Overage is a term used in the wireless telephone industry to describe billed charges for when a wireless consumer uses a larger number of minutes than their agreed upon price plan allows. In order to maintain high availability, most wireless carriers only allow a certain number of minutes of usage per subscriber per month -- especially during "peak hours": the time when historically the largest number of mobile phone users attempt to use the network. The minutes included with a user's price plan are normally relatively inexpensive (compare with prepaid minutes for example). If a user exceeds the minutes provided by their price plan, extra minutes are made available at a more expensive rate (in this case usually exceeding the rate for comparable prepaid minutes). Such charges for minutes ar