It's an accepted part of US phone life. Americans want cheap calls. To turn round to an average joe and say "yeah, it's gonna cost the same to call a cell in the next room as it is to call England" wouldnt have washed, so they make the person carrying the phone bear some of the cost of the call, (just like when an english person goes roaming)

Americans were so used to cheap calls, that calling a cell wouldnt have taken off in popularity if the caller had to bear the whole cost of the call.

The logic is sound: if youre so big and important that you have to carry a cellphone so that anyone can call you, any time, then why shouldnt you pay for part of the call?

I don't feel that bad for them; some networks have a plan where you jsut pay $x per month and that's it; unlimited everything.. I feel bad for the idiot friends I have who buy the cheapo £20 a month plan "because they don't want to spend a lot on their phone each month but they want to have a new, shiny thing" that gets 150 texts, and then they send 2000 texts a month and get a £185 bill. £20 a month off o2 would have got them 700 minutes and unlimited messages, but they would have to use a second hand phone off ebay..

Ah, how vanity costs..

Anyway, it's digressing.. back to slightly on topic:

the *0# prefix for O2 has a corollorary on Orange: start the message with RCT, though orange does support delivery reports..