Hello Steven,

 SH> These charges have dropped like a stone here for the same
 SH> reasons you outline in the parts of your message that I'm
 SH> not quoting.  But cheap long distance calls are only part
 SH> of the solution.  What I also encountered was poor line
 SH> quality so that there was endless retraining and very slow
 SH> transfer rates.

Hmm, this has been a problem to some destinations but within Western Europe
those problem have long gone. International links have been digital for
over a decade I'dd say so there is no distinguishable difference in quality
between a local call and an international call. In the past we had problems
with satellite links, but that was ages ago.

 SH> Our local telco used the same argument here and local rates
 SH> did go up to some extent.  However, we never got stuck with
 SH> a "per call" charge

I am not sure who is better off. TAANSTAAFL. Someone has to pay for the
local calls and it is usually the customer.

We /used/ to have unmetered local calls. A local call was EUR 0.07
irrespective of the duration of the call. It was changed in the early
80ties. There are two versions of why this was changed. Both bring into
account that the mechanical exchanges at that time could only handle 7 out
of 100 subscribers at the same time. So a situation where many subcsribers
make exteremely long calls had to be discouraged.

1) It was the modem users that would tie up a line for hours. I admit
myself having been guilty of that too. I left the connection open for
entire weekends.

2) It was IBM that planned to replace their leased lines by an estafette
system of permanently open dial up lines. This was possible because local
areas overlap.

I don't know what it really was. Perhaps a bit of both. Anyway, metered
local calls put a damper on on-line BBSing but was a tremendous impetus for
pointing. It was very popular here.

Back to cost.

I pay a monthly fee of EUR 14.44 for my analoge line. There is an
additional montly fee of EUR 0.95 for the optional caller ID. For national
calls there is an EUR 0.05 call setup fee that is charged each time the
other party answers. For international calls this is EUR 0.10. Then there
is the fee per minute ranging from EUR 0.01 for a local call in the off
hours to EUR 0.30 for a call to a cell phone during office hours.

For my cell phone I pay a monthly fee of EUR 9.05. An EUR 0.10 call setup
fee and a per minute rate of EUR 0.20 and up depending on destination.

Cheers, Michiel

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