This is a very interesting document on the costs of calling telephone voting lines or sending a text message to vote in the Eurovision Song Contest last night in 36 different countries:-

http://a1679.g.akamai.net/7/1679/9896/v001/esc.download.akamai.com/9896/press_pictures_2006/televoting_numbers_2006.pdf

The most expensive country for phone voting was amazingly not the uk (25p per call on an 09) but apparently Romania at 1.19 Euros per call which is something like 85p.  I am sure 85p in Romania is in fact more like having to pay 5 pounds per call in terms of equivalent cost of living and wages etc versus the UK.  I don't know the exchange rates for some of the more minor countries though so it may be that one of these is even more expensive?  Germany at 12 Euro Cents or about 10p per call seems to have been the cheapest.

The surcharge cost on top of normal text prices for voting by text was 25p in the UK but a staggering 1.39 Euros or basically One Pound per text in Spain.  Cheapest for voting by text was Andorra at only 11 Euro cents a text or about 7p, although Andorra didn't offer a phone voting facility.

The fact that premium rate numbers were used so extensively only of course proves that despite the massive budget for the contest that the Eurovision and the EBU refused to pay telecoms suppliers for the cost of offering the voting platform so that it could have been done at normal national call rates.  This would not have happened in the USA where I'm sure it would have been a normal call rate cost since no lottery prize etc was being funded by the calls.

Although most other European countries clearly all have Premium Rate numbers I still don't suppose many of them have a con in place where people dialling lower cost premium rate numbers are told "its only the BT local rate sir" or its only the BT national rate sir".  At least last night a proper 09 number was used by the UK at a fixed price rather than one that depended on how verbose the length of the voting message could be made.

I would be interested in the views of other forum members on both these call costs and of course the fantastic victory scored by Heavy Metal/Horror Rock group Lordi in tossing into the dust the Eurovision's usual reputation for only having mindless Euro ballards, high energy pop and Bazooki type songs.  One theory I do have is that if Lithuania's equally admirable piss take song We Are The Winners had not been in the same contest then Lordi would have won by a mile but as We Are The Winners appealed to the same kind of voters as Lordi this cut down the scale of their victory to just a clear but comfortable margin.

Another thing to take into account is the cost of calling normal geographic numbers in the same country.  Some countries might have very high rates compared to the UK, which makes the difference between that, and premium rate numbers less of a margin.

And also the cost of living, and wages needs to be taken into account as well as the exchange rate.  In some countries, the average wage is double that of the UK, but then so are many living costs.

It is interesting that Romania has the most expensive costs, as their wages are alot lower than ours, but I think that property and travel costs are alot lower as well.  It might be interesting to also see how many calls they get from each country compared to the population.  I'd expect that not many Romanians voted, but then again Romanians might be used to high telephone charges and those who can afford it, would have happily paid for the privilege.