Costs were mind boggling and surprising. I got in huge trouble when I was in elementary school because I called my best friend who lived 1 mile away. It could cost more to call someone who lived in a different LATA (in my case, the other LATA was one mile away) than it did to call a different time zone. As I recall a call 1 mile away was billed at 23¢ per minute and a call to Portland, Oregon, three time zones away was 12¢ per minute (and this was in 1977 money, which where one dollar was worth six hamburgers). Another: the cost to rent a handset was $3 per month. By 1988 (and $1 was worth four hamburgers), you could buy a touch tone phone for $3 at Target.