The music that gets piped into your ear while you’re waiting to be put
through is the curse of modern telephony. Italian company Zerosei (EP 827 321)
has a radical solution. Instead of music, switchboards will play adverts. This
may sound worse, but Zerosei believes advertising revenue can be used to reduce
call costs, by charging local rates for long-distance calls. The messages are
stored on a microchip, so that callers hear a selection of adverts, not the same
one repeated endlessly.
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