re: #236 Sherlock Hound

Landline phone companies are greedy as fuck. For many years, they would charge for touchtone (DTMF) service! This, even though the equipment has supported DTMF dial tones for at least 60 years! Caller ID has been around for 30 years and the cost is long since sunk. Nope. Still a charge. When I had us buy a new phone system at my employer, Verizon charged us for Caller ID. Our phone system required Caller ID. We switched to Comcast shortly after that; like the cell companies, cable phone service had CID “out of the box”.

Unfortunately for many of us in rural areas, landline companies still hold a natural monopoly on telephone service. As such, they can charge whatever they want if the state public utility commission or FCC do not choose to clamp down on them.

With the exception of Caller ID here (they offer that as part of regular telephone service), every other service (call forward, &c) is an extra charge.

Since my telephone company is also the monopoly Internet provider, that means a huge telephone bill (my telephone service costs more than my gas, electric, and water combined—or the equivalent of my property tax every three months).