It also suggests that the NYT intern that wrote this has very little idea about phone companies. >DOUBLE BILLING In Europe calls to cell phones (from landlines

It also suggests that the NYT intern that wrote this has very little idea about phone companies. >DOUBLE BILLING In Europe calls to cell phones (from landlines) cost the caller 5-10x as much as calls to another landline - local calls on landlines aren't free. Because of this cell phones have special numbers so the caller knows it's a cell phone. So you can't have a cell phone with a local exchange number. Which means you don;t have the wholesale replacement of home phones with cell phones in europe. Many people there are campaigning for the US system of cell phone owner pays. INTERNATIONAL CALLS: The reason your call to Greenland costs $3/min is that the Greenland state telephone company is charging them this. It's also the reason that calls to say the UK cost less than to geographically closer countries in S America and why calls to the 3rd world cost a fortune. For a lot of countries 'settlement charges' are their main source of hard currency. THE SUBSIDY GAME Have they not heard of interest? Of return on investment? Perhaps not, perhaps they built a new office block in NY because they assumed they simply paid back a fraction of the cost each month until the capital was repaid.