So that's how it works

I've had the following link sitting around in a tab for a while, so I want to write it up and get rid of it:

They figured that over the time their grandmother rented the phones, she spent $14,000 in rental fees.

It turns out that the widow is not alone. Some 750,000 people continue to rent rotary phones from Lucent, the AT&T spinoff that now manages the phone service.

For a very long time I have wondered how Lucent made its money, and I think this is probably as close to an answer as I'm likely to get.