The “receiver pays” model is really thought of as the “person who chose to have the call go over a more expensive channel pays” model. It is seen as similar to call forwarding. If I forward my phone to a number in Fiji, people calling me don’t pay, I pay for the LD charges to Fiji.

Because in the US/Canada cell numbers are indistinguishable from landlines — you can port your landline number to your mobile and many people do — this system makes more sense.

How much negotiation is there, as in how much variation is there of the price paid by landline callers on different carriers? There seems to be a floor, in that the cheapest carriers still cost 20 cents/minute USD.

That inter-cellular calls are cheap is a sign of how artificial this price is, and that some carriers rebate the caller/sucker’s fee to the target is another sign of it.

As for SMS, that’s a racket either way. It should be free based on its real cost — it’s a single data packet! Yes, US carriers do charge to receive (and some just increased it, amazingly). You can send for free from the web though, and people can e-mail you a text message from ordinary internet mail. That’s only possible when there’s no charge to the sender. However, there should be no charge to anybody on this. It’s a racket that there is.