Starting on December 7th, ALDI Germany will be kicking off its MVNO service on E-Plus' network.

The offer is on par with what you get from Simyo and blau.de to name a couple examples. Here are the basics:

SIM pack: ?19.99 (?10 of talk time included)
Refill cards: ?15 or ?30, available only at local ALDI locations

Prices:

?0.05/min for all calls to other ALDI Talkers numbers
?0.05/SMS to all ALDI Talkers numbers
?0.15/min for calls to landlines/other German wireless networks
?0.15/SMS to other German networks
?0.20/SMS to int'l numbers

Free Voicemail

Other important info:

-Billing: 60/1 billing for the 1st min, then to the exact second or 1/1 billing!!
-Roaming available in 34 countries and you are reachable in 110 countries


Info: http://www.aldi-essen.de/OFFER_D/OFFER_49/OFF001.HTM
http://www.aldi-essen.de/OFFER_D/OFFER_49/OFF002.HTM

Thanks for the info, I just update the German page... I found the official site should be this one: http://www.medionmobile.de/
Aldi is a discount store, a bit like Tchibo, isn't it? I think now Tchibo should lower its prepaid tariff again...

I noticed also Schwarzfunk lowered its tariffs to 25 cent/min (it was 30 cent/min) and SMS to 9 cent (it ws 10 cent). Not so competitive anyway... and on the site they still write the old tariffs in the main window, and the new ones in the detail?bersicht

Really nice rates, but...
why the hell in this prepaid (and other Germans ones) international rates are so high???
You complained many times about lack of competition resulting in high rates in your country. However, after fast reviewing Italian prepaid tariffs, I see that at least to some countries it's possible to call from Italian prepaids for significantly less than German 1.84 or 1.99?/min. And newer and newer German MVNOs don't change this!

Well high international rates are what keep Enlinea and callbackworld in business...and another important question I always have with any sim is

1. The ability to set voice menus (as opposed to phone menus) to English, one of the reason, despite the higher rates, I keep my Vodafone DE sim...

2. The ability to make calls into long distance cards...of course with lower internal rates that makes this a very desirable way to make international calls....

As well as direct dial or calling cards businesses :) ... Yes, I know all this but here I wonder why there is no effect of competition on imternational rates from German sims...

Yes, it's very important and I don't think it's very expensive for service providers to add such a feature. But I think that the reason of implementing voice prompts in local language(s) only may be very simple - to discourage foreigners from buying such a SIM and to rip off them on roaming.

You mean issues like e.g. restricted availability and costs of 00800 numbers in Poland what I said about in http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/index.php?showforum=5 ?

OT. The two issues you mentioned are not satisfied by any prepaid SIM in Poland :). 00800 and (some, not all) 0800 numbers can be accessed from Orange SIMs only.
But Polish Orange prepaid SIMs have voice prompts in Polish only (but before rebranding they had - in English and German!). And voice menus are the only way to turn on/off voicemail and CLIR. Prompts in VM can be set to English anyway, but it requires registering the SIM on the Polish-only website, and can be done only through this website! :P

At the moment, the calling card I use from Vodafone costs me 13p/min to UK landlines; maybe there's a cheaper one I haven't found (several are blocked).

Using this with a different calling card would be 11.3p (I hope the access numbers aren't barred), and actually use the card credit where the Voda credit is redundant when used for 0800 calls, and it would be cheaper to call my brother on Vodafone DE when I visit. A pity I topped up Vodafone in July then (still ?15+ on there) - I may end up with both.

Also I'd like to see cheaper landlines, like the Belgian Simyo.

Effendi,

that's the better homepage. Medion and ALDI are tied very closely together on several fronts. ALDI is Germany's leading discounter with LIDL and Plus rounding out the remaining important competitors. Tchibo is Germany's largest coffee store chain and they've entered into other sectors such as their MVNO GSM service and their own line of different products for the home/office environment (clothes, furniture, electronics etc).

Przemolog,

I can only speculate as to the background on why int'l rates remain so expensive. My guess is that these remain unchanged since the MVNOs know that the bulk of their customers will use their cheap rates for domestic purposes only.

Forgive me but maybe I'm a little dense...I don't understand the last sentence....don't the companies want as much business as possible...why would they care if foreigners buy their sim and how would they be ripping them off on roaming?

