[snaimon]

Thanks Effendi, Przemolog.

I believe there is also a D1 Germany option XtraClever which also adds 1 cent per minute received to the user's prepaid balance -- allowed on certain tarifs. A common device to encourage calling.

One point of the teletarif articles as they pertain to Germany is that there is a huge suspicion that INFLATED termination fees are a lucrative source of revenues for providers --- if I recall it is 6.5 Billion (Milliarden) Euro per year. Some kind of regulation is being discussed and to avoid any intervention, the two largest carriers are voluntarily reducing these fees. The quote above indicates that the proposed 11 cents is still much too high.

I would be curious as to any estimates for termination fees in other European countries. As noted, Andy cited fines in the French market and those rates seem to be quite high. That is another thread here in Europe.

I am not sure if we have US termination fees. I would imagine that in the US this is the equivalent of ROAMING agreements. T-MO has some such agreements and offers POST PAID customers FREE nationwide roaming. T-MO prepaid does NOT allow any roaming. My mother had a prepaid Verizon phone and was charged 99 cents per minute for some calls made in her own home when she was apparently on a roaming service. That happened only once or twice. I had SunCom POST PAID service once and unknowingly made a call roaming on the ATT network and also paid through the nose.

Stan