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I'm pretty sure that the 'no special code for mobile' and 'recipient pays' concepts were part of the same plan - companies worried that nobody would call a mobi
by jacalata 14y ago
I'm pretty sure that the 'no special code for mobile' and 'recipient pays' concepts were part of the same plan - companies worried that nobody would call a mobile if they knew it was different or more expensive, so they made it look exactly the same to call one, and make the assumed 'high powered exec' cover the cost difference in order to receive calls. I'm not sure why this only happened in the US - was it the first country to have consumer mobile phones?
- beagle3 14y agoI have no first hand knowledge, but I'd assume there's no malice involved. In the US, every state has a different area code, and calling within your area code (and possibly a few others) is "local", and other area codes are "long distance". At the time, the infrastructure wasn't there for a US national mobile area code - the installations were state local, and as a result, mobile numbers were state local. And it all follows from there. The US phone infrastructure (both landline and mobile) was there first, and as a result, suffered from a lot of legacy that the European system was able to avoid by virtue of having more time to think about it, observe how it was done wrong, and do it right.