• @[email protected]
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        82 days ago

        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.

        • @aubeynarf
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          42 days ago

          phone calls now travel over IP

        • @[email protected]
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          52 days ago

          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.

          • BeardedBlaze
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            12 days ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              12 days ago

              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.

        • @[email protected]
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          2 days ago

          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.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 days ago

      Obama had a program that gave out free cellphones during his first term. Don’t remember how that went down.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 days ago

        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)

        • @[email protected]
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          2 days ago

          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.