| Garry W 2005-05-21, 10:55 pm |
| Rick Merrill <jaynehm@comcast.net> wrote:
quote:
>You have put your finger(s) on another issue with VoIP: you cannot place
>person-to-person NOR collect-calls nor ANY other type of
>operator-assisted call. That's one reason costs can stay low.
I'm afraid those are things of the past, too. The original purpose of
person-to-person, as I recall, was to avoid having to pay the long-distance
charge if the person you wanted to talk to wasn't even there. This was of
interest when long distance cost an arm and a leg. Nowadays when the
surcharge for the operator is a hundred times greater than the charge for the
long distance call itself, person-to-person just doesn't make much sense.
Collect calls are useful from a pay phone. Or, rather, they =used= to be
useful -- back when pay phones were still plentiful. Back when pay phones
didn't have built-in "dial anywhere" deals. Back before calling cards were
available really cheap in every convenience store. Back before you could talk
to your automobile directly.
Only people I've heard of who still call collect are the prison inmates.
quote:
>Actually, I don't even know if I can receive on a VoIP line a collect
>call. (Happily, all my kids are grown, flown and on their own.)
The kids I know that are anywhere near grown seem to have all acquired their
own cell phones...
Garry
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