The per-minute charge for cellphone minutes is intended to cover the cost of delivering the call over a radio channel, which is an expensive and limited resourc

The per-minute charge for cellphone minutes is intended to cover the cost of delivering the call over a radio channel, which is an expensive and limited resource. European cellular carriers will often charge the caller the full cost of the call (using a special area code which has a higher per-minute rate) and allow customers to receive calls without using up their own money. This was tried in the United States with area codes 500 and 533. It didn't take off, probably because callers didn't like the cost of a call being unpredictable (carriers could set a different call cost for each 500-NXX block).