Because the original mobile carriers were all subsidiaries of the
incumbent land line telephone companies, they thought in land-line
terms.

That's simply wrong. In each area there were two mobile (cellular in
US argot) franchises, A and B. The B franchise was awarded to a local
landline carrier, the A to someone else. In some areas the A carrier was
a landline carrier in a different part of the country, but in many cases,
notably McCaw Cellular, they were new specialist carriers.

In North America, unlike in most other areas, mobile numbers are
integrated into the regular dial plan, there's no distinction in
numbering or pricing for calls to mobiles, and mobiles pay for both
incoming and outgoing calls.

There's a variety of arguments about why we did it that way. One is
simply that there weren't enough spare area codes to overlay new
mobile ones on top of all the landline areas so they had no choice.
Another is that the US and Canada are large countries, and back in the
1980s the incremental cost for a call across the country compared to a
local call was high enough that it wasn't reasonable to charge all
calls to or from mobiles the same. (I sure had a lot of complicated
charging plans back then.)

Another theory is that mobile pays means that we have number
portability between mobile and landline, which will never happen in
caller pays areas, and that since the mobile customer is aware of the
price of incoming and outgoing calls, the actual price per minute
(including the incoming calls which mobile users in caller pays areas
incorrectly think are "free") is among the lowest in the world.

R's,
John
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John Levine, , Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
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