Germany - GPRS Data
 

Hi

I'm going to Germany next week, and I want to buy a local card to access the internet.

I searched the forum and found Blau, Simyo, Aldi, ...

But what card is the most easy to setup?
I don't mind paying a few cents extra, I just want it to work out of the box, not having to wait a few days. I'm not going to make phonecalls with it.

I'm arriving on a saturday, and I want to use it the same day, so the shop has to be open that day. I'm traveling by car, so I can buy in a gasstation, papershop, ...

I have a Belgian passport, that passport must be enough to get the card and activate it on the spot.

What can you suggest?

Depending on the duration of your stay, the data volume and bandwidth required, you could go for Tchibo, who offer a monthly data flatrate for € 20. SIMs are sold for € 1 at Tchibo shops and come with € 1 of initial credit. Tchibo uses the O2 network, which offers widespread EDGE coverage and HSDPA in urban areas. details: Germany - Tchibo - Prepaid Wireless Internet Access

simyo and Blau, which both use the eplus network, offer a 1GB-pack for € 9,90 valid for month. eplus has recently started upgrading their GSM network to EDGE, but most of their network still supports only GPRS and their UMTS network doesn't support HSDPA. Also the eplus network is often congested especially in urban areas and so you may experience modem speeds even if UMTS is available.
Since simyo is only sold online, you will need to get a Blau SIM, which is sold at NORMA (supermarket), Kaufland (supermarket), real (supermarket), Media Markt (electronics retailer), SATURN (electronics retailer), ProMarkt (electronics retailer), Budnikowsky drug store), ateka (phone shop) and debitel (phone shop). Blau SIMs cost € 20 and come with € 20 of credit until the end of march - regularly the initial credit is € 10. For details on Blau check Blau ? Prepaidwiki (German). If you don't subscribe to the 1GB-pack, Blau will charge € 0,24/MB.

The last recommendation would be Fonic, who also charge € 0,24/MB but also offer a dayflat for € 2,50/day, which needs prior activation by customer care. Fonic is also realized through the O2 network, which means EDGE and HSDPA coverage. SIMs are sold for € 10 including € 6,75 of credit at Lidl (supermarket), real (supermarket), Müller (drug store), dm (drug store), JET (gasstation), ProMarkt (electronics retailer), KOMET (electronics retailer). Details: FONIC ? Prepaidwiki (German)

Forgot to mention: Fonic has the big advantage of cheap calling rates to Belgium: € 0,09/min to fixed lines and € 0,29/min to mobiles

Thanks for listing the different possibilities.

FYI: I'm staying just one week.

I also read in another thread about Solomo.
They also have 9ct/m to Belgium, not that I will call that much, but it's nice.
They also have 24ct/Mb for data.

I can buy that online.

What is your opinion about this one, besides that it also uses E-Plus?

Solomo is good, but I don't know if you can order it without a German address. It does not offer a data "deal" beyond the 24 cent/MB.

As you mentioned wanting to get the SIM right away, and use data (and call home, or many other places, for 9 cents/min), you'd probably find Fonic a good choice, as it is very easy to find a retailer that sells it.

Solomo pro is also attractive, as they have the same cheap international rates to Belgium as Fonic, but the fact you wanted to buy the SIM "on the spot" hindered me from recommending them to you, as they sell their SIM online only. Also as Motel75 mentioned, there's no data option beyond those € 0,24/MB and they use the eplus network, which is inferior.
On the other hand solomo pro has cheap roaming rates (incoming calls within Europe for € 0,10-0,15/min) and it includes a free VoIP-account, which offers parallel call (mobile phone and VoIP ringing simultaneously) and cheap outgoing calls to solomo subscribers for € 0,05/min (including your own solomo SIM). The VoIP-feature allows you to be reachable on your German mobile phone number anywhere in the world for free, where you have internet access (just need a VoIP-device or -software). Further if you have some VoIP-device supporting multiple VoIP-accounts and VoIP-forwarding (like a Fritz!Box) you can forward incoming calls from some DID-number through solomo's VoIP-account to your solomo SIM for € 0,05/min.
solomo does ship SIMs to Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and Spain. They usually send SIMs the next day and should arrive in the named countries within 2-3 days.
If you order through this link you'll get an additional credit of € 5. So with this month's promotion you get the SIM with € 10 of credit for € 5.

My fault. I meant that, when I have to buy it at my place of stay, I want it to work immediatly.
But this offer is great, I ordered it already. It should arrive early next week. This gives me the possibility to setup voip forwarding. I do have a FritzBox (nice device), and I have plenty of local DIDs.

Do you mean, that when I attach my Begian DID to the Solomo Voip account, that I can receive calls on my cellphone (in Germany) at 5ct/m? or is that only on the sip-client? If so, it's not very usefull because I can also attach my DIDs to my own voip-accounts for free.

