Glossary · Billing
What are 10-second billing blocks?
10-second billing blocks (pulse)
A billing block, or pulse, is the unit a call's length is rounded up to before it's charged. With 10-second blocks, a call is billed in small slices instead of whole minutes.
On a call
A COD confirmation call lasts 35 seconds. Billed per minute, you'd pay for a full minute. Billed in small blocks, you pay for 40 seconds.
AI agents from ₹1 a minute.¹
Explained
Here is how it works, in plain words.
Indian telecom has long talked in pulses. Plans have billed by the minute or by the second, and the pulse is the unit a call gets rounded up to. Even TRAI’s 2026 amendment sets its new charge on automated calls “on per minute pulse basis”.
For AI calls, the pulse decides how much you pay for the last few seconds. Many automated calls are short, like a delivery confirmation. On a per-minute pulse, a short call pays for a minute it never used.
| Call length | Per-minute pulse | 10-second blocks |
|---|---|---|
| 8 seconds | 60 seconds | 10 seconds |
| 35 seconds | 60 seconds | 40 seconds |
| 61 seconds | 120 seconds | 70 seconds |
| 96 seconds | 120 seconds | 100 seconds |
Smaller blocks make the bill track talk time almost exactly. There’s no minute boundary to design around, and every few seconds you shave off a call show up as savings.
Two details are worth checking with any provider. First, is there a minimum? A one-block minimum is normal, so even a very short answered call costs one block. Second, what counts as billable? Ringing, a busy tone and a failed connection shouldn’t cost anything, because nothing was said. A voicemail usually does, because audio played and a line was used.
Watch for two meters on one call, too. The voice AI and the phone line can each have their own block, and the call record should show both.
To forecast a month, round each answered call up to its block first, then multiply. Averaging the seconds first comes out slightly low, because rounding never cancels out.
In Voice Infra
This is what Voice Infra does about it.
Every plan bills calls in 10-second blocks, rounded up, and you pay only when a call is answered. A call that rings out, finds the line busy or fails to connect costs nothing. Phone calling we supply can follow the carrier's own block, which the call record shows.