Because North Americans know that when they call somebody they pay a single, predefined rate to call that person: the rate from their location to the destination area code.

I don't have to know if I'm calling a mobile or a landline. In fact, a lot of people in the US pay a flat rate to any number in ANY area code in the country.

Let me pick a country I call often from my plan's list. Germany. I see two rates for landlines (49 for Telekom and 49115 for civil services), and then six rates for mobiles based on five major carriers and a sixth catch-all that is 5 times more than the others.

For kicks, let's look up India. Nice. 18 rates.

That's … not how it actually works if you are in Germany. Typically you get a flatrate or minutes to landline and two prices for mobile calls: One for calls to your carrier, one for calls to other carriers. You might, for examle, have 120 minutes for calls to people with your carrier and 19 cent/minute to other carriers (and if you go over the 120 minutes).

It's actually not so complicated, but it's certainly often a good idea to know which carrier someone is using when you are calling them on the mobile phone. There are, however, also plans that treat all carriers the same.

Uh, here in Portugal I pay exactly the same - 8 eurocents/min - for any network, both mobile and landline. And we don't pay for receiving calls.

If I have a cell phone number in Toronto, move to Montreal, and call somebody across the street in Montreal... I pay the rate from Toronto to Montreal.

I know because I was surprised with $400 cell phone bills maxing out my credit cards after a few months over there, thinking the exact same thing, that I paid "the rate from their location to the destination area code" - which we do not.

In Canada you generally pay long-distance rates (~$0.40/minute) when you: -Call a number with a different area code (and sometimes the same one because some area codes are very large and actually have multiple zones) -When you call a number in your own area code but you aren't in that area code (when you're in another city) -Receiving calls when you're outside of your area code

Most people are on multi-year contracts with substantial break frees (in the $200 range). There are also charges to change your number and so on and so on...

What recourse do we have? All the NA cell carriers do it, so we can't vote with our feet.

You pay for receiving a call too. You just pay differently. Nothing's free.

There's no "paying" vs. "not paying" conflict here.

In a sense, you are right. However, US and Canadian total average bills are far Higher and have more probability to be much higher than the contract fee. In the EU, mobile operators have had legislation forcing then to simplify and lower call costs. In the developing world, costs and fee models are whole orders cheaper.

I have no problem about the cost of buying a local mobile anywhere I travel in the world, the the US being the exception (have not yet travelled to Canada, which is shameful as I have family and friends there).

I found the comment of all the US carriers operating the same policy and therefore not being able to walk away. Surely that is grounds enough for a complaint about price fixing, using the rest of the world as a case study?