Me vs. Telus: Calling Germany

So, I'm going to England in August for a conference and I'm planning on visiting my friend in Berlin after I'm done with the conference. I haven't talked to her in a while and there's a bunch of details that need to be worked out that won't be easy over the internet. I ask her for her phone number and then go searching for how much it will cost to call her.

I assume, being the year 2008, that calling from my cell phone would be easy and cheap. I briefly search the internet and find a page telling me that it will be $1.88 a minute. I think to myself, this has got to be wrong. What telecom company could possibly get away with charging this much to call between two first world countries? A quick call to Telus's customer service and I discover that not only is this charge correct, but that there is no plan that reduces this fee to something more reasonable.

Now, I know how communication networks work. It's really cheap to send data from computer to computer over the internet. It's free for me to call locally within Toronto. I don't know how much receiving calls in Germany is but it can't be more than a few cents a minute. This seems to leave a whopping dollar and eighty something cents unnaccounted for.

Still, a part of me can accept that telecom companies need to make money and a big part of their business model is hitting people with big phone bills after the fact. However, what struck me the most was that after discussing my needs with Telus, they told me that I should not in fact use their telephone services to call my friend but that I should use someone else's. A quote from Telus customer service:

"Calling from cell phones is expensive. You should use a land line and a phone card".

Welcome to 1985.