Sorry for my poor English - maybe that's the reason of misunderstanding :).
Here goes what I mean.
If you are going abroad and want to communicate by using a mobile phone, you have 3 basic possibilities:
1) Using a mobile phone from your home country in roaming. You are available under the same number as at home and you don't have to buy a new SIM and to unlock your phone (if it's locked). But you usually pay horrible amounts of money for any service (maybe except for receiving SMSes - usually free everywhere).
2) Buying a local prepaid SIM. You must buy a new SIM in each country and distribute its number to people who are to call you. But you save a lot of money on national calls, incoming calls and you can listen to VM for a national rate (even for free in some networks).
3) Buying an international SIM which a compromise between the two options above.

Now, think what would do if you come to some country and want to save by buying and using a local SIM. You can buy it for a few dollars and most or all money you spent is available as a credit, rates are reasonable, incoming calls are free etc. But you don't understand a word from voice messages and SMSes sent to you by the operator, VM messages are like ancient swahili :D. And the operator's website is in local language only. All this forces you to use roaming INSTEAD - what means paying huge money to your roaming operator (rates for roaming visitors don't have to be the same as for local users!) and service commision to your home operator. If you used a local SIM instead, you'd simply save too much from the point of view of operators :P.

So what you're saying that by making local sims very attractive to foreigners, the local company is sort of encouraging people not to use their home roaming company but that should hardly be a concern of the local sim provider; again it seems to me they would want to sell as many sim packs as they can, especially to foreigners visiting their country. And although I am not one who thinks that everything in the world should be in English, it is an undeniable fact that English is the world's 2nd language witness the fact that in almost every international airport in the world signs are almost always in local language(s) and in English yada yada yada....that being the case if a company wants to pick up business from foreign visitors, then English should be available as an option for the voice menus.

Several years ago, when I first got my Orange FR sim during a visit to Paris, they had some of the menus available in English; since then that has been withdrawn. I have local sims in Ireland, Germany, France, Holland and the UK. Of course Ireland and the UK make voice menus available in English, not surprisingly so does Holland (although it took a while for me to figure out the Dutch commands to get this done) and the German one I have, vodafone DE also has voice menus in English although it took a couple of e mails to Vodafone in Germany to get it done but I did get it done....I have been told by Effendi that several of the Italian ones to also....but apprently the only one that does so in Germany is the one I have.

My basic use of the cards has always been to receive anyway with very very limited calling out...other than the UK and apprently Italy calling North America on local sims is very expensive and no cheaper than using my own home carrier (T Mobile US) and its overpriced international roaming rates...then about a year ago at around this time, we were kicking around on this forum buytel which turned out to be a disaster and then riiing came along which seems to have solved the problem and made local sims not very necessary. I went on a tour this past summer which included 5 days in Poland and a cuople of days in a bunch of the other countries in that region and I had been all prepared to buy a Polish sim at least and kept trying to figure out which Polish sim had English voice menus available but it became a moot point as soon as I got to Poland and discovered that riiing functioned almost perfectly as far as receiving calls was concerned and then discovered how to use enlinea and callbackworld and for the most part they functioned perfectly also. But as we all know, intermittent problems have been occurring with cbw and enlinea and I was pretty glad I had both the French and German sims towards the end of that trip....

But as with everything, I suppose it is how you intend to use the thing. If I were to settle down in a country for more than a week, I suppose local prepaids would be best as it would probably be necessary to make local calls. I spend much of my time out of the US visitng friends in London and so of course it is best for me to have British sims but they are pretty cheap both for local calls and for calls to North America, at least Orange, Virgin and now O2 with their free bolt on are and so is Mobile World despite its limited validity. But that's an exception.

I will be in Germany for about 3 or 4 days in January and then again this upcoming June and July so I suppose keeping my German Vodafone sim makes sense and since it is vodafone, I guess I can top up while in London with a vodafone voucher and with some of the difficulties riiing has experienced in France, I usually scramble to leave France with an Orange voucher for 10? to at least keep that sim active every 9 months. Other than that, it is riiing for me I suppose.

Unless some other carrier can come up with a better alternative for multi country travel and has voice menus available in English.