Anyway, sounds like a good deal, and I think I won't mind the "slower" network.
In Belgium, I'm using BASE as my provider, and they only offer EDGE, so I'm used to the speeds :-)
And EDGE is fast enough to make my Fring client on my iPhone work. I tweaked the iPhone so that Fring also works over EDGE (not only WiFi). So I'll probably be able to make and receive calls for "free" (besides the data-cost for solomo).

I'll write a small report about my findings when I'm back.
Just to be on the safe side, I'll write down some fonic and tchibo addresses to pick-up a sim-card in case solomo is not performing as I expect.

Thanks for all the input to all of you.

Yves

More solomo voip details
 

Yves,

You also need to know that a solomo pro accout has two credit balances. One balance is for the sim (for normal telephone services). And the second balance is for voip services (at the moment: voip calls, the "iSMS service" for sending cheaper SMS messages over the internet which include your solomo pro telephone number, and perhaps also to pay for tweetpushes in the future). It looks as if a free test phase for tweetpushes will begin in April.

The bad news is that the voip services balance cannot be credited from the sim balance, nor can it be topped up via the internet. The voip services balance has to be topped up via a bank account:

Empfänger: solomo GmbH
Bank: Commerzbank
Kontonummer: 10 443 6100
Bankleitzahl: 443 400 37
IBAN: DE51 4434 0037 0104 4361 00
BIC: COBADEFF443

UserId: xxxx (get this from the voip section of your online solomo account)
Benutzername: 01570******* (your solomo pro phone number)

Best logon to your online solomo account and confirm the bank details. I think you can logon to your account even before you receive your sim in the post.

Yes, you can forward your Begian DID to the Solomo Voip account. Online you can set up your account to receive incoming calls either on your solomo mobile alone (5c/min), or on your solomo voip account alone (free), or on both simultaneously for 5c/min (but only pickup on one receiver). Each solomo pro account also has its own voip telephone number (with "98" in the middle) which you can give to people if you only want them to directly phone your voip telephone.

Naked voip over somolo/e-plus is banned, but technically possible. There are a few minor hurdles, but nothing complicated. I won´t give any details because the e-plus network is very, very overloaded at times. Just play around knowing that it is possible. Jump the hurdles!

All solomo sims allow UMTS data transfer, where it has been enabled by e-plus.

Oh, I almost forgot. The solomo service is provided by vistream. In the solomo contract terms and conditions, you have to agree to the vistream terms and conditions, which include a clause allowing vistream to terminate all services after 3 months of account inactivity. No-one has ever reported that this clause has been used, but it is there nevertheless.

Yes. You just need to configure the solomo VoIP account in your FritzBox and set up a forwarding (or parallel call) for inbound calls (addressed to some of yours DID number(s)) to your solomo number through the solomo VoIP account.

Answering calls to your solomo number by SIP client is always free. The 5 ct/min referes to calls from your solomo VoIP-account to any solomo pro number (including your own one).

Regarding the separate credit for VoIP, I didn't realize, that solomo has dropped the initial credit of € 5 also for the VoIP-credit. So indeed you will need to topup the VoIP-credit ("solomo online Konto") separately by banktransfer.

That's how you setup your solomo VoIP-account in your FritzBox:

http://freenet-homepage.de/tufkati/s...p_fritzbox.png

UMTS voip experience
 

I use a commercial "better than G729" codec for continuous 2-way voip over UMTS. G729 "closes" an up or down channel if no-one is talking on it. With G729, when a non-talker starts to talk on an overloaded network, there is sometimes a delay before he can be heard clearly again.

Out-going voip calls are easy. In-coming, always-registered, voip calls require a bit more work to set up correctly. Understandably, some networks make more effort to try and stop external voip callers from dialling in.

Over e+, I need 4MB for 10 mins speech. At 24c/MB, long, out-going conversations may be cheaper via a mobile. For longer voip conversations, a flatrate data tariff may be more suitable. If you have nothing better than G729, I would stay clear of e+ because they sometimes offer gprs speeds instead of UMTS. If you only have G711, don´t waste your time trying e+.

Inquisitor has previously linked to a page that reports UMTS voip is possible with a Tchibo sim:
Germany - Tchibo - Prepaid Wireless Internet Access

Tchibo uses the faster (than e+) O2 network. Tchibo has a cheap prepaid monthly data tariff. It´s something like 10 euros for 500MB/month.

More precisely: You can forward your Belgian DID through the solomo VoIP account to your solomo SIM.

You can set up parallel call, so VoIP and SIM will ring simultaneously if the solomo number is being called. But keep in mind, that the solomo VoIP account can't be registered multiply. So you can't use the VoIP account on your FritzBox and through Fring at once. Before you leave Belgium you need to decide wether you setup the VoIP account on your FritzBox to forward calls to the SIM or if you want to use the VoIP account with Fring.

That's another interesting thing, I didn't realize. So when you are in Germany, you could call your VoIP-account on your FritzBox from your solomo SIM and so reach your family or setup callthrough for 5 ct/min. Just for clarification: Depending on what you configure online on the solomo website the solomo VoIP account will ring for both: your regular solomo mobile number and the additional VoIP-number (= username of the VoIP account).

