United States of America is a federal constitutional republic made up of fifty states, one federal district, and several territories. The country is situated largely in the western hemisphere: its forty-eight contiguous states and the District of Columbia (coextensive with Washington, the capital) lie in central North America between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south; the state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent with Canada to its east, and the state of Hawaii is in the mid-Pacific. U.S. territories, or insular areas, are scattered around the Caribbean and Pacific.
At over 3.7 million square miles (over 9.6 million km²) and with more than 300 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and third largest by land area and population.
Telephone system:
General assessment: A large, technologically advanced, multipurpose communications system.
Domestic: A large system of fiber-optic cable, microwave radio relay, coaxial cable, and domestic satellites carries every form of telephone traffic; a rapidly growing cellular system carries mobile telephone traffic throughout the country.
International: Country code - 1; 24 ocean cable systems in use; satellite earth stations - 61 Intelsat (45 Atlantic Ocean and 16 Pacific Ocean), 5 Intersputnik (Atlantic Ocean region), and 4 Inmarsat (Pacific and Atlantic Ocean regions) (2000).
Premium Rate Numbers are not common as a way of payment. Most Americans prefer to pay by credit card. Consumer friendly legislations is hurting the Premium Rate sector further, allowing a consumer to avoid payment without any possibility to ban him from a service.
In fact a customer can call a 800 freephone number anytime to inform the carrier he is not willing to pay his 1-900 bill. Nothing can be done against that. So chargebacks of up to 50% revenue are not uncommon.
