When Thomas Philippon moved to Boston from his native France 20 years ago, he was a graduate student on a budget, and he was happy to discover how cheap American telephone use was. In those days of dial-up internet connections, going online involved long local phone calls that could cost more than $10 apiece in France. In the United States, they were virtually free.
Philippon eventually got a doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and decided to stay here. He’s now a professor at New York University. And over the years, he has noticed something surprising about his adopted country: Internet usage is no longer a good deal.