Do explain how you get screwed on mobile termination rates! Mobile phone calls are considerably more expensive in Europe per minute, but you as a recipient may not realise it. See my comment that points to a post with more details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8075829
BTW I am a Brit and think the US is dysfunctional in many ways.
What you are paying for is not the incoming call getting to your carrier, but for your carrier to then connect to your phone using radio (or whatever). Same for outgoing calls. To flip it around, when I call YOUR number, why should it be relevant to me how YOU choose connect to the phone network? Why should I care if you use cell, satellite, machines in the exchange, a piece of string, copper or whatever else comes along in the future?
If the US wanted to use separate area codes for mobile then it could only practically be done by making the area codes longer. This would be a massive disruption. What solution would you propose?
Are you seriously saying that people should understand at least 36 different random unrelated area codes to cost more? And that people who can't do that are inferior and just being difficult? Because in other countries they did things like make mobile area codes always start with 7 - ie only one rule to remember.
Well as a Brit you should know how you make more room in the phonenumber space: awkwardly, slowly, in a series of steps, and with a huge amount of disruption. But a few years later everyone's forgotten about it.
This is in spite of the fact that in order to get from where we were to begin with - with '01' as the area code for London, for example - to where we are today, peoples' numbers went first through the 071/081 split, then through the 'add 1' 0171/0181 era after phONE day, and then finally moved over to the 0207/0208 codes, as a foundation ultimately for London having an 020 area code.
In Britain it was relatively easy as there was only one phone company, plus the one in Hull. Britain already had variable length area codes and numbers, so it wasn't as disruptive. (I was very amused to find one place where the area code was longer than the number!)
The US & Canada had far more companies, plus NANPA 3/7 format being hard coded everywhere - forms, computer programs etc. Trying to implement changes to phone number length will make y2k efforts look trivial.
Heck when places started requiring the dialling of area codes because "local" areas especially big cities had more than one, was disruptive enough. That started happening in the mid-nineties.
Given the choice between huge disruption, or termination fees being the same and the costs of connecting between the phone company and the person making/receiving the calls being their business, the latter isn't an unreasonable choice. When I call you, why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else?
I remember when Australia extended all phone numbers to be standard 10 digits (from either 8 or 9 digits previously, depending on area) - I was 11 when it started, and somehow I managed to work it out and still use the phone.
If you're telling me the "greatest country in the world" can't transition to a sensible numbering system because it's "too hard" I will simply point you once again to the various other things Americans are hilariously and depressingly behind the rest of the world on... anything related to measurements, banking, healthcare, politics, comes to mind.
> why should it be relevant to me if you are connected to your choice of carrier by a piece of copper, fibre, radio waves or whatever else
because as someone else in the threaded highlighted, it can be abused (especially in the case of SMS which don't require you to 'pick up' to bill you) to a ridiculous level.
More expensive to whom? When I lived in France I paid 20 Euro per month for unlimited everything, including international calls to over 100 countries. As a subscriber, my per-minute rate was not of any concern to me since there wasn't one.
Did those unlimited international calls also include to international cell phones? Cell phones are usually excluded because the termination rates are so much higher as my calling card screenshot showed.
Edit: I looked up free - a well known French ISP. Guess what - they have free calls all over the world to landlines, but charge for mobile - http://www.free.fr/adsl/telephone.html