Re:Is Facebook a Structural Threat to Free Society?
by jacquesm on Tuesday March 14, 2017 @12:28PM
(#13868915)
> Yes, some people used to ring up $2000 phone bills, but the more common case was legitimate communication.
Telephone tariffs in some parts of the world made long distance relationships very hard. Monopolists (often government controlled) took consumers to the cleaners every chance they got.
Only in the last two decades have prices finally been coming down.
So even those $2000 phone bills could easily be legitimate communication.
Today I'm still very conscious of the time I spend 'on the phone', especially when abroad. On mobile phones I've been hit more than once with a surprise bill because of living close to the border that was in that neighborhood (but the phone company was good about dropping those charges because even if I was on Dutch soil my phone kept switching to a German base station that was very strong where I lived).
Telephone tariffs in some parts of the world made long distance relationships very hard. Monopolists (often government controlled) took consumers to the cleaners every chance they got.
Only in the last two decades have prices finally been coming down.
So even those $2000 phone bills could easily be legitimate communication.
Today I'm still very conscious of the time I spend 'on the phone', especially when abroad. On mobile phones I've been hit more than once with a surprise bill because of living close to the border that was in that neighborhood (but the phone company was good about dropping those charges because even if I was on Dutch soil my phone kept switching to a German base station that was very strong where I lived).