The U.S. Navy has been asking sailors for suggestions on what complaints they need tending to, and found one of them to be the high cost of long distance calls back home from ships at sea. Currently, sailors spend over $10 million a year on these calls, billed at a dollar a minute. While email is more heavily used, many sailors still prefer to pay for an occasional call home. So the navy negotiated a new deal with the phone service provider (AT&T Direct Ocean Service), and got the per minute rate cut in half. That will mean a savings of a hundred dollars a year, or more, to those sailors who are heavy users of the phone service.