Ben's back in the Netherlands

[Effendi]

Usually old small operators disappear... sometimes they come back!

http://www.cellular-news.com/story/2...rce=newsletter

[fedeprovenza]

It would be interesting to know the tariffs

[Ties Brants]

According to the website there are 3 options:

ben soms: 100 minutes/ text messages for 5,95
ben regelmatig: 250 minutes/ text messages for 9,95
ben vaak: 500 minutes/ text messages for 22,95
you will pay 0,25 when you have finished you included minutes
and then you can get 1000 messages for 9,95 and mobile internet (128 Kpbs downstream en 32
Kbps upstream) for 9,95 as well, but it is limited to 250 mb a month.
The interesting thing is that you don’t have a year contract but you can cancel on a monthly basis, which can be interesting for exchange students and other visitors who will be staying longer then a couple of months, but not for a whole year. As long as you have a Dutch bank account and an EU passport you should be able to get this contract, as far as I know.

Ties

[Effendi]

So it seems they don't have any prepaid offer by now.

[Ties Brants]

No, they don't. But it is really just an other brand name of T-mobile. So if you want prepaid you just have to get a T-mobile prepaid card.

Ties

[AndreA]

Well, interesting. In Italy we have another strong brand (BLU) not in use, maybe Wind can copy the T-Mob NL policy

[Effendi]

In the Netherlands it's the second time they get back an old brand. First it was Telfort, which was bought by O2 becoming O2 NL, then going back to Telfort brand and finally being bought by KPN. I read that also T-Mobile has bought Orange NL, so by now there are still 4 (Telfort's has been merged with KPN AFAIK) networks but officially only 3 owners?

[Ties Brants]

Yes, the Telfort network does no longer exist. All telfort sim cards now "roam" on the KPN network. I red somewhere that T-mobile will stop using the Orange name somewhere mid 2008.

So one moment there are 5 networks, and before you know it there are only 3.
It was pretty predictable that one of them would disapear. 5 was a little to much for a small country, even German only has 4. But it was really nice, because at least you had choice.

And, yes, the rebranding of telfort into o2 en back again was really a waste of money.....

[Effendi]

Originally Posted by Ties Brants

5 was a little to much for a small country, even German only has 4. But it was really nice, because at least you had choice.

If Liechtenstein still has 4, I think also the Netherlands could have 5!

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by Ties Brants

It was pretty predictable that one of them would disapear. 5 was a little to much for a small country, even German only has 4.

It's especially the smaller and densly populated countries like NL, where it makes sense to run a 4th, 5th or even 6th network, because it's relatively cheap to roll-out a network, which further has a higher mean load and so amotizes faster.
In a territorial state like Germany you have to build up a lot of infrastructure to cover rural areas, where then only few users will generate few revenue. That's so expensive, that even after ten years of service O2 Germany still has a lot of gaps in their coverage map (see below), which are currently (nearly) closed by a national roaming agreement with T-Mobile (which is disabled in regions with sufficient O2 coverage).
Since O2 Germany and E-Plus, who both had only GSM1800-frequencies before, were granted EGSM900 frequencies in 2006, O2 aims to achieve nationwide coverage of their own network by end of 2009.