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Because VOIP hadn't come along, so they had a monopoly and could charge pretty much what they wanted. They switched to digital because it reduced their costs,

• EGreg 5y ago
  Why didn’t they compete with each other to bring costs down? You mean they had a cartel for decades, kept prices artificially high, didn’t compete and the government did nothing? Yeah sounds like the cablecompanies…
  • pfranz 5y ago
    > Why didn’t they compete with each other to bring costs down? I remember that happening in the 90s due to deregulation and breakup of at&t. 10-10-321 had a lot of commercials in the 90s[1]. I'm sure they're on YouTube. Most people I knew would go to a convenience store to buy a pre-paid card for long distance. 1-800-collect was a similar service that had a bunch of ads for calling collect. It kind of makes calling confusing (and required going to a store and buying something upfront), but I remember younger people (who probably weren't paying for the landline at home) never really considered using their home phone's long distance service. I think most landline services kept their high prices because the few that used it were too lazy or didn't know better. I wouldn't be surprised if it's still expensive (I haven't had a landline in over a decade). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-10-321#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-10-321#History