The most annoying thing about paying to take calls is that it seems to be brought about by government messing rather than market pressure.
But in the US, the cell phone numbers are in the same area codes as the land lines, so the regular caller cannot tell if it is mobile or not.
In the UK, all the cellphone carriers have unique area codes that identify a cellphone.

I cannot see the point of giving a mobile device a location based area code. But I guess that cellphones,TV and radio are the three areas where the US is light years behind europe.

How long has the BBC been transmitting HDTV? We are still years from real coverage here, they are still fighting over the money.