A marketing term used by Verizon in 2000 to promote their prepaid long distance plan. The idea is that instead of "talk-talk-talk-pay," where you pay your bill up to a month after you receive it, you prepay for everything. The rate they cite is attractive, at 8 cents per minute prepaid versus 10 cents per minute billed. (This is comparing Verizon with itself; there are other long-distance carriers that charge less than 8c/min billed.) The only problem is that you have to keep enough minutes in reserve to allow you to continue talking. Otherwise, you have to call their service center or use their web site to purchase additional ones. The fact is that the 8 cents per minute rate only becomes effective if you use every single minute; if you keep, say, 100 minutes in reserve, that's basically a surcharge you give yourself.