How Call Termination Is Billed
Wholesale voice billing is simple arithmetic wrapped in fine print. This page removes the fine print: how the rate deck works, what billing increments actually cost you, how short-duration dialer traffic is treated, and the protections that keep your invoice honest, including FAS detection, so you never pay for calls that were never really answered.
1. The rate deck
Everything starts with the A–Z rate deck: a CSV with one row per destination breakout: not per country, per breakout. Germany isn't one price; it's German fixed, German mobile (per operator group where it matters), and German special services, each with its own rate, increment, and effective date. A typical deck row:
destination;code;rate_usd;increment;effective_from Germany Fixed;4930;0.0095;1/1;2026-06-01 Germany Mobile T-Mobile;49151;0.0210;1/1;2026-06-01 Germany Mobile Vodafone;49152;0.0205;1/1;2026-06-01
Rate changes come with notice (increases) or take effect immediately (decreases), each with explicit effective dates. That's standard wholesale practice, stated on the deck rather than buried in terms.
2. Billing increments: where invoices are won and lost
The increment notation X/Y means: bill a minimum of X seconds, then round up in steps of Y seconds. It looks like a footnote; on call-center traffic it's often a bigger cost lever than the rate itself, because outbound campaigns produce millions of short calls.
| Increment | How a 7-second answered call bills | How a 61-second call bills | Effective cost vs 1/1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1/1 | 7 seconds | 61 seconds | baseline |
| 6/6 | 12 seconds (+71%) | 66 seconds (+8%) | +3–8% on typical mixes |
| 30/6 | 30 seconds (+329%) | 66 seconds (+8%) | brutal on short calls |
| 60/60 | 60 seconds (+757%) | 120 seconds (+97%) | +20–40% on dialer traffic |
Worked example: a campaign delivering 100,000 answered calls averaging 28 billable seconds at a $0.01/min rate costs $466 on 1/1 billing, and $1,000 on 60/60. Same rate per minute, 2.1× the invoice. This is why a deck with a slightly higher rate on 1/1 routinely beats a "cheaper" 60/60 deck, and why we publish the increment on every deck line.
DIDHub's standard routes bill 1/1 wherever the underlying carrier allows; destinations with carrier-imposed minimums show it explicitly on the deck.
3. Short-duration and dialer traffic
Predictive dialers generate a profile carriers call short-duration traffic: high call attempts, low ASR, short ACD. Some underlying networks surcharge it or cap it, because call setup/teardown is the expensive part of carrying voice. The honest way to handle it, and ours, is upfront:
- Declare the traffic type. Dialer traffic goes onto routes engineered for it; conversational traffic onto conversational routes. Mixing them silently is how providers end up blocked mid-campaign.
- Short-duration terms on the deck, not after the fact. Where a destination carries a short-duration surcharge or minimum, it's a column in your deck, never a retroactive invoice adjustment.
- No penalty ASR clauses. Low answer rates are a property of cold outbound, not a billing event.
4. What you don't pay for
- Ringing time. Billing starts at answer (SIP 200 OK with media), never at ring or attempt.
- FAS (False Answer Supervision). A misbehaving downstream route can signal "answered" early (during ringback, on voicemail-like prompts, or before connect) to bill dead air. Our quality system fingerprints FAS patterns (instant answers, uniform ACDs, media-silence signatures), pulls the route automatically, and credits affected calls.
- Connection fees. None on standard routes; the rare destination where the terminating monopoly imposes one shows it on the deck.
5. Origin-based rating (EEA)
For calls into the EEA, many terminating operators price by the origin of the call as well as the destination: intra-EEA originations are regulated to a cheap tier, while rest-of-world originations pay the commercial rate, sometimes 30–100× more. Your deck reflects this as separate OBR breakouts, and your CLI's accuracy determines which tier you get, one more reason CLI integrity pays for itself. Full explainer: origin-based rating.
6. Settlement
Prepaid balance with optional auto-recharge (saved card, threshold-triggered), the same balance that covers your DIDs and inbound usage. CDRs with per-call rating are queryable in the dashboard and by API, and every invoice reconciles against them line by line. Larger operations can move to weekly post-pay terms once a payment history is established.
Send us your traffic profile
Destinations, monthly minutes, CLI requirements. We'll return a route plan and rate deck within one business day.
FAQ
What does 6/6 or 60/60 billing mean?
X/Y notation: a minimum of X seconds is billed per answered call, then duration rounds up in Y-second steps. 1/1 is true per-second billing; 60/60 bills whole minutes. On short-call campaign traffic, 60/60 can cost 2x what 1/1 costs at the same per-minute rate.
When does billing start on a terminated call?
At answer: SIP 200 OK with established media. Ringing, early media, and failed attempts are never billed, and False Answer Supervision (routes that fake the answer signal) is detected automatically and credited.
Do you surcharge short-duration dialer traffic?
Only where the underlying destination carrier does, and then it's printed on your rate deck as a column, never applied retroactively. Declaring your traffic profile upfront lets us route dialer traffic onto routes engineered for it.
How often do rates change?
Wholesale decks move with the market. Decreases apply immediately; increases come with advance notice and explicit effective dates per deck line. The deck CSV is versioned so your LCR can ingest changes programmatically.
Can I get the rate deck by API?
Yes: decks and per-call rated CDRs are available through the API alongside the dashboard, so your billing system can reconcile automatically.
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