What are "peak", "off-peak" and "mobile to mobile" minutes?
Peak minutes generally are minutes that are calculated between the hours of 7:00 AM and 8:59 PM. That's when the network sees the most usage. That's why the minute pools that you get, that you pay for per month, are taken out of that time, because it's the time that people most often use their phones. Off-peak, however, is a time when the network is idle or people are sleeping, or eating dinner. There's just not that much load in the network, so you can be free to use that as much as you want. Mobile to mobile, however, is basically giving the customer the ability to call another handset on the same carrier. So, if you're with carrier A and you have a telephone, and your friend is also with Carrier A, anytime you communicate between the two it's free, because there's no drain in the network; there are no outside transmissions going on. The way that call centres work is that when you make a phone call, the first network gets it, and when your network gets it, if it's a call within your network, then that call centre distributes it to the next person. Whereas, Carrier A gets the call, and it's to Carrier B, then it has to call Carrier B's server, and Carrier B has to find the user and then make the phone call. This makes an outside connection, therefore putting more drain on the network.
