Talk:Long-distance calling

Opening heading

Is there any service that helps a telephone user determine whether a call between two numbers will be long distance?

Also, there is an odd billing custom in the US: local-long-distance.

For North American numbers, http://www.localcallingguide.com/lca_rcdist.php will do this if you have the area code and first three local digits for each of the two numbers. I don't know of any service that does this worldwide. 66.102.87.61 (talk) 20:10, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

local long-distance

The section "Categories and charges" mentions local long-distance in the second and third paragraphs. Are we repeating the same concept here, or using one term to describe two different ones?

Replaced external links who contributed the original content for this article.

Please quit removing links from this section. The references are external sources and copywrited. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.24.76.41 (talk • contribs) .

This user has been blocked from editing as a repeat spammer. Gwernol 11:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Long distance carriers

I'm waiting for the day when the concept of long distance goes away--with advanced digital codecs, bandwidth can be reduced, and with IP technology, geography really means a lot less than it used to. But I digress.

While attempting to reduce my grandfather's phone bill as much as possible (as he uses his cell for everything except fax calls and the occasional incoming call), I asked the SBC/AT&T representative if we could just not have a long distance plan (as the cheapest offered was still $2 per month for the 10-cent-per-minute OneRate plan). She said that it was possible, but you have to be extremely careful about not making long distance calls, as it can get very expensive. She said that if you don't have a long distance plan, the exchange randomly picks a long distance carrier--or, in her words, the LD carriers grab whichever out-of-plan calls they want and proceed to charge the maximum allowable rate, which is $5 per minute.

This is just the word of one AT&T CSR, so I didn't want to incorporate it into the article yet. Anyone able to confirm this or want to add it in? cluth 06:34, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I was also told that if you cancel your LD service and accidentally make a LD call, any company and "grab you" and charge any price they want for the call. For $6/month you can block this from happening. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.145.239.187 (talk) 00:28, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

If it's true, it's US-specific. In Canada, not setting a default carrier gives the local telco at their worst available rate ($0.34 for the first minute on Bell Canada in the 1990s, for instance) but not a random carrier. 66.102.87.61 (talk) 19:15, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

[[The insertion of Big Red Wire by Brad the owner is a joke. They have 8 employee's and less than 50,000 customers nationwide. They resell the Qwest network and are not a facility based carrier. He is simply spamming.Iclimb (talk) 04:38, 8 May 2008 (UTC)]]

Cultural Bias: This Article is completely biased towards the United States

Outside of the US, for example, the United Kingdom, the concept of long-distance calls, the language describing long-distance calls, and the technology implementing long-distance calls, does not exist. In the United Kindgom, for example, you can dial a call anywhere in the UK, or anywhere in the world, for a flat rate decided by your local telephone operator and, no matter how many telephone companies the call may have to pass through, you only ever get a single bill.

The globalise tag was added to warn people, particularly non-native English speakers, of the dangers of misinterpretation with regard to world culture when reading this article.

I've reinstated the {{globalise}} tag. Some of the concepts here, such as the LATA as an arbitrary demarcation between local "Baby Bell" telephone companies and interexchange carriers, are entirely meaningless outside the US as they're regulatory constructs invented as part of the breakup of the Bell System. The term "toll call" is also meaningless in countries where local calls are not free (such as the UK). Trunk call should point here and this article should be rewritten to be about the global concept. Dump the US-specific nonsense into the articles on LATA, AT&T divestiture or similar US regulatory concepts as they're excessive country-specific detail for this page. 66.102.87.61 (talk) 19:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: page moved. Feel free to create a dab once all of the old incoming links are cleaned up. The templates have been updated, but it will take a bit for the job queue to process them. Vegaswikian (talk) 07:58, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

---

Long distance → Long distance calling — There are quite a large number of things that "long distance" can refer to, by merit of the fact that "long distance" it is quite a general descriptive term. I see no reason why this should be placed at long distance and not the more descriptive (and equally in usage) term of "long distance calling" or "long distance call". I was brought here looking at misdirected links to long-distance track event and that page seems an equally, if not a more, desirable target based on the page views of the two [1][2].

However, there are a large number of articles which long distance could be the target of: Long-distance trail, Long-distance trains, long-distance relationship, Long Distance Triathlon, Long-distance swimming, Long-distance riding as well as several songs and albums called Long Distance. Judging by the large number of articles and the fact that no single term could claim to be the definitive "long distance", I think Long distance should become a disambiguation page and the current topic moved to "calling". Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)^{Join WikiProject Athletics!} 17:46, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Long distance, used alone, is almost always understood to refer to long distance telephone communications (unless, of course, the context is clearly otherwise). None of the other articles you mention could plausibly be titled simply "Long distance", or even if they could they certainly would not displace this one as primary topic. If anything, those other articles would go on Long distance (disambiguation), although even that is probably unnecessary. Station1 (talk) 00:00, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Strong support. This is an obvious one. "Long distance" is very common in athletics. There is also worldwide view issue here, in that other countries don't use the word. In some places it's referred to as "calling STD." In any case, "long distance" is almost never used alone (since it's adjectival, anyway) - it would not be used in this context without the word "call": "to call long distance," "a long distance call," etc. Hence, the move makes perfect sense. StAnselm (talk) 00:49, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Long distance is often used alone as if a noun [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] in the context of telephoning, but not often in other contexts. Station1 (talk) 02:56, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

