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f300 (Offline)
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Default 02-08-2009, 16:58

Quote:
Originally Posted by easyroam- View Post
Roaming sim cards are especially designed and programmed with larger chipsets. A realistic price is more $15/$20 depending on quantity and suppler.
I'm not disputing the amount, probably you don't have other choices. However just looking around I've noticed something that might put things into perspective: you can buy nowadays a Nokia prepaid including a Vodafone (I think) prepaid card for 9.97 EUR. And that includes shipping (amazon.de) if you buy more than 20EUR merchandise (which isn't hard). So a current, new (yes, basic and simlocked) phone with everything (battery, charger, SIM) is much cheaper (retail!!!) than a SIM card (wholesale).

So on one side we have EU-roaming with 0.19EUR incoming/0.43 EUR outgoing EU-wide (including to EU mobiles) even for the lousiest prepaid in EU. On the other side you have huge costs like 67$ shipping or 15-20$ SIM card (before anybody in the chain even starts thinking about a profit and before the customer actually using any service). In the end it's really tough to grow (or even keep) such a business and I respect anybody that even tries.
   
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