> When you're the phone company, calls are free

Not so. But the culture prioritized phone use in a way
that's been completely forgotten. High execs would
answer their own phones when they were at their
desks. "Your call is very important to us. Please wait
for the first available representative" would have been
anathema.
One of my few managerial decrees in the Unix lab was
to give a year's notice that "research" would  stop
forwarding Usenet traffic, not because of phones, but
because uucp was becoming a burden on our computer.

Doug