I don't know if it is a price thing (except phone companies long ago charged for long distance, and hate giving up that fee). I think the real problem is that

I don't know if it is a price thing (except phone companies long ago charged for long distance, and hate giving up that fee). I think the real problem is that these gate systems at apartment complexes setup to only handle 7 digits. It was install in the 70s or 80s when our state when our part of the state had only 1 area code (leading 3 digits). Now, we have several. When we dropped our land line, we found that the door buzzer system could only call the 763 area code, but our cell phones use 651.