[jonathanmayer]

My experience was that the major carriers had little economic incentive to invest in improving telephone service, which they viewed as a legacy line of business. They were focused on selling data plans, building their networks, and entering new markets (especially online services and advertising).

[cma]

Spam calls are actually a cash cow. Uses your minutes and Verizon also makes money selling a subscription spam blocking service that would be worthless without the annoying calls:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/15906800/verizon-anti-spa...

[jjeaff]

What percentage of US cell plans aren't unlimited minutes these days? I'm thinking it has to be a tiny amount.

Seems like they would like to unclog their Network not to mention their servers have to handle and store all the voicemails.

[Scoundreller]

The receiving provider usually gets paid to terminate the call.

It may only be a fraction of a cent per minute, but these are the same telecoms that will gladly send you a bill every month because you owe them 1 cent.

[supertrope]

In the past, cellular network operators earned revenue based off minutes sold. That's why voicemail has very verbose instructions that are read to you every single time. It's a way of inflating average call duration and thus revenue.

These days with unmetered calling, the receiving telco still makes some money off incoming calls through termination charges.

[lotyrin]

If they truly aren't interested in it, that'd be great, they could just stop, open up to become dumb data pipes and create a market of competitive third-party service for the telephony part.

[dredmorbius]

Are the telcos trying to kill the system outright then?