[kwlug-disc] a present for the older guys here...

[Khalid Baheyeldin]

One reason why BBS's were never big where I lived (Middle East) is that the
telco paradigm was radically different.
Receiving calls of any kind was free (even long distance, or
international), but making outgoing calls, even if they
are local, cost money. That is why the dialup internet lagged for years,
because the cost ramped up as you stayed
online for longer.

When the internet was made available over DSL, things started to pick up,
but after many years of low adoption
for the general public.

What follows is a tangent ...

That same paradigm worked well for another thing: mobile phones. Mobile
phone numbers were never part of
an area code, but had their own area codes depending on the carrier. So
instead of your phone beginning with
519, it was a separate area code for ALL phones that are Rogers, another
code for Bell, ...etc.

That meant that those who are calling a mobile number know that it is a
mobile phone, and pay for it (if their
plan did not have unlimited). The call receiver did not pay anything for
taking incoming calls.

That is different from the North American scheme where mobile phones have
an area code tied to a geographic
area, and the caller to such a number has no idea if it is a mobile phone
or landline, nor if the receiver pays
for incoming calls or not.

But things are changing a bit since most carriers offer unlimited incoming
and outgoing calls on mobile.

Mobile phone adoption in the Middle East (and Europe and Asia) was for
decades far ahead of North America.
Having CDMA for a long time did not help, and also having locked phones
didn't too ...
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