All what I say is a hypothesis only. Maybe lack of English menus and instructions is just a result of stupidity of marketing people, and not a conspiracy to force people spend more on roaming :). You're right of course that selling as many SIMs as possible improves the company's market image (1 SIM sold = 1 new customer :)). But OTOH think about another index: ARPU. Consider that: a foreigner who comes to some country, buys a prepaid SIM for a few dollars, uses the credit to notify about his/her new number, mainly receives calls (something just what say below about your usage) and makes no extra top-ups (or small ones). Such a person is a valid user in statistics at least until SIM expiration: for a few months, in some cases a year or even more. And IMHO it doesn't look good if all what such an occasional user brings to the operator is 10 or 20 dollars per year (maybe a little more if include termination fees for incoming calls from other networks). And this profit may be multiplied if the foreigner chooses roaming instead of using local sim (especially conditional diverts to VM in home country and listening to the VM at international rates may be a financial horror :( ).

Yes, I agree with you. After all, we discuss here in English though the site itself is Italian based and English is a foregn language for many (probably) most forumers :).
I think that making sims foreigner-friendly might be profitable but it requires extra effort e.g. by providing "formatted content" via USSD/SMS/MMS/WAP/downloadable Java apps. I mean something like tourist information (hotels, restaurants, museums, timetables, etc.) "joint" with SIM localisation service...

As I've already mentioned before the same happened in Poland. When Idea got painted Orange :) English and German menus disappered from Pop prepaids.
Orange prepaids are now the most foreigner-unfriendly offer in Poland - despite the worldwide brand :P.

Everyone's needs, phone calling habits, skills are different. The family and I speak German and have German friends and relatives whom we often call. Due to CALLER PAYS, they usually DON'T call us. We do give out cell #s to our USA relatives, etc, but apart from ME calling to my wife and son last summer, nobody has ever called us. We do call amongst ourselves, too. The need for voicemail and instructions in English is also not essential for us.

I cannot exactly remember -- it has been 2 years -- but I don't believe either of my D1 cards allowed us to reach the ATT German 800 number. The ATT # was reachable from the hotel room and we were able to pick up local calling cards. That was before I picked up a Riiing card and CBW and a new SIMYO card for my wife last July. I have one of the D1 cards tied to an XtraOne as a local number for the Enjoyprepaid (Nobelcom) LD service and that usually worked well, even for dialing to local German #s in the day instead of 79 e-cents per minute.

Not to be totally contrary, as you, I cannot recommend using the home carrier with its overpriced roaming rates -- except for those who would be travelling once for just a short time. My Riiing card is currently loaned out in Jamaica. My theory is that if you ask around, someone can usually help out with a loaner SIM/phone. A friend was going to Portugal on business and he declined the offer of the Riiing card as he had access to a Portugese SIM.

Stan

LIDL has stores in many countries, including Greece.
I wonder if their MVNOs will hop borders :)

Lidl is the main rival to Aldi in Germany. According to teltarif, Lidl has been contemplating a low-price mobile offering for some time. The hope was for 9.9 e-cents per minute. This is more speculation than cold, hard facts in my opinion. Time will tell.

OT:

It is somewhat amazing to me, a relative outsider, that in the last 7 - 12 months there has been such a change in the German prepaid mobile market. TRUE, Europe has free incoming, but rates in Germany are reported to be or have been relatively stable and relatively high for YEARS.... until Spring this year (2005).

It is also reported that T-MO DE is going to reduce its Click and Go network internal rate to 5 e-cents to match the Aldi-talk offer, down from 15 and reduce the landline rate to 25 cents, down from 30. To bad those are the only rates that may be in flux.

The family will probably be headed to Europe again next summer and I am holding off making any additional SIM purchases or tarif changes until just before the trip. I am questioning the value/usefullness of my 2 D1 cards. Versus the SIMYO card, the only advantage is 9 e-cents on weekends to German land lines. Otherwise, SIMYO or Alditalk beats my XtraOne tarif. It might be possible to switch to the XtraClassic and then apply for NON-STOP. NON-STOP is in trial until Jan 31, so there is not point at this time. It costs 5 Euro to switch rate plans.

