The Diplodocus

Reading this post on Unfogged got me thinking, though not about the obvious.  The topic brought back a hazy memory of being young and listening to my parents call India, often at very strange hours.  This was rationalized by the time difference and the fact that the long distance rate somehow varied based on the time of day.  Without knowing the specifics, I can’t recall whether it was cheaper to call late at night or more expensive.  Presumably late night calls were cheaper, kind of like peak and off-peak service on the Metro.

Nowadays, it seems domestic long distance plans have gone the way of the dodo, extinct via the spread of the cell phone.  Does anyone pay for long distance service anymore?  It feels like considerations as to whether or not you can cheaply call Muncie at 5 PM have been supplanted by considering airtime minutes and, for the unfortunate, roaming charges (and aren’t those pretty much gone as well?).  The poor telemarketers hawking money-saving discount plans are probably squabbling over the list of folks who subscribe to Luddite Monthly.

The veracity of this memory deserves to be questioned.  Was there really a visible savings if my parents called India at Time A instead of Time B?  Was there some sort of matrix listing long distance rates as they varied based on time?  It seems like a strange thing, and not horribly practical.   And for all I know, for international calls this practice may still exist — I’ve been using virtual phone “cards” and Skype exclusively, and have no idea about this kind of stuff.      

(For the record, I feel that I can officially pshaw most complaints about dating long distance at this point.  Talk to me when the issue is timezones, not area codes.)