Hmmm...depends heavily on your service...

For example, MCI's The Neighborhood, you can get local and long distance service with alot of bells and whistles (caller id, call blocking, call forwarding, etc) for a flat rate of 60 dollars / US month. No long distance charges, no local charges...period. Great if you make alot of long distance calls (which even at cut rates are still minimally 3 cents/minute ).

Then you kinda have to flip around and look at things, you can usually get some combination of a fixed amount charged a month and then a low per call charge (for example, 20 dollars month, + 3 cents minute).

These are however, just for local residences. When you start talking about businesses that have high call volumes, then they start getting significant discounts for their services. I am not familiar with what the charges are...it might be a high dollar amount but when you consider what it is per call...it is trivially small.

/nebulus

I don't want to dash your hopes nebulus, but we signed up to that list in my state over a year ago, and we still recieve around 5 a day. I think its time i get the The TeleZapper from walmart. I wonder if that thing really works or not, cause the sign-up list were on is not doing the trick.

The telemarketers have already found ways around it. The way the telezapper works is to send a number disconnected tone when it detects the connection. It used to work to screw up the automated dialers that go around and find active numbers; however, last I read, they had made adjustments to it to where it didn't work anymore...

/nebulus