Most people do not pay per-minute fees for local service anyway.

Doctors and druggists are using "900" numbers to give advice on the telephone for a per-minute fee.

But because the new per-minute fees go up every day except Sunday, the consumer groups say bills will rise for many other low-volume callers.

After $500 worth of calls have been purchased, the per-minute fee drops to 23 cents.

Those per-minute fees have inflated long-distance rates for consumers.

So by reducing the per-minute fees, the Nakahata deal levels the playing field to a certain extent.

He pointed to the example of a parent driving to pick up her child from a day-care service that charges a per-minute late fee.

The pricing structure is often based on per-minute or per-megabyte fee rather than flat rate, and may be different for different content services.

The concept was simple: sell cards enabling people to make long-distance calls from pay phones, for a flat per-minute fee.

To complete these calls, Skype pays phone companies small per-minute fees.