Using VoIP over GPRS/EDGE/3G would only be cheaper than a callthrough-setup through the solomo VoIP-account + FritzBox if you use a VoIP codec, that generates less than 28 KBit/s (including up- AND downstream and overhead).

So far solomo hasn't cancelled account earlier than after 12 months of inactivity and I think it shouldn't be a problem to send a SMS every 3 months.

Yes, but Tchibo charges in 400KB-increments. So those 500MB could be consumed faster than expected. So if you chose Tchibo, the flatrate for € 20 could be the better choice.

More somolo voip info
 

Yves,

Solomo does not yet allow incoming sip calls to their network. Calls cannot be forwarded using sip-URLs of the format: sip:01570*******@voip.solomo.de.

No, this is incorrect. If parallel sim and voip calls are enabled (via the solomo account webpage), calls picked up on the voip device will cost 5c/min.

I'm using parallel call since it's introduction (solomo notified me personally minutes after it was activated) and I've answered a dozen incoming calls through VoIP, which were definitely not charged at all. If you were charged for parallel call, that's an error.
If you check your call history ("EVN solomo VoIP") on the solomo website, you'll notice, that there's not even a column for the cost in the incoming-table (ankommende Gespräche).

Thank you Inquisitor
 

Interesting. Thanks for the tip.

PS Yves might be confused by all the voip information that we have been giving him. You assumed that he will use a FritzBox. I assumed that he would tie his DIDs/voip accounts together using voxalot, pbxes, etc.

Solomo pro is really great for receiving calls outside Europe!

With my Dutch Vodafone postpaid card I would euro 1,50 per minute to receive a call in Bolivia (for example).
With Solomo pro it would be, if I understand it correctly, euro 0,05 per minute to receive a call in Bolivia! (zone 1)
And for another euro 0,05 per minute I could then forward any number to my Solomo pro number, including a fixed Dutch number with my frizbox
which would make Solomo 15 times cheaper then Vodafone Netherlands.

Yes, you understood it correctly. You could set up a forwarding on your FritzBox, which would forward calls addressed to your Dutch DID number through the solomo VoIP account to your solomo SIM for € 0,05/min. Incoming calls in Bolivia would cost another € 0,05/min - so € 0,10/min in total. But those € 0,05/min in Bolivia are a rare exception (or maybe an error) - even in European countries incoming calls range between € 0,10-0,15/min and in other Latin American countries you'll pay way more (Brazil € 0,49/min, Colombia: € 1,99/min).

True. Then again everything below 1,45 is still cheaper then Vodafone. Because World (which is pretty much everywhere except Europe and Canada/USA) costs euro 1,50 per minute.

and only zone 7 is more then 1,45. The USA is that one, that is too bad.
But Autralia and Japan are also in zone 1. Although you would have Vodafone passport there as well.
It is also pretty useful for some African countries.

If I would use this to forward my fixed line to my mobile in the Netherlands, it would be 15 cent/minute. Which would be cheaper then forwarding to a Dutch mobile in the Netherlands.....

It is not perfect, but still pretty nice :)

With poivy.com you can reach Dutch mobiles for € 0,10/min. Since poivy.com supports SIP, you can also use them so setup a forwarding on your FritzBox to your Dutch mobile number. poivY

confused ? :-)
 

Hi

Thank you all for your concern.
I think it's not worth all the hassle.
It's just for one week, and only 2 people I want to reach. So I think it's better that I call them on their fixed line at 9ct/min instead of them calling me at 23ct/min (what they are charged for calling a german mobile).
The global idea of cutting callcost is appealing, 1ct here, 1ct there...

The card is good enough for data.

Maybe I'll use the solomo card for voice, and the fonic card for data (and for the speed). That way I don't have to swap cards all the time.

As I said in my initial message, I like it simple, and I don't mind paying that extra cent.

Now I still have to figure out where exactly to buy the fonic card (closet to my destination) and we're all set.

Thank you all for you input !

Yves

@Ties Brants
solomo today confirmed in their forum, that those € 0,05/min for incoming calls in Bolivia are actually correct: solomo GmbH • Thema anzeigen - ankommende Anrufe in Bolivien wirklich nur ? 0,05/min?

@Inquisitor: Thanks. also for the help with UMTS usb adapter.

I ordered the card to just play around with. Unfortunately not going to South America any time soon. My brother however is, so he might want to borrow the card. 5 euro cent is really cheap :)

Eplus Germany
 

Hi

As promised:

I went to Germany, had only the Solomo cards with me. Where we were staying, Eplus receiption was really bad (Yes, I know, you told me so :-) ).

I drove aroud a bit, and everywhere Eplus was not the best thing to go for.

Since I wasn't into buying another card, we had a fine phoneless stay, and I loved the quietness :-) !

Yves