Stan

It is pretty amazing that not very long ago, typical daytime same-net tariffs were 39c per minute, and cross-net much higher

Now it needs to happen in France - maybe the huge fines they've all been dished out will kick the networks in the arse, but not yet - Orange are claiming that France is the cheapest country in Europe! [more than double the prepaid rates on Orange UK] - but they have also said that there will soon be 13 brands ...

Stan,

Your observations are very solid. What amazes me is that most of these MVNOs are on E-Plus. This means that future MVNOs could also choose to move to O2 since that is the only other smaller network with less than 20 million customers and one that hasn't even reached capacity yet.

As for LIDL joining the MVNO club, there hasn't been a solid announcement just yet but I would expect them to follow in the next couple weeks. The price shakeup was quite overdue for the entire German market but the fact that outgoing calls were so expensive was due to the fact that the costs of offering free incoming calls had to be recovered elsewhere.

Thanks for the info.

On teltarif there is some dissatisfaction about poor E+ rural coverage. Only experience with SIMYO was in Duesseldorf and coverage was ok there.

Don't know much about 02 -- isn't Tschibo using the O2 network?

I guess I have some gereral questions that you may be able to answer or clarify.

ELSEWHERE?

I guess ELSEWHERE means BY CHARGING HIGHER OUTGOING RATES. Or are there other options for paying the [high?] termination fees? Are German [or is it European] termination fees high? I heard the German rate is 15 cents per call to mobile lines, but what do I know. And if it IS indeed 15 cents, how can AldiTalk make any money? Now granted not all calls will be to mobile lines and network internal calls may have lower or zero termination fees. But Aldi's margins must be very low. And who sets the termination rates anyway? Do the carriers have anything to say about it? And I have read these rates have been falling. Is that true?

And you may have seen Andy's messages on Orange FR's responses and the recent fines levied in the French mobile industry, but rates there are also very high -- 55 cents. He believes that market is also overdue for some true competition. Do you know anything about the French market?

Not that I understand these things, but let's take T-MO USA prepaid. The lowest voice rates they offer are 10 US cents and of course if a T-MO prepaid customer calls another T-MO prepaid customer, the total revenue is 20 cents as the caller also is charged for the inbound call. I think we can assume that T-MO is making money at these rates. Of course if the call is to a land line or mobile carrier other than T-MO the revenue is only 10 cents and they are still or must be making money.

My brother has me on his family plan 1000 anytime (weekday) minutes for $70. That is 7 cents per minute. There are unlimited nights and weekend minutes. Now granted there is a $35 one time charge to activiate post paid service on each T-MO line (I had a coupon and my charge was waived!). There are 2 additional MONTHLY $10 lines charges added into the basic rate of $70 making his basic bill BEFORE TAXES be $90 -- still 9 cents per minute without looking at the FREE unlimited time which will lower the overall rate.

The bottom line is that T-MO is making money in the US charging 10 cents per minute OR LESS. Factoring in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate we are probably talking 8 euro cents per minute. WHY ARE GERMAN [EUROPEAN?] RATES [STILL] SO HIGH?

Stan

I'll do my best to answer your questions, Stan even though I don't have an answer for each one.

1) Isn't Tschibo using the O2 network?

Yes, they sure are and so far I don't that changing since O2 hasn't made any moves to allow new MVNOs onto their network. The fact that E-Plus and O2 are very close together in subscriber numbers (E-Plus: 10.1 Million vs O2: 9 million) indicates that O2 would be the next logical network to offer more MVNOs since they have the network capacity.

O2 Germany has been around since 1995 when it started out as Viag Interkom. It was bought by mmo2 in 2000. Earlier in the fall, O2 was bought by Telefonica of Spain which also owns all former Bell South properties in Latin America and has also established a number of its own networks through that portion of the continent.

2) Or are there other options for paying the [high?] termination fees? Are German [or is it European] termination fees high?

I'm not familiar with how exactly these rates are set or how they compare with the rest of Europe. What exactly do you mean by termination fees?

The termination rates are either set directly by the carriers themselves or even by the German FCC, the RegTP (Regulierungsbeh?rde f?r Telekommunikation und Post - Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications and Postal Services). I imagine that the carriers definitely have some if not complete say.

3) Do you know anything about the French market?

