Why were long-distance calls such a big deal before cell phones?
I do not want to say that kids today do not understand this stuff. I want to know the reason why phone calls used to be so expensive. For example if you made a phone call to a town a couple of hours away in 1987 and your mom told you to keep the call short what was the main reason for the cost. Was it because of the lines and switches that connected the call or was it because of the prices that the phone companies were charging. Maybe it was because of the rules that the government had in place to control the prices. I have heard people talk about this before. I never really understood it. They make it sound like it is knowledge but I guess I missed that information. I want to know why the phone companies used to charge much for long distance calls even after the technology changed and it became cheaper for them to provide the service. The phone companies just kept charging prices because that is what people were used to paying. I want to know the phone network reason, for the high cost of phone calls.
The phone network reason is what I am trying to understand.