What counts as a minute?
Anything sold by the minute deserves a plain explanation of how minutes are counted, because this is where per-minute pricing usually gets quietly unpleasant. Ours works the way telephony has always worked, and the parts that could surprise you are below.
Rounded up, with a one-minute floor
Call time is rounded up to whole minutes, and every answered call counts as at least one. A forty-second call is one minute; a call of two minutes and ten seconds is three. This is standard telecom billing rather than something clever, but it has a real consequence worth knowing: if most of your calls are short, your minute count will run ahead of your actual talk time, and you should plan on call volume rather than on a stopwatch.
What happens when you go over
Nothing switches off. Minutes beyond your plan are simply charged at the overage rate and appear on your next invoice. You are told at eighty per cent of your allowance and again when you reach it, so going over is a decision rather than a discovery at the end of the month.
Overage is never the cheap option, on purpose
The per-minute overage rate is set deliberately above the per-minute rate of every plan, including the most expensive one. That means there is no arrangement where consistently overrunning a smaller plan costs less than moving up to the right one — which is the opposite of how metered pricing is usually designed, and it is intentional. If you are over every month, the alert is telling you to change plan, and changing plan will genuinely cost you less.
What is not billed
Time counts from an answered call.
While an Irish number is going through verification, calls on the temporary test number are accounted separately and never reach billing. You were promised free testing while waiting on a regulator, and that promise is enforced in code rather than in a policy page.
How to estimate before you commit
Count the calls you receive in a normal week, not the ones you remember. Multiply by your honest average length — most small-business calls run two to four minutes, and people consistently guess low. Compare that against the plan allowances on the pricing page, and pick the one above your estimate rather than the one that just fits, because the first month is always the noisiest.
Frequently asked
Rounded up to whole minutes, with every answered call counting as at least one. A forty-second call is one minute.
Nothing switches off. Extra minutes are charged at the overage rate on your next invoice, and you are alerted at eighty per cent of your allowance and again when you reach it.
No, and deliberately so. The overage rate is set above the per-minute rate of every plan, so consistently overrunning a smaller plan always costs more than moving up.
No. Time counts from an answered call.
Count a normal week of calls and multiply by an honest average length — most small-business calls run two to four minutes and people guess low. Pick the plan above your estimate.