Generally speaking, both home exchange partners decide (and agree with) the rules to be followed.

As for the phone calls made using the land line, normally the agreement is that of letting free use of it. This is due to the many families who, nowadays, only pay flat monthly fees for their phone calls so that potentially they can call all over the country “for free”. In this case you will decide with your home exchange partner what to do. If you both have the same “flat fee” phone calls service then it won’t be a problem. But if a person wants to make phone calls out of the your fee free area, then he/she will have to pay back for his/her phone calls, once you get your bill. It is always better writing down a little contract (some rules…) about the bills. It will make everything clearer and there won’t be any kind of problems. The same is worth doing for other utilities, electricity, gas, heating, etc., although usually (as the common sense would suggest) the property owner keeps paying these, as always.

The great majority of people, however, only uses their own mobile phones or buys pre-paid phone cards, if they need to call home/abroad. It is also worth reminding that in case of an ADSL internet connection available in the house (on both sides), we can easily make FREE PHONE CALLS using software like Skype.