Ben's back in the Netherlands
 

Usually old small operators disappear... sometimes they come back! :D

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/2...rce=newsletter

It would be interesting to know the tariffs;)

According to the website there are 3 options:

ben soms: 100 minutes/ text messages for 5,95
ben regelmatig: 250 minutes/ text messages for 9,95
ben vaak: 500 minutes/ text messages for 22,95
you will pay 0,25 when you have finished you included minutes
and then you can get 1000 messages for 9,95 and mobile internet (128 Kpbs downstream en 32
Kbps upstream) for 9,95 as well, but it is limited to 250 mb a month.
The interesting thing is that you don’t have a year contract but you can cancel on a monthly basis, which can be interesting for exchange students and other visitors who will be staying longer then a couple of months, but not for a whole year. As long as you have a Dutch bank account and an EU passport you should be able to get this contract, as far as I know.

Ties

So it seems they don't have any prepaid offer by now.

No, they don't. But it is really just an other brand name of T-mobile. So if you want prepaid you just have to get a T-mobile prepaid card.

Ties

Well, interesting. In Italy we have another strong brand (BLU) not in use, maybe Wind can copy the T-Mob NL policy :beer:

In the Netherlands it's the second time they get back an old brand. First it was Telfort, which was bought by O2 becoming O2 NL, then going back to Telfort brand and finally being bought by KPN. I read that also T-Mobile has bought Orange NL, so by now there are still 4 (Telfort's has been merged with KPN AFAIK) networks but officially only 3 owners?

Yes, the Telfort network does no longer exist. All telfort sim cards now "roam" on the KPN network. I red somewhere that T-mobile will stop using the Orange name somewhere mid 2008.

So one moment there are 5 networks, and before you know it there are only 3.
It was pretty predictable that one of them would disapear. 5 was a little to much for a small country, even German only has 4. But it was really nice, because at least you had choice.

And, yes, the rebranding of telfort into o2 en back again was really a waste of money.....

If Liechtenstein still has 4, I think also the Netherlands could have 5! :D

It's especially the smaller and densly populated countries like NL, where it makes sense to run a 4th, 5th or even 6th network, because it's relatively cheap to roll-out a network, which further has a higher mean load and so amotizes faster.
In a territorial state like Germany you have to build up a lot of infrastructure to cover rural areas, where then only few users will generate few revenue. That's so expensive, that even after ten years of service O2 Germany still has a lot of gaps in their coverage map (see below), which are currently (nearly) closed by a national roaming agreement with T-Mobile (which is disabled in regions with sufficient O2 coverage).
Since O2 Germany and E-Plus, who both had only GSM1800-frequencies before, were granted EGSM900 frequencies in 2006, O2 aims to achieve nationwide coverage of their own network by end of 2009.
http://www.gsmworld.com/covmaps/gsma...comb/0_0_0.png

Also true of course, we are really spoiled with the coverage here. But 5 networks with only something like 16 million people means that it is also a lot harder to get enough customers.
To me the really interesting countries are Sweden, Norway, etc. really big countries with relatively few people but with a really impressive coverage. In north Sweden you see only mountains and snow but your cell phone will still work. But now I’m getting somewhat off topic….

I also heard lately that KPN is gonna cease the brand HI (his "official" MVNO), and all the customers will be under KPN.

Does somebody knows more about that?

How many brands/MVNOs does KPN own? In Germany it has E-Plus, but also uses BASE, simyo, and ay yildiz (these are their own brands, not considering the many MVNOs that use the E-Plus infrastructure). Seems to me that BASE and simyo are the closest things it has to cross-border branding.

Only in Dutch and it doesn't really say they will stop using Hi, it only says they want to focus on KPN and Telfort (which is almost the same, but not exactly....)

Ties

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/51714/kpn...rt-en-kpn.html

Wow, it seems KPN collects brands! :D
BTW I never understood the sense of "HI" offer, which has never been convenient...

Regarding the prepaid, i agree with you....all calls at 29 ct per minute is not a good choiche (before, i had a T-Mobile "after3" prepaid).

IMHO, hi make sense only for the postpaid

Ah, that's it, thanx.

Not brands, but companies, actually. Almost all the brands they have (except for hi) used to be companies. And most of them are ISP's.