I just finished a 27-minute Skype call from my hotel room in Boston to my loved ones at home in Estonia.

Depending on the method of calculation, the call cost me $9.99 (the price of 24 hours of internet access), $0.19 (previous amount times 27 by 1440), or nothing (as I needed internet access anyway, making this call had no effect on what I had to pay).

Alternatively, I could’ve used my cell phone. In this case, my mobile provider would’ve billed me for EEK 1066, or roughly $92.

Finally, there’s a phone in my room. The friendly hotel puts a surcharge of $7/min and $4.50/connection on top of whatever AT&T would charge for an international call. So the surcharge alone would have amounted to $193.50.

Comments, I think, are unnecessary.