Many years ago, mobile phone companies began to include nationwide long distance in their calling plans. This was an exceptional feature for a lot of people, and it was loved.

In addition, the phone companies charged a flat rate for a certain pre-set number of minutes and that worked out well, too. Not so in the world of the land line where, even today, calls are mostly charged by the minute rather than prepaid.

The issue I take with this comes in with international calling. My best friend lives in Canada, and we speak very regularly. In order to afford it, I pay an astronomical rate for a years-old phone plan that still includes calls to canada in the prepaid minutes.

Modern mobile-phone plans don't include these calls without you paying the same rates as this ancient plan - or higher. Instead they offer you the option to pay a small sum which will reduce the per-minute charge on these international calls. In other words, if I pay N dollars a month for 1000 any-time minutes and unlimited nights and weekends, then X dollars on top of that to reduce my long distance fees to call Canada, I still pay long distance in addition to my existing plan. To be entirely truthful, I didn't stick around long enough to see if any of the prepaid air time is expended in addition to this charge, but I find it frustrating and downright inconsistent.

The fact is that mobile phone plans today generally count your air time usage against the minutes you prepaid. To charge in addition to that is wrong. However, if we were to say that each minute on the phone with canada was worth one and a fraction of a minute of air time, that would be much more fair and consistent. It would give folks a chance to stay within their plan, would leave phone companies the ability to choose the value of their international calling, and even potentially be an add-on service that we'd have to pay for. But it would still be more fair than what we've got today.