Other than the facts about who operates what network in France, I'm not familiar with how their rate structures are set.

4) WHY ARE GERMAN [EUROPEAN?] RATES [STILL] SO HIGH?

The best guess I can come up with in this case in that it probably is tied (also for question 2) to the high German/European sales tax rate. German and European sales tax rates tend to be 8-15% higher than the highest sales tax you know in the US (CA with 8-8.25% if I recall correctly). Germany's national sales tax rate is 16%, Italy has 19%, Sweden has the highest rate at 25% and the UK is at 17.5%. All German prices already have the sales tax factored into them.

That's all I know, it is not the most solid info but would also partially answer your questions.

Thanks for the answers. Very helpful.


You might try this link for termination fees:

http://www.teltarif.de/arch/2005/kw36/s18555.html

"Das ist L?ddemann zu wenig. "Wir gehen ganz klar davon aus: Ein wirklich reeller Preis f?r die Terminierung liegt irgendwo bei zwei Cent."

[2 cents termination fee per minute is cleary more realistic according to one expert]

There may be other articles. Is seems that these fees may not be related to taxes, but in any event, I did forget the higher tax rates and general VAT in Europe and that may indeed be part of the difference in prices between USA and Germany. If the article is indeed correct about the 15 e-cent terminiation fees (18 US cents), then US T-MO would be losing 8 cents on every prepaid call. That rate must be much lower or non-existant here.

On US PREPAID services sales taxes do apply to refill cards at least in states where there are sales taxes, but these are APART FROM any of the carrier charges or revenues.

On the postpaid accounts, taxes are added in to the bill AFTER the basic and other add-on charges. It is assumed and hoped that the carrier will pass such collected taxes to the appropriate taxing authorities, city, state, federal, etc.

Stan

Newer article from tt:

http://www.teltarif.de/arch/2005/kw47/s19524.html (Nov 23 -- FT Deutschland)

"Weiter hei?t es, dass Kurth die von den zwei gro?en Netzbetreibern T-Mobile und Vodafone zum Jahresende angek?ndigte Senkung der Terminierungsentgelte auf 11 Cent je Minute im europ?ischen Vergleich f?r akzeptabel halte."

Kurth believes the proposed drop of termination rates by 2 large networks, T-MO and Vodafone De, down to 11 cents per minute by year's end would be acceptable.

Snaimon, European mobile rates are higher than US ones because you don't pay when you receive calls. Anyway, your operator gets some money when someone calls you, thanks to the termination fee, which is usually different from carrier to carrier.
I can explain the situation in Italy, I think in Germany or France it's pretty the same.

The Government sets some termination fees for the operators with high penetration in the number of users; i.e. TIM and Vodafone have a lower termination fee than Wind, while 3, the last arrived, has no obbligations in terms of termination fee, and in fact they have the highest one (I think more than 15 ?cent/min).
In Italy we still have very high termination fee, that's also why many operators have "autorecharge" tariffs so the more you receive, the more you get money on your prepaid! That's quite a typical Italian thing, in other countries it doesn't happen often, but if I'm not wrong O2 Germany has something similar on their Loop prepaid.

In Poland, Tak Tak has something like this, named "Bonus Tak Tak" (nowadays not advertised at all :)). It costs 1.22 PLN to activate. "Autorecharge" is done for off-net (not from Era and Heyah) incoming calls (and not in roaming). Each 10 minutes counted with 1-second accuracy gives one Eraunit (on-net/landline minute convertible to 4 on-net SMSes). Collected units are added to the Eraunit subcredit once a month if their umulated value reaches the multiple of 5 Eraunits. Really not a big deal ;)

Thanks Effendi, Przemolog.

I believe there is also a D1 Germany option XtraClever which also adds 1 cent per minute received to the user's prepaid balance -- allowed on certain tarifs. A common device to encourage calling.

One point of the teletarif articles as they pertain to Germany is that there is a huge suspicion that INFLATED termination fees are a lucrative source of revenues for providers --- if I recall it is 6.5 Billion (Milliarden) Euro per year. Some kind of regulation is being discussed and to avoid any intervention, the two largest carriers are voluntarily reducing these fees. The quote above indicates that the proposed 11 cents is still much too high.

