What's interesting here is how things are different from say 20-30 years ago, when everyone would answer their land-line with 'Hello, this is NAME on NUMBER, ca

What's interesting here is how things are different from say 20-30 years ago, when everyone would answer their land-line with 'Hello, this is NAME on NUMBER, can I help you' or some variant. This is how I was taught to answer the phone at home, certainly. Perhaps what's changed is that calls are no longer expensive, and numbers are no longer hand-dialled, so knowing as quickly as possible that you had connected to the wrong number or person is not as important. There's probably other cultural issues at work, I guess, to do with an increased awareness of privacy and so on. The way we communicate has certainly been changed by the Internet and mobile phones in an enormous way.