EU turns its attention to per-minute billing
By Chris Ziegler 
posted Jan 27th 2008 11:44AM
posted Jan 27th 2008 11:44AM
Having just come off a win in the international roaming department, the European Union is looking for other ways to cut the wireless bills of its many citizens -- and it thinks it knows exactly where to start. The practice of rounding up to the next nearest minute when billing calls is common to a great many carriers across the globe, and the EU says it could be costing folks an average of 20 percent more minutes per month than they're actually using. It's not prepared to take action against carriers just yet, but it says it'll "watch developments very closely" and decide what to do -- if anything -- by the end of the year.[Via textually.org]
It's about time they look into this. Who else gets away with this scam? If you buy 1.1 gallon of gas do you pay for 2? If you buy 1.1 pound of meat do you pay for 2?
Aerial used to have per-second billing here in the US back in '97. But they were bought by Voicestream and that feature disappear. But that was when minutes used to be scarce. Does anyone in the US NOT have enough minutes every month??? It seems the carriers throw minutes at you, so long as you pay them a hefty chunk of change every month. All the low minute users have been shifted to pre-pay from what I see.