I would be curious as to any estimates for termination fees in other European countries. As noted, Andy cited fines in the French market and those rates seem to be quite high. That is another thread here in Europe.

I am not sure if we have US termination fees. I would imagine that in the US this is the equivalent of ROAMING agreements. T-MO has some such agreements and offers POST PAID customers FREE nationwide roaming. T-MO prepaid does NOT allow any roaming. My mother had a prepaid Verizon phone and was charged 99 cents per minute for some calls made in her own home when she was apparently on a roaming service. That happened only once or twice. I had SunCom POST PAID service once and unknowingly made a call roaming on the ATT network and also paid through the nose.

Stan

New article today (Dec 13) on teltarif.de about Lidl's efforts. Seems they WANT TO but do not have a partner just yet willing to go as low as they want.

As for me, I can wait until the dust settles in the German market, IF it ever setttles. No point in changing the D1 tarifs until we figure out what happens after 31.1.2006 and 28.2.2006 when the LIMITED pricing options expire. Worse comes to worse and I just stick with my 9 e-cents weekend/holiday rates to landlines on the XtraOne. One of the cards has a 0 balance and I COULD theoretically replace it with a 2nd SIMYO. I am in no rush to decide.

Some folks are upset about the fine print -- they either switched their D1 tarif class or bought new D1 Xtra Click & Go cards but did not realize the reduced rates MIGHT NOT BE PERMANENT.

No rates are ever permanent when it comes to the established big boys in the German wireless sector. The MVNOs are unlikely to raise their prices so going with them will always be a safe step.

I'm pretty sure if LIDL teams up with a network, it'll probably be O2 since they haven't taken anyone else along for the ride other than Tchibo.

<span style='font-size:13pt;line-height:100%'>Medion, Aldi Mobile Discount Offer Exceeds Expectations</span>

FRANKFURT -(Dow Jones)- German telecommunications company Medion AG said Thursday it sold 300,000 starter packs during its 14-day mobile phone offer with discount retailer Aldi, exceeding the company's expectations.

The starter-pack special offer of prepaid SIM card plus EUR10 of initial call credit was limited to two weeks but the pre-paid cards for the "Aldi Talk" product will continue to be sold, said Peter Staab, Medion's director of investor relations.

Aldi Talk went on sale in early December through the discount retailer's 4,000-plus outlets around Germany.

Calls and text messages from one Aldi Talk customer to another cost EUR0.05 a minute and EUR0.05 per SMS. Calls and texts to fixed lines or to customers of other mobile networks cost EUR0.15 per minute or per SMS.

Dutch Telecommunication operator Royal KPN NV's German mobile unit E-Plus is providing mobile network capacity as well as customer service via its call centers to Medion for Aldi Talk.

The offer marked consumer electronics company Medion's branching out into a new product offering. Traditionally, Medion sold computer hardware through Aldi channels.

Earlier this month, German business publication Manager-Magazine reported that telecom giant Deutsche Telekom AG planned to cut its prepaid mobile calling prices in the T-Mobile network to EUR0.05 cents a minute from EUR0.15, in response to Aldi's entry into the market.

Company Web site: http://www.medion.de

-By Simon Steiner, Dow Jones Newswires; +49 69 29 725 500; simon.steiner@dowjones.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

There has been some negative speculation on teltarif.de. First the 300 K number was NOT starter packages. Sales have been suspended and it is again speculated that the stop was neither planned nor voluntary but the result a court order. To reinforce this, just when retail sales are booming, why would a saavy marketing firm like Aldi stop sales of a HOT item. Some forum writers are even saying this was a blunder on Aldi's part and that sales have been very slow in comparison to the expected # of sales.

Personally, I have no inside knowledge sitting here in the US. But I tend to think that something went awry with planning on this. ALDI Talk was supposed to limit the 5 cent rate to other ALDI Talk phones, but at present the rate applies across the board to all E+ customers. That might be a technical glitch that E+, the provider, will wish to correct before mass distribution continues -- to limit the damage to their revenue stream.

Stan

If there is a problem with E-Plus' network capacity, it would probably be related to the fact that they have most of the German MVNOs on their network. I wonder how they'll fare around New Year's. It's a bit difficult to get an SMS through sometimes.