Calls to ISPs, like all local calls, are typically metered and the rates can be very expensive.
Then came the engineers of the state telephone company, angry at government plans to end its monopoly of non-local calls.
However, as regulators discourage the subsidising of local calls with revenues from pricey international ones, fixed-line subscriptions are becoming more expensive.
NTT, with bags of cash, a great brand name and a virtual monopoly on local calls, offering customers a one-stop shop.
In other places such as Japan, where people pay per-minute phone rates for local calls, consumers are eager to eliminate online access fees.
But phone companies, facing greater competition in long-distance markets, have for the last several years been pushing for regulatory approval to charge for local calls.
Though competition has made life cheaper for businesses that make a lot of long-distance calls, ordinary people still pay high prices for lines and local calls.
But in areas where local calls are free and ISPs offer unlimited Internet access for a flat monthly fee anyway, the no-charge Internet model has less appeal.
Proposals for a nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast could be put at risk if local calls for investment are ignored, a council planner has warned.
In Britain, the example of the United States has often been used to show how free local calls and educational subsidies can encourage schools to connect to the Internet.
BBC: News | Education | Threat to US schools' Internet subsidy
Although free local calls have already encouraged many schools to use the Internet in the United States, the legislation was intended to reduce other associated connection and line rental costs.
BBC: News | Education | Threat to US schools' Internet subsidy
Tariffs for using utilities and the infrastructure are extremely low: local calls are usually free, gas prices artificially cheap and wholesale electricity costs about a tenth of the average European level.
Comptel, an American business association, has accused Telmex of not consolidating local area codes (so local calls are charged as long-distance) and of inserting recorded messages into calls from rival carriers, warning that future calls might fail.
For example, if a mobile account opened in Shanghai, and sparingly used for local calls, begins making numerous calls from Beijing to a few numbers in a distant western province, then it is likely that a phone thief is calling friends back home.
Andaz has made its pricing both transparent and all-inclusive: breakfast, Internet, mini bar, local telephone calls, laundry and unlimited movies.
It forthrightly refused to recognize that the Internet was obliterating traditional barriers between long-distance and local telephone calls and between telephony, TV, radio and cable.
Furthermore, stays at AKA include bicycle usage, local telephone calls, private parking, on-site laundry, business centre services and use of the executive boardroom, all of which are complimentary.
In Singapore, consumers have historically had to pay up to .085 cents a minute for local telephone calls - Starhub gets a cut of that revenue for every minute its customers spend connected to the Web, since they must get there by placing a local call.
Divers helped the patrol, and local police referred calls seeking information to the patrol.
He calls local media "abusive" and keeps harping on a "three-D" conspiracy of disinformation, disaffection and destabilization against him.
When firearms are found at a checkpoint, the TSA calls local police who determine whether the passenger should be arrested, ticketed or have their gun returned.
CNN: Airport screeners discover more than 1,500 guns in 2012
In the Valais region, an arc that runs along the French and Italian borders and home to the Matterhorn, the local fondue variety calls for a tomato coulis.
Regardless of where I am in the world, I need the capability to send and receive emails and attachments, access the Internet, place local and international calls, and receive calls to my Verizon U.S. number while roaming.
FORBES: How to Save Money on Mobile While Traveling in Canada
Users simply insert a SIM card with credit to begin making calls at local rates.
Local residents should be ready to heed evacuation orders, if and when state and local officials issues those calls.
One of these is known as bypass, or disguising long-distance calls as local ones to avoid paying interconnection fees.
"Our offices have been overwhelmed with calls from local companies asking about them, " says Daniel Marcu, executive director of Towers Perrin Argentina, compensation consultants.
According to The Times, it calls for local authorities to gain powers to ensure trust schools take their "fair share" of poor and disadvantaged pupils.
BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Kelly defiant over school reforms
There are obviously a number of complicated logistics involved with moving Air Force One, moving a plane of reporters, events, local stops, phone calls involved.
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