August 20, 2023, 7:15 am | Read time: 3 minutes
If you have a landline, you probably use it for calls. While calls from house to house are usually cheap, those from a landline to a mobile phone often are not. This is shown by a recent market analysis.
No one uses a landline anymore? Not true! Among private households, a proud 83 percent have a landline connection. This is shown by a recent survey from Statista. And in business establishments and offices, landline phones are indispensable. So, a lot of people might be interested in how expensive it can get when calling a mobile phone from a landline.
Overview
How expensive are landline calls to mobile phones
Calling a mobile phone in Germany from a landline is about as expensive as a mobile call to Spain or Italy. This is shown by a market analysis from the comparison portal Verivox. In numerical terms, calls from a landline to a mobile phone within Germany can cost up to 22 cents per minute.
What many don’t know: Such calls are generally not included in phone flat rates. The double or triple flats for internet, landline, and possibly TV only cover landline calls, not connections to mobile networks.
Especially when returning missed calls, one should be cautious. Since many now have a mobile tariff with an all-net flat, there’s a good chance they call a landline number with their mobile number. If you then call back unknowingly, it quickly becomes expensive.
Also interesting: Avoiding cost traps when calling and surfing on vacation
Ten major providers reviewed
Ten major landline providers were scrutinized for the analysis. Prices ranged from 9.8 to 21.9 cents per minute for domestic calls from a landline to a mobile phone. Exception: According to the information, O2 does not charge additional fees for calls from a landline to a mobile phone within Germany.
Read also: Alleged calls from Amazon and PayPal! Now even the police are warning
Cost Trap Ahead! What to Consider When Using Your Phone on Vacation
Do you still have a landline phone?
How you can protect yourself
Many mobile tariffs are known to have so-called all-net flats, which include a flat rate for calls to all German landline and mobile networks. In contrast, landline phone tariffs rarely include free calls to German mobile networks, warns the comparison portal. So, it can be worthwhile to check your contract’s price list before picking up the phone. It’s better to call a mobile number back with your mobile phone instead of the landline. Even if you don’t have an all-net flat, the per-minute rates are usually much cheaper here.
Read also: What ever happened to Jamba and the “Crazy Frog”?
Tips for calls abroad
Back to Spain and Italy for a moment. If you want to make a call abroad, Verivox suggests doing so from a landline. For such a call, the costs are usually only a tenth of the mobile price, according to Verivox.
Extra tip: use the good old call-by-call services. Landline customers of Deutsche Telekom can save a lot of money on international calls this way. At least until the end of 2024, when the popular savings prefixes will be permanently discontinued, TECHBOOK reported.
Call-by-call works by entering a special prefix before the desired contact’s number–that of a cheaper provider. The connection is then established through that provider. Read more about the topic here.
With material from dpa.