Some news from Italy...

[Effendi]

In these last weeks there has been a big debate about the "costi di ricarica" which means the recharge fees, in English, something which happened almost only in my country. Till last week it was "normal", for us, to pay 25€ and get 20€ of recharge only. Just Wind and 3 had some top-ups (high value) without these recharge fees.

Since the 6th of March all Italian operators don't have the recharge fees anymore! So if you refill with 10€ you get 10€, 25€/25€ and so on. There are no bonuses either.

That should be a very good piece of news if not for what happened next... Vodafone and Wind decided to create new prepaid plans which are all more expensive than before. Vodafone highered the setup fees at skyrocketing levels (19 cent!) while Wind highered the per minute rate and SMS cost of Senza Scatto and Wind10 (become Wind12). TIM and 3 are by now the 2 most convenient operators in Italy, which is rather strange, expecially for TIM, the former monopolist...

Let's see what will happen in the next future... in the meanwhile some members of the Government and communication authorities said that they are going to forbid also the use of the set-up fee! So big news ahead, and probably other tariff increments too...