Some kind of special ultra-cheap local-only plan? ($12/MO was really cheap back then - I worked for a telco and that was my discounted employee price). Sounds like the idea was you would use a different long-distance provider.
I was paying 10¢/min to London in the 80’s via Sprint.
Yes, at the time local calls were basically within the same city in Kansas and long distance was between multiple local companies that all charged a lot to cross networks.
Out of state calls were through a national carrier, which is why they were cheaper. If I rememeber correctly the in state calls were like 5x the out of state calls and he was expecting it to be less for the shorter distance, like tens of dollars instead of hundreds.
Oh, wow. Break up of Bell really screwed you on that one. (Not that I think the breakup was bad, it helped everything - just your local companies decided to take advantage. Which is funny, because they used to be related Business Units in Ma Bell, so the leadership probably all knew each other from working together).
Whenever I moved into a new place in the '90s, I’d have a phone line installed in my room (I was always a roommate to somebody) and it only ever cost me $12 a month. Special Lifeline Service for poor people.
Not sure why I ever did this since I was never home.
Holy hell, wtf?
Some kind of special ultra-cheap local-only plan? ($12/MO was really cheap back then - I worked for a telco and that was my discounted employee price). Sounds like the idea was you would use a different long-distance provider.
I was paying 10¢/min to London in the 80’s via Sprint.
Yes, at the time local calls were basically within the same city in Kansas and long distance was between multiple local companies that all charged a lot to cross networks.
Out of state calls were through a national carrier, which is why they were cheaper. If I rememeber correctly the in state calls were like 5x the out of state calls and he was expecting it to be less for the shorter distance, like tens of dollars instead of hundreds.
Oh, wow. Break up of Bell really screwed you on that one. (Not that I think the breakup was bad, it helped everything - just your local companies decided to take advantage. Which is funny, because they used to be related Business Units in Ma Bell, so the leadership probably all knew each other from working together).
Whenever I moved into a new place in the '90s, I’d have a phone line installed in my room (I was always a roommate to somebody) and it only ever cost me $12 a month. Special Lifeline Service for poor people.
Not sure why I ever did this since I was never home.