51–60 of 80 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW - AT&T is now in SD. (grew up there, and still have family in the state).
And in Montana as well when they purchased Alltel in 2009.
Verizon purchased Alltel, but was required by the FCC to sell off 105 of the markets, which is where ATT stepped in and bought a bunch of those markets.
FWIW, my Alltel account was switched over to Verizon in 2009.
A similar thing happened in New Zealand (and likely elsewhere) in the late 90's, before broadband became prevalent. There were a number of ISP's who provided free dial-up internet, because they made money from termination fees when the majority of people called from a large telco to their smaller one. Eventually the large telco reached a commercial agreement and the service was scrapped, but it was good while it last…
Same thing in Ireland, except that we paid for the calls. So we paid 2c per minute, of which the ISP maybe 1c got from the telco in termination fees, so there was a lot of "free" internet access at the time.
Of course broadband made the whole thing obsolete.
Bear with me here, but it seems to me like this is a good argument for socialism. Consider: why do termination fees exist? Clearly, as America was being wired with telephone service, the cost to run lines to rural areas was prohibitively expensive. So what's the capitalist/Randian thing to do? Well, charge more for phone service out there. If people can't afford it, then they'll move to where it is cheaper to have a…
Interesting, I dint know that. I had an interesting experience with ATT. I was into the 6 month of a 2year contract back in 2007. I wasn't using my phone much (non-iphone). But then I went on a road trip to Yellowstone, which included driving through ND, SD, MT and WY. During this 7 day trip, I was using my phone a lot (work + personal). The total amount of minutes I spent in those 7 days were way more than my usual…
However, they let us out of our contract, gave us the phones, and paid us for the phones (since we had just renewed with them) at around $200 each.
It was quite a pleasant surprise.
Edit: And then they bought a tower in town when the iPhone came out. Go figure.
So, given all this, why wouldn't AT&T offer a competing free conference service where they keep the termination fee?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/technology/flaws-in-videoc... >
I once read that this is how MagicJack makes most of their money as well.
It's interesting that you bring you MagicJack. I have always wondered how they made money. Now it is starting to make some sense. Can you share the link to that article?
So, given all this, why wouldn't AT&T offer a competing free conference service where they keep the termination fee?