This data is decidedly not beautiful. The scale of the graph is the wrong one and should be logarithmic as stated in other comments. The price didn’t drop to 0 in the 80’s….
I remember having to pay to call my girlfriend two cities over in the 90s. Like, let’s get real.
Where can I get this free cell phone plan?
You can use the internet these days to call anyone for free, with video even.
Downloads free app and login to a free wi-fi, that’s all. Even if you need to buy the hardware the cheapest junk phone will suffice.
This specifically refers to phone calls.
The technology used in 1915 was completely different from what the phone network is now, but essentially it’s still voice being carried from one device to another over a distance. You can still pay for international calls if you like, though, if you insist it absolutely has to be non-voip.
phone calls now travel over IP
Tele for “far off”, phone for “voice”. I think internet calls count as telephone calls. Naturally this chart could not show separate pricing for Internet telephone calls in 1940.
This chart literally only goes up to 1981, and specifically refers to phone calls. Internet still isn’t commonly available everywhere in the world, or US for that matter.
The original post was about how it’s cheap to make long distance calls now versus in the past. That’s true! In that spirit I don’t see any benefit to distinguishing between analog and digital calls. But point taken about the time axis on the chart.
WiFi calling gives free phone calls.
Obama had a program that gave out free cellphones during his first term. Don’t remember how that went down.
They still had them in California as of a month ago. I always saw their setups around my city. You could get a phone and a tablet, but the tablet might have been tied to certain provider or your benefits (EBT/snap/etc)
And those plans did not cover international calls lol
They didn’t but you could hook em up to free wifi which you could use to make free calls with apps like WhatsApp, skype, Facebook, etc.
Not free, just very very very cheap. Economy of scale
London <-> San Francisco is missing. The caption is a lie. It should have said something like “between New York and both London and San Francisco”.
Also they obviously need a log scale. Like how can you not see that?
Or from New York to London and San Francisco 💛
The venga phone is callin’, and everybody’s dialin’…
