Comment by stillpointlab

I mean, you might find this hard to believe since you have a fixed view, but I'm old enough that we had one of those old-school rotary phones. My family literally leased that phone as part of our phone bill up until the late 90s. I recall at one point we were forced to trade the rotary for a push button since the telecom was discontinuing support. When "caller id" became a new feature it only worked for the first while on the rented phones.

To this day, I suspect many people have a line-item on their Internet bill for their modem/router rental/lease.

Why you would find this hard to believe is actually the curious thing to me.