In the other discussion about exchanges, there was mention of the portability of cellular numbers and that one could own a number far from the place it was issued.
I believe cell phone users (who aren't on a plan) are charged by where they are located at the moment as opposed to where their number is based.
However, the real issue is for those who call cell phones from land lines. I believe there the rate center associated with the number still applies regardless of where the phone itself happens to physically be.
In other words, imagine I'm in NYC and you're in NYC. But, your cell phone has a L.A. number. I call you from my house and I'm billed for a call to L.A., right? The equipment might find you in NYC, but it still considers it a call to L.A. because of the number.
One thing that bothers me is that callers today are often charged for a toll call or extra time even if the call isn't completed. In the old days the Bell System was strict about supervision and trained business customers to avoid keeping customers on hold too long* and certainly never disconnect anyone.
But today if you call a cell phone and nothing happens, you still get billed. Cell phone users pay for time from SEND to END, not for when a phone is actually answered. In other words, if you call someone and they take a while to answer the phone, you pay for that time.
Nowadays many people (including me) have unlimited bundled service deals. But a lot of people don't, especially cell phone users during peak times. Calls from pay phones obviously cost money and the meter is running. Many people still have a la carte long distance.
- Bell advised never to answer a phone and put the person on hold as so many people do now, rather, they said to let it ring and only answer when you were ready. This way, the caller wasn't billed unnecessarily for hold time. [Of course, we're told that the old Bell System was an evil monopoly and never ever acted in the customer's interest, so I must be mistaken about their free extensive customer training programs.]
Anyway, deluged with caller complaints -- I mean, if you had waited for King on (the essence of) hold for thirty minutes only to get abruptly disconnected by AT&T and have to dial back in and go to the end of the line (where you had originally been before you gradually worked your way up the queue) wouldn't you have been sore also? Also, one of the 'Bible discussion programs' on Family Radio also used an
800 number for his callers and told them the same thing, "let it continue ringing until we answer it" had the same problems with crabby, angry callers who were cut off.King's answer to his callers was to encourage them to reach him using 'Sprint or MCI; they do not cut you off like that; we will give them your business'. And King switched his 800 line to one from Sprint, I think. AT&T's response: "Good! Good! Let Sprint/MCI have all the busy circuits with no revenue on them; we do not need it! We want money on our circuits, not just dead time." PAT]