From David Pogue’s New York Times blog:

As long­time Pogue’s Posts read­ers know, my biggest cel­lu­lar pet peeve is the end­less record­ing you hear when you reach someone’s voice­mail: “To page this per­son, press 2 now. You may leave a mes­sage at the tone. When you fin­ish record­ing, you may hang up. Or press 5 for more options”—and so on.

At the con­fer­ence, I asked one cel­lu­lar exec­u­tive if that mes­sage is delib­er­ately recorded slowly and with as many words as pos­si­ble, to eat up your air­time and make more ARPU for the cell car­rier. I was half kidding—but he wasn’t fool­ing around in his reply: “Yes.”

The secret’s out.