[Motel75]

Actually, my complaint about the prepaids is more basic than that. The amount of account activity you get per topup is not very generous, and only PTC allow account validity to accumulate (buy 50 Zl, it adds 3 months; buy another 50 and it goes up to 6 months), but only to a maximum of 1 year. Compare that to, say, 2/3 of Czech operators, where it lasts 1 year or 15 months, typical for most prepaid countries. I realize that the per-minute price, and some of the features, in Poland are very good (I've been a customer of all of them), but there has only been slight movement on this; PTC only introduced cumulative validity about a year ago. (And before Heyah came along, all the prepaid deals were poor value: 1.50 a minute, 60-second billing, and 3 months expiration for 50 Zl.

The problem with the rapid expiration and non-cumulative credit is it discourages new users, who might not be willing to spend 200 Zl per year (at least not at first); in Germany the minimum spend per year is only 20 ?, in Italy as little as 3?, and in the UK and elsewhere basically nothing. Poland has a relatively low penetration rate (even so, nearly 80 percent), but elsewhere the slack has been taken up by prepaid. Polish operators seed the market with super-cheap starter packs, but I'd be surprised if more than a small fraction turn into long-term customers, simply because of the overall cost and frequency of recharges necessary; I know a couple of older people who found it to be "too much trouble" before they had a chance to discover just how useful a mobile phone could be.

I'm not sure the 1-year "receive calls" period is all that useful. When my Orange card (the worst offender) ran out, I put it away for good; the incessant "recharge within three months or lose all your credit forever" was too annoying; what if I was abroad? It's better than total account cancellation, but it's not very friendly, and this kind of pricing policy does little to retain users. Many people in Poland I know are on their fifth or sixth mobile number; there's a very high churn rate, not surprising when each account expires so quickly and long-term customership isn't rewarded. Considering how much operators elsewhere pay to retain customers, this is very surprising.

Sami Swoi has a 7-month account activity for 80 Zl recharge, but again, it isn't cumulative (and their website has no useful features, and their software doesn't work properly, and they let you choose either GPRS or roaming but not both).

FWIW, my Heyah card is maxed out to 1 year (they really do mean 365 days; charge more, and you might even lose a couple of days!).

BTW, you're right, copper not steel. I was writing from memory.