• Support move, and replace by disambiguation page which also points to Long-distance track event etc. The use of "long distance" in the sense of this article is US-specific anyway, since the UK and India use subscriber trunk dialling. -- Radagast3 (talk) 03:14, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support move - I may be biased (being part of WikiProject Athletics), but I do believe that disambiguation is in order, as given by the numerous articles listed above that begin with the words "Long distance", including, but not only Long distance running. Mipchunk (talk) 06:56, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support move - I doubt that anyone outside of the USA would feel that 'long distance' must obviously refer to telephony. 'Long distance calling', on the other hand, is immediately comprehensible for everyone. --RexxS (talk) 08:18, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Very strong support - Completely agree with nom, StAnselm and RexxS. The status quo is plain weird. Sideways713 (talk) 12:17, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Makes sense as per nom. --DAJF (talk) 15:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Strong oppose I agree a move is needed, but "long distance calling" is too vague, and itself a rare phrase in normal English (as opposed to "long distance call") - or is this a WP:ENGVAR point, as suggested above. Either way, would support Long distance telephony or some variant with "telephone" specified. The article very rightly has a "worldwide" tag, and is purely about the US. A rename to Long distance calling in the United States would be acceptable also. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
• Support. Makes a lot of sense and removes some ambiguity. Faceless Enemy (talk) 20:37, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

What is a 'Baby Bell'?

The article names and uses the term 'Baby Bells' without ever explaining what the heck it is? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.245.193 (talk) 10:07, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

A "Baby Bell" is probably a misnomer. The monolith of AT&T was, by court order (modified final judgement in 1983) broken into several smaller companies - Regional Bell Operating Companies - that ran whatever AT&T owned in that region up to that time, so that they no longer were part of a single nation-spanning company. AT&T long distance was also separated from them into a separate company. The RBOCs were referred to as "Baby Bells" because of their small size compared to what was. Pacific Telesis (?), US West (much of what had been Mountain Bell), Ameritech (midwest: Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana Bell companies), Bell South (Southern Bell), NYNEX (New York and New England Bell companies), and two or three others. The RBOCs were prohibited from offering long distance between them for several years, I suppose until the competitive market "matured". The RBOCs/Baby Bells eventually began to reconsolidate with one another or with other companies that never were in the AT&T family, e.g. GTE, Sprint, MCI, foreign investors, non-telephone companies.

Also split from the old AT&T monolith were equipment manufacturers and AT&T Long Lines, the latter become Bellcore, whose functions included managing the North American Numbering Plan which was later contracted out by the FCC to a private business that has absolutely no interest in telephone service so that it is strictly impartial. GBC (talk) 21:59, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Spam inclusion?

Am I missing the value in oldid=576288082's addition of a link to "low cost calling cards" in the external links? Seems like an ad to me. ~E$ 20:37, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Statistics

It would be useful to have an external link to long-distance call statistics by country (external link rather than including in article as these data are ephemeral). If I find a good, stable site I will add it, but the search so far doesn't look promising. D Anthony Patriarche (talk) 22:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Need a section on the history of competition in long distance service

I just added verbiage mentioning the 1968 FCC decision that forced AT&T to allow competition in long distance, starting with MCI Communications.

If I recall correctly, I read something about this recently in Crawford (2013) Captive Audience (Yale U. Pr.); unfortunately, I've misplaced my copy of that book. I believe that was an important step in creating the Internet as it is known today. DavidMCEddy (talk) 14:47, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

POV change

As of 2017-08-30, the section on the United States, included, "The US regulatory structure is non-standard as it splits long-distance calls into multiple, arbitrary categories; an intrastate call is regulated under state law but, once interstate commerce is at stake, federal regulation is applied." Two concerns:

• What does "non-standard" mean in this context? In particular, what "standards" are available that should apply here?
• The term "arbitrary" seems out of place here. The U.S. constitution includes many provisions limiting the powers of both the federal and state governments. This includes the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that the United States Congress shall have power "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes."

I reworded that sentence as follows: "The US regulatory structure splits long-distance calls into multiple categories. An intrastate call is regulated under state law. Federal regulation applies to intrastate calls."

I also deleted "arbitrary" from the next sentence: "The local access and transport area or LATA, another arbitrary US regulatory construct, ... ." The term "arbitrary" in this context seems at best out of place and inappropriate. I replaced that phrase with just "concept". DavidMCEddy (talk) 14:27, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Dragnet sound file

I have just listened to the entire episode that this sound file comes from, the episode itself captured from a phonograph recording. It is entitled "The Big Missing", ep 8 of the first season, air date 28 July 1949, listed at https://www.oldradioworld.com/shows/Dragnet.php. GBC (talk) 21:49, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

21st Century

In the 21st century United States, I no longer worry about long distance charges because my cell phone and IP phone (which has completely replaced landline in my area) both have plans that charge all domestic calls equally. The discussion of LATAs, intrastate calling costing more than interstate, and so forth is historically relevant, but not current in my observations. ke4roh (talk) 02:00, 22 September 2024 (UTC)