In addition, the cost-effectiveness of these lines is far greater than those of the public operator with nearly four times as much revenue per line. Public payphones have been the traditional method of encouraging widespread access to telecommunications facilities. New approaches to increase the supply of payphones revolve around mandated targets for incumbent operators and liberalization of payphone provision. A number of developing countries are adopting policies calling for the installation of telephones in unserved localities, through establishing targets for incumbent operators or by establishing special funds. Access is then based upon a reasonable distance from each user's location.
Technology also allows for a re-evaluation of access options.
In Brazil, voice-mail boxes are made available so that individuals without a telephone are able to receive as well as to make calls from public telephones. In South Africa, there is an initiative to provide email addresses to all families accessible from post offices equipped with public Internet facilities. Some operators will have to revise their tariffs structure to make them less reliant on incoming inter-carrier settlement payments. But because of the shift of costs to the local and domestic networks, the decrease of the settlement revenues will, in some cases, impact on the affordability and could even endanger the objective of global access. Moreover, the capacity to pay of the population of several least developed or developing countries may make it impossible to compensate for the loss of revenue from international settlements leading to various degrees of shortage in revenue-generation needed for network expansion.