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Originally Posted by Przemolog

Hey, not quite! Billing increments are not so important by themselves. Only increment/minute rate combination really matters. You don't like telesim because you would have to pay the multiple of 40.5 cents for any call. But if the rate were 1 cents/min even 10 minute increments wouldn't be that bad. OTOH even 1 second increments with very high rates may not be so good, e.g. calls to satphones in Hop cost $6/min what means as much as $0.10/sec.
I think that the honest solution is only when each increment cost the lowest (or at most the next one) nominal of the currency of the billing.

Yes, you are right.
In theory you of course will call a destination with 1.5ct/min minute increment than with 5ct/min second increment billing...

But in reality the 5-minute increment billing companies only charge approx 0.1 ct/min or 0.5ct/min less on their tariff than the others (at least here in germany) -- just to be placed at number one in the tariff charts from the "call by call" lists. Or they tend to swap between 1 and 5 minute increments every 2 weeks or so. This behaviour is just to gain maximum profit and nothing else.

Chris