In the late 1990′s, it was literally impossible to enjoy a decent dinner without having someone from MCI, AT&T, or Sprint call to pitch their “new” long distance plan. But with the average long distance rate priced at 30 CENTS a minute, a little pestering was a necessary evil. And when some commission earning salespeople began signing up people without permission, consumers outraged and filed complaints with the FTC and FCC. The term “slamming” became synonymous with pesky telephone operators who had illegally signed up customers without consent.

Telephone companies made comparison shopping difficult and with the onslaught of domestic and international calling plans, tracking the best deals became a daily chess match. One could get the best domestic rate, and still pay the highest for international rates. Or, pay a monthly fee for low international calling to a country of choice.

The long distance industry was able to effectively and systematically put consumers in a hynogogic state of mind. Families were paying high rates for long distance and in some cases over-spending by hundreds a month, namely international calling. Some customers even had their long distance privilege stripped away due to unpaid bills.

It was during this same time period that the telecom mania introduced pre-paid calling cards. With prepaid calling cards, consumers no longer had to worry about overspending. Whatever one’s budget for calling became his/her call management card. Finally, international callers could give big bills their long-awaited quietus.

As prepaid calling cards gained in popularity the traditional telephone mammoths stepped up their mindsharing campaigns with:

10-10-321
10-10-220
10-10-345
10-16-570
10-10-811
10-10-566
10-10-719
10-10-297
10-10-987
10-10-457
10-10-636
10-10-811
10-10-868

In some cases, MCI and AT&T secretly marketed more than one 10-10 numbers. It was as if the big boys were tracking and testing which calling plans had the highest response rate. Clever. Hardly a day went by without seeing or hearing Dennis Miller, Tony Danza, ALF, Hulk Hogan, John Lithgow or Sugar Ray Leonard hawk their “exciting” 10-10 saving plan.

With 10-10 calling codes, callers could use a calling plan of choice regardless of the subscribed-to long distance provider. Unfortunately, many of these so- called dial-around services had hidden surcharges, monthly fees and minimum talk times. For example, some 10-10 plans guaranteed up to 20 minutes of talk time for 99 CENTS. Thus even a one second call could cost the caller 99 CENTS. Others had a minimum fee per call, making a quick 30 second call cost $2-4.

Leading up to 2010, the line between local and long distance calls has become gray. With the advent of the internet and voip services like skype, magic jack and vonage, and telephone number portability, any caller could take his local number and place or receive calls from anywhere in the world. For a small fee of $2 to $3 and web connection, calls from the U.S. to Japan cost the same as that from a next door neighbor.

What is the future of telephone? Is there one?