TALK IS CHEAP:Being on the wrong mobile phone package can be a costly error. If you're smart about it you can save money or even chat away for free

HOW MUCH DOES it cost to make a five minute peak-time phone call in Ireland today? 10 cent? 34 cent? Nothing at all? There was a time when almost everyone knew how much a phone call cost but that was before fancy smartphones and data packages and bundled minutes and pre- and post-pay contracts. Today, the chances are no one knows for sure.

We asked Twitter users how much a call cost and a confusing and confused picture quickly emerged. “How long is that piece of string between the two cans?” asked one user. “On what, to what? I know my texts are four cent but not sure about calls,” said another. “There are too many answers to that,” came a third response. “Depends on your package and your operator.”

The confusion arises out of the dramatic changes to the Irish telecoms sector over the past 15 years. It allows the industry to get away with quite astonishing practices. How else could mobile operators have people pay up to €1.17 a minute if they are connected to numbers through directory enquiry services.

And how many people would stand for it if they knew that Eircom charged people calling mobiles from their landlines more than 20 cent a minute outside of bundled minutes.

The high charges don’t stop there. People who are on mobile phone packages that don’t suit their particular usage are asked to pay through the nose for calls.

Last month, UK analysis engine Billmonitor worked out that British consumers were wasting nearly €6 billion on their mobile bills because they were on the wrong contracts. The survey analysed 28,417 customers’ bills and found that more than three-quarters were on contracts that did not match their usage. This mismatch meant they were all paying around €250 a year more than necessary.

Billmonitor found that just over half of phone users were on a tariff that gave them too many free minutes or text messages and so were wasting €3 billion paying for calls and texts they never made. Some 29 per cent had tariffs that did not give them enough allowance. Collectively that was costing them about €2 billion.

A similar study has yet to be done in Ireland but it is unlikely Irish phone users are much different from their UK counterparts. It is safe to assume that we are collectively wasting at least €200 million each year because the contracts we are on don’t suit us.

If anything, the problem is likely to be worse here because there are fewer tariff options available than in the UK, making it harder to find bundles that closely match your individual needs.

The issue is that many passive consumers haven’t a clue how much or how little they use their phone, so they don’t know what the right contract is for them. It is easy to work out. A first step is to visit ComReg’s excellent price comparison website, callcosts.ie, to work out the best rates.

The next step is to carry out a phone usage audit to see how many minutes worth of phone calls you usually make and how many texts you send. Go back through your bills and pick a month that represents your normal usage.Then compare that to the bundled package you are on.

If you are paying for 350 minutes of calls and only making 250 minutes worth, you are effectively giving the company money for nothing. And if you are paying for 150 text messages but only sending 50, ditto. Similarly if you are paying for 150 minutes worth of calls and make 300 minutes of calls – which is only around 10 minutes a day – then you are paying an additional €45 a month for those calls above the bundled allowance.

Mobile phone companies charge ridiculous rates when people go above their limit although how much depends on the package and the company. For example: if you are on O2’s Advanced 350 package then you get 350 minutes of calls a month and 150 texts. But every minute over the 350 costs 27 cent while every text over the 150 costs 11 cent. If you are on the cheapest 02 deal, which is the Simplicity 150, you get 150 minutes of calls a month and 100 texts.

However, you pay 30 cent a minute above the 150 minutes and 13 cent per text above the 100 bundled ones allowed.

With 3 Mobile’s Classic Flex package, users get 350 units – one unit equals one minute of talk time or two text messages. It’s up to you how you divide the units. Once you go over your 350 units, you pay 34 cent a minute for calls and 17 cent for each text sent.

After assessing your bills and your usage, the next step is to ring your provider and ask them to come up with a tariff that suits your needs. If they can’t do that, switch to a provider that will. The reality is that mobile phone operators tend to be nicer to the customers they want than the ones they have so you might find yourself getting a snazzy new handset for your trouble.

During the boom years, mobile phone companies in Ireland charged over-the-fee fees for text messages and calls and stupid roaming charges applied.

Irish customers were always asked to pay more than people in other jurisdictions and while things have improved in recent years, the four service providers – Vodafone, O2, Meteor and 3 – still collect the second-highest average revenue per user in Europe.

The good news is that the days of companies making people pay through the nose for the most basic services are numbered, as technology looks set to make per minute charges of anything close to 30 cent a thing of the past. Smartphone apps, in particular, allow people to make calls and send texts for nothing or next to nothing.

When it comes to freebies, Skype is the Big Kahuna. People with the Skype app can make free Skype-to-Skype calls to anywhere in the world and to make calls to regular numbers at greatly reduced rates once they have access to a Wi-Fi network.

VIber is arguably an even more impressive development. The app – which is free – allows people to make free calls and send free texts to anyone else who also has the app, no matter where you are and the sound quality is crystal clear.

Shopping around among the upstart providers can also save money. Companies such as Tesco Mobile and Just Mobile piggy-back on the big four networks but often charge a lot less when it comes to pay-as-you-go deals. With Tesco Mobile, buying €10 worth of credit gets you €20 worth of calls and you can call people on the same network for free. International calls to the US and Australia can cost as little as 2 cent a minute.

There are savings to be made too on landline calls. The website cheapcalls.ie allows people to make long-distance calls for much less than the regular providers do from landlines. It is very simple to use. On the site are a series of Irish-based numbers with prefixes such as 1890 and 0818 and 1530. You dial the number listed opposite the country you want to call, a voice prompts you to dial the number of the person you want to speak to in that country and you get connected.

Instead of paying the regular charges associated with calling countries overseas, you pay the cost of calling the Irish number you dialled first. So if you want to speak to someone in Canada, you dial an access number which is prefixed 1890 and when you get through, you are paying Irish local rates. Ditto if you dial an Australian landline. If you dial an Australian mobile, the access code is prefixed with a 1520 number so you pay 15 cent a minute. The company uses internet telephony to make the connections so it is like having Skype without having to have access to a computer.

And then there is the question everyone should ask: do you need a landline? For some people the answer is yes, others keep it out of habit. A fixed telephone will cost even the most casual user about €500 a year, more than half of which goes on line rental alone.