Cell Phone Carriers' Secret!

Hehe... Yet another excerpt from David Pogue's NY Times blog, where he describes a half-joking comment he made to a cellular exec at a big cellular-industy conference in Lake Como, Italy:

(P.S. … As longtime Pogue’s Posts readers know, my biggest cellular pet peeve is the endless recording you hear when you reach someone’s voicemail: “To page this person, press 2 now. You may leave a message at the tone. When you finish recording, you may hang up. Or press 5 for more options”—and so on.

At the conference, I asked one cellular executive if that message is deliberately recorded slowly and with as many words as possible, to eat up your airtime and make more ARPU [Average Revenue Per User] for the cell carrier. I was half kidding—but he wasn’t fooling around in his reply: “Yes.”

The secret’s out.)

Aaaaaa-HA!

-e