The call-by-call procedure for potentially cheap landline calls and faxes is set to expire at the end of 2024 in Germany. The child of the liberalization of the telecommunications market will no longer exist because Deutsche Telekom and the Association of Providers of Telecommunications and Value-Added Services (VATM) were unable to reach an agreement on continuing beyond 2024. The legal obligation to enable call-by-call expired in 2019.
As of December 31, 2024, Deutsche Telekom will discontinue offline billing which is a prerequisite for the “savings primaries”. With offline billing, the respective provider can determine both the prices and the content of his service completely freely. Negotiations with Telekom lasted for months, but online billing was agreed upon for the continuation of these service numbers such as 0900, 01805, or 11833 numbers which include information services.
Online billing saves “value-added services” since it allows for fixing caller-per-minute prices depending on the number that follows. The VATM assures that the costs for end-users from the fixed network and mobile communications would be designed “uniformly and with maximum transparency” from the time of the changeover. This means that the tariff lanes are priced uniformly from all telecommunications networks, and the price announcement also remains in place.
According to the new agreement, information and service numbers in the premium range (0900) are to be offered in the future. The planned change in the billing model goes hand in hand with a redesign of the allocation plans for information and premium services by the Federal Network Agency (BNetzA). Discussions have already taken place with the regulatory authority, who want to accompany the process and “promptly present new assignment rules for the new telephone numbers for hearing”.
The VATM wants to “timely inform” the companies concerned about all new rules that will take effect from 2024. The association describes the discontinuation of call-by-call as disappointing. According to the current annual report of the Federal Network Agency, in 2022 a total of over one billion call minutes were made via call-by-call and the fixed provider preset preselection. This corresponded to a share of almost three percent of the volume of the competitors and one percent of the total volume of calls.
In the official directory of the assigned operator codes, the BNetzA currently still has 65 providers who offer or at least can offer connections via 78 different, five- or six-digit area codes. However, the actual number of competitors is likely to be lower. Twelve of the registered companies share the same address on Rudi-Conin-Strasse in Cologne, and a further eight are located on Bahnstrasse in Langen in Hesse.
