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Originally Posted by MATHA531
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.
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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
).
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Originally Posted by MATHA531
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.
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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
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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...
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Originally Posted by MATHA531
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
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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.