Is it Fair to Blame Fisher-Price for the Size of your Phone Bill? (1997)
Itemised billing listing the telephone numbers called on a line, and the length of those calls, was first trialled among BT’s domestic customers in 1983. It was standard for all customers when this press advertisement was published in 1997. Directed to parents and their regulation of the time children spent on the telephone, the advert encouraged parents’ tolerance of children’s use of the landline phone. Whereas BT’s advertising campaigns in the 1980s, such as ‘Animal Instincts’, had focused on children’s phone use for keeping in touch with family, this advertisement presented telephone practice as important to help children to make friends.
BT Group Archives: TCB 325/EHA 5322
