End of a technology chapter
Telekom and competitors pull call-by-call the plug
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Get briefly, not at lunchtime or request with area code: Anyone who spoke on the phone in the nineties had to pay attention to all sorts, they wanted to protect the wallet. An aid was call-by-call calls, where you could use the tariffs from other providers. With the triumphal march of the flat rates, the need disappeared – but not entirely.
The low-priority for calls called call-by-call are history. A corresponding market model expires at the turn of the year, the Deutsche Telekom and the Association of Telekom competitors VATM said. It was about calls from a landline phone, it was not possible to call your cell phone calls.
The demand for the savings for savings was recently low: According to the Federal Network Agency, only 1.6 percent of the telephone minutes in Germany were on call-by-call last year. It was 4.2 percent ten years earlier. The proportion was even higher in the nineties. The reason for change: flat rate tariffs and calls via Internet services have been able to have discussions for a long time at no extra charge, so the cheap forecasts are no longer necessary in most cases.
Up to 90 percent cheaper than Telekom
It was different at the turn of the millennium-at that time Call-by-Call was a mass business because it was a cheap alternative to the relatively expensive telephone tariffs of Deutsche Telekom. Their monopoly ended in 1998 and made call-by-call possible. Telekom had to open its network for private providers, companies such as 01051 Telecom, 01050 COM, Talline and Tele2 used this and offered favorable minute prices for long -distance conversations and international calls. According to VATM, they were up to 90 percent cheaper than normal phone calls via Telekom.
Around the millennium change and in the zero years, the cheap forecasts became the standard in many households in many households: Parents admonished their children, but please “with area code”-i.e. call-by-call-to make the phone bill within limits. Cut out notes from newspapers, on which the best primaries and minute prices were located, hung in some households as a memory aid right next to the landline phone. Over the years, the notes yielded and were finally demolished: they were no longer important.
On the one hand, this was due to the fact that the domestic tariffs had increasingly telephone flat rates, without minute prices. And if you frequently talked abroad, you could secure a flat rate option to a state or a group of states for a corresponding surcharge – the minute price also fell away for him, so he no longer needed a cheap area. In addition, services such as FaceTime, WhatsApp, Signal or Threema enabled free conversations on the Internet.
There are still savings of savings – but be careful!
In 2020, the regulation of the Call-by-Call niche market by the Federal Network Agency ended, after which the VATM and Telekom also concluded an agreement on the continuation of the market model-this now expires.
There is now “a gap for cheap calls abroad,” says the VATM. However, there are messenger internet calls and foreign flat rates. Customers should go to “their providers and inquire directly about foreign flat rates and tariffs that enable favorable international telephony. Many providers have special offers that are tailored to international calls”.
Even after the end of call-by-call, there will still be savings for savings. This deals with so-called call-throver numbers, which, however, work a little differently. On the one hand, you can choose them both on the landline and on your cell phone, on the other hand, you have a catch: According to the comparison portal Verivox, every call is billed, even if the conversation does not come about, for example because the person called does not work or at is occupied. In addition, Verivox points out that tariff announcements are voluntary for call-throver services.
