Well, let's consider such costs. Most of which (maintenance, management, rolling stock) are unrelated to amount of telephone usage. So there is no reason that these costs should be unequally attributed to a person who makes local calls 1 hour per day, as opposed to another who only calls 15 minutes per day, for example.
As for the "laying new pipes" issue: Years ago in the the US, when inter-central-office trunk connections were all implemented using large bundles of copper pairs, it would have been _correct_ to say that higher telephone usage resulted in larger costs, since more trunk lines were necessary. Today, on the other hand, inter-office trunks (at least the new ones, and I presume that even many of the old ones have been switched over) are implemented in fiber optics. Extra capacity is either automatically available (since the capacity of a given fiber is unlikely to be fully used) or can be fairly simply added by converting old fiber from about 450 megabits per second to 2.4 gigabits, or even faster rates which have become more recently available.
Your view point doesn't really fit the facts, but since it is not the issue here, I'll let it go. Can't resist like someone has to pay those 80,000+ employees at AT+T.
But you miss my point, if a phoneco is not getting a penny for its long distanceservices (which subsidise the flat rate local calls) then the choice would be to close down. Which would be a severe attack to the local internet usage.
That's an entirely unsupported claim. Nobody claims that telephone usage (term used generically) is on the way out. "Closing down" is only going to happen if local phonecos cease to be able to provide a service that people are willing to pay for.
Exactly! Once "X-Phone" has its servers in US Cities, and its charging 10 cents a minute for long distance calls, I don't see if the phonecos would be able to provide any service that people are willing to pay for, I mean they won't be able to provide matching lucrative rates. You mean to say that, X-Phone will take advantage of the phoneco and mint money for a minimal investment, whereas the phoneco who spent billions on the infrastructure will be just whistle down the road, and let the X-Phone indulge in its own cyberdo. Its like you write a book and the cover designer sells it in his name. Best, - Vipul