Does anyone have any updates on the currrent situation?

From what I can see now:
EPlus, Congstar, Vodafone and TMobil are all ok to call Betamax.
The only problems are with o2, Tchibo and Fonic. ???

Is this still the case?

Nah you read wrong :)

When it comes to mobiles, Germany is one of the less consumer-friendly countries, at least in Europe, and especially with postpaid contracts.

There aren't many countries where:

- You get a 2-year contract (in most other countries, it's one year)

- If you don't cancel your contract at least 3 months before it expires, it is automatically renewed for 1 additional year (in most other countries, after the 1st year, you can cancel it anytime)

- You get a SIM-locked phone for the duration of your contract (in many other countries, the phones are sold unlocked by law)... this will hopefully change soon.

- It's prohibited to use your data plan for VoIP and P2P applications (and those ports are closed)... also this will hopefully change soon

- The price for SMS, stubbornly remains at 0.19€ (national) and 0.29€ (international), with most pre- or postpaid plans of the four major mobile telcos (while everywhere is Europe is falling down to 2c per SMS)

and so on and so on...

I learned the above the hard way... so when in Germany, use prepaid cards but not from the 4 big mobile telcos ;)

Except for few devices sold by T-Mobile for a limited period, I never saw SIM- or netlocked phones sold with postpaid contracts.

And regarding the VoIP-ban, you may have missed O2's announcment this week, according to which they will officially allow VoIP without any surcharge.

However I agree with you, when it comes to the preference of prepaid over postpaid. Postpaid was interesting in the past due to the highly subsidized handset prices, but those subsidies have decreased significantly, so it doesn't pay off to bond yourself two years to the mostly unattractive postpaid tariffs.

@evan
 

Travel to France, try to find a cheap mobile solution and you'll feel happy to be a german......

O2 does not allow calls to Betamax since long time now.
Recently on 12-10-2009, E-plus - BASE blocked calls to Betamax completely. I was able to call in morning of 12th oct and from the afternoon all calls are blocked. Now I am stuck with BASE as I have 2 years contract. :-x:-x
Is it legal that any company can block a landline number on a landline flat tariff ?? See the news.

German operators split over mobile VoIP strategy - FierceWireless:Europe

EU looks set to force operators to carry mobile VoIP traffic - FierceWireless:Europe