No man is an island and no man is unconnected

The clearing out of old papers keeps turning up interesting little tidbits.

I came across my old AT&T phone bills from my time in grad school in Philadelphia. Bell of Pennsylvania was the service company. You had to rent the desktop equipment(you couldn't buy it). This is of course before digital and before cell phones. In my second year, I switched to the new upstart competitor MCI.

The basic package with Bell of Pennsylvania was not too bad. $6.78 a month for the equipment rental, line service and line maintenance.

But this was when you had day (premium) rates and night rates. And when your service area for free calls was basically your area code. In state but out of area code was more. Out of state but within the US was even higher rates ($12.82 for a 46 minute call in the evening to southern California). And of course international calls were eye-watering ($18.47 for a 15 minute call to the UK at midnight).

Our choices were more restricted and the prices exorbitant. $18.47 for a single 15-minute international call in August 1984 is the equivalent of $43.27 in July, 2017. My total bill that month (16 out-of-area code calls and two international) was $227.98 or $534.03 in today's money. That's not far off the five person family plan with five cell phones and wireless service today. Woof. And only thirty three years ago.

And, as if to add to ancientness: I came across this Wall Street Journal article from 10/7/1985 by a grad school buddy.

Double click to enlarge.

In 1987 AT&T was still connecting the last remote habitations of the earth. 62 people with one phone on Pitcairn Island in the remote South Pacific.

It seems an age ago now before we were all connected, everywhere, all the time.