Re: [PLUG] Separate but related question: was VOIP choices

[InterLinked via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On 10/10/2025 7:38 AM, Rich Freeman via plug wrote:
> On 10/9/2025 10:12 PM, Steve Litt via plug wrote:
> > On Mon, 6 Oct 2025 21:38:11 -0400
> > Gary Duzan via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >
> > > They do bill by the minute,
> > Ouch! The return of 1976. Maybe get a WATS line? :-)
>
> Keep in mind that real costs are accrued by the minute.  In the 
> consumer world for marketing/political reasons this gets moved around 
> so that consumers/voters don't get upset, but the reality is that 
> every packet costs somebody something to deliver.
>
> In the business world it is much more common for stuff to actually be 
> accounted for like this, so that companies can purchase what they 
> want.  If you only need rare outbound connections would you rather 
> have a service with no monthly service charge but a per-minute call 
> charge, or one that the minutes are free and unlimited, but there is a 
> monthly service charge and if you use too many unlimited minutes then 
> they terminate your account?
>
> While AWS rates aren't exactly cheap, their pricing model where you 
> pay for exactly what you use and they really don't care how much you 
> use is refreshing in this regard.  I can upload 50PiB of data to S3 
> and they won't complain one bit about it.  I can back my website with 
> S3 and send them a billion gets per hour and that won't bother them 
> either.
>
> We only get the illusion of free/unlimited stuff in the consumer world 
> because you pay for it in other ways, and if you actually try to take 
> advantage of anything being free/unlimited you'll get cut off.  The 
> VoIP provider is just being honest.

This is exactly it. Someone is always getting ripped off in "unlimited 
plans", either the user or the provider.

I have the 5 cents per minute Verizon Long Distance plan on my POTS line 
(12 cents for intrastate long distance), because it's still a lot 
cheaper than paying for their Freedom Unlimited plan, which includes 
just a few basic features nowadays that aren't useful to me. People 
think it's nuts, but it makes more economical sense.

(Of course, I pay less than 1/10th of that for VoIP calls, but for 
high-quality, you can't beat a good high-quality TDM long-distance 
provider).

NA


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