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In some countries, such as Canada and the United States, long-distance rates were historically kept artificially high to subsidize unprofitable flat-rate local residential services. [citation needed] Intense competition between long-distance telephone companies narrowed these gaps significantly in most developed nations in the late 20th century.
Toll-free numbers are also sometimes confused with 900-numbers, for which the telephone company bills the callers at rates far in excess of long-distance service rates for services such as recorded information or live chat.
In the meantime, the largest facilities-based CLECs, MFS, and TCG, had IPOs and then were acquired by WorldCom and AT&T, respectively, in 1996 and 1998 as those long distance companies prepared to defend their business customers from the Regional Bell Operating Companies' (RBOC) incipient entry into the long distance business.
[1] WATS was introduced by the Bell System in 1961 as a long-distance flat-rate plan by which a business could obtain a special line with an included number of hours ('measured time' or 'full-time') of long-distance calling to a specified area. [2] [3] These lines were most often connected to private branch exchanges in large businesses.
For international access the NANP is assigned the country code 1, which is dialed as a prefix in the international E.164 telephone numbering plan. The trunk prefix for dialing long-distance calls, across numbering plan area (NPA) boundaries within Canada or to other NANP countries, is also 1.
1-919 – Erotic services; 1-956 – Entertainment services: up to 40 Agorot more than a regular landline rate + destination service provider fee; 1-957 – Information services: regular landline rate + destination service provider fee; The prefix 1-900 belongs to services with cost addition of 0.5 NIS for minute. Usually, used in radio ...
The amount of money involved in the settlement rate system is considerable. In 2003, American telephone companies made payments of three billion dollars to telephone companies and governments across the world. The settlement route arrangement is also known as the accounting rate system. The accounting rate is the sum of the two settlement rates.
A subscriber located just outside the exchange boundary of a large city, or just outside the flat-rate local calling area for the city, would find that many numbers which would have been local from the city itself became long-distance. In many areas, local flat-rate service was subsidized by long-distance toll service for much of the 20th century.