Number Porting in Germany

[petkow]

Thanks so much guys. I note that the free porting is only available until 15 October with Salomo. Do you think he will still have to pay to leave T-Mobile Prepaid?

I can't believe how long he has been paying 39c for all calls on T-Mobile. It is just robbery! He uses it sometimes when he is in Switzerland too. I dread to think! This Solomo looks like a perfect product... even for roaming. 10-15c/min incoming in most parts of Europe, and integrated with Callback. The 10% discount with €10 topup and 20% with €20 is also a great feature. The only tiny drawback I can see is that it is on E-Plus and the coverage is not perfect.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by petkow

Thanks so much guys. I note that the free porting is only available until 15 October with Salomo. Do you think he will still have to pay to leave T-Mobile Prepaid?

Yes, the fee from T-Mobile is not changed in this case. Only no "inbound" cost at Solomo.
I have such a card here at work for testing and after some small issues after the start of this still new provider it works flawlessly now.

Chris

[inquisitor]

Actually the E-Plus network doesn't provide the best coverage for Germany, but it's still good and since E-Plus and O2 (both used only the GSM1800 band before) got EGSM900 frequencies last year, they're about to close the gaps quickly with futher reaching EGSM900 basestations. However E-Plus' 3G network is cappy - it has bad coverage, is overloaded and doesn't support HSPA at all.

Regarding the porting process you should know the following:

1.) If you're on a postpaid plan you need to cancel the contract before initiating the porting or if you're a prepaid customer you need to send a so-called "Verzichtserklärung" (disclaimer) to your provider, so they'll release your number for porting. You can download a corresponding form for T-Mobile from http://klarmobil.de/nl/verzicht/tmobile.pdf

2.) The old provider will always charge about € 25 for the export of your existing number. If you're a prepaid customer you must make sure you have at least € 25 of credit left. Otherwise the old provider will refuse the porting.

3.) You shouldn't order your new SIM card 2-3 days before you have send in the "Verzichtserklärung".

[babble]

The genion s card is a really good idea if you make land line calls from your "home zone". After setting-up the first free home zone, each change of home zone costs about 5 euros. You can choose any german address to be your home zone address, and set it up yourself on the o2online.de website. The home zone has a radius of up to approximately 2 km within a city, and it can be a bit wider in the countryside. (O2 only guarantee a maximum radius of 500m, but in practice the actual radius is bigger.) On many new phones, a "little red house" icon appears on your phone display while you remain inside your home zone.

This site gives an accurate idea of the coverage of a typical home zone:

http://gsm.yz.to/karte.php?x=379732&...ehz=43264&kr=1

You can click on the map to physically optimise your address in order to maximise your home zone coverage. You can click on "zoom" and then click on the map to move to other parts of Germany. You might need to press the "Zeichen" button to update the map. Use: move the location of the central "X" marker to your preferred home zone location and keep your desired base stations (the small dark blue squares) within the brown 2km radius circle. Whenever you update your home zone, you will find that your real coverage has a radius of about 1.9 km. So don´t be disappointed if you lose a base station just inside the edge of the 2km radius limit.

If you are into voip, you can cheaply call or forward voip calls onto the land line number of a genion s card.

Within the home zone, you can make cheap international land line calls using a service like budgetmobil.de. Calls to the UK work out at about 5 cents per minute if you use the genion card to dial the budgetmobile access number. (Genion 3c/min plus budgetmobile 1.78c/min into the UK.) Call quality and reliability are first class. No problems in the last year. Normal direct genion calls to UK land line: 11.3 c/min, to UK mobiles: 36.9c/min. Budgetmobile calls to UK mobiles using genion to dial into Budgetmobile: Genion 3c/min plus budgetmobile 11.2c/min = 15c/min. Budgetmobile announces the charge per minute when you set up the call.

You may also wish to consider one of the german prepaid cards that offer unlimited german land line calls for about 13-15 euros per month. Tchibo, Aldi, etc. Personally, I prefer Aldi because of their "anywhere within Germany" 24c/MB data rate. Genion cards also have the option of cheap data rates for connections made within the home zone. For example, "Internet@home-Pack-M" gives 1GB/month for 10 Euros. You might find better rates if you ask the gurus on this site.

The last time I checked, the genion s card had a 25 euro connection charge but no monthly rental charge. If you buy the "genion s card with a mobile", the "monthly rental" is 10 euros per month.

It is probably better to buy a "genion s card" in an O2 shop. That way you get free telephone support when you dial direct with the "genion s card". Otherwise, if you buy the card online (then appropriately called: "genion s card online"), telephone support costs 62 cents/Min from a Deutsche Telekom land line, and 62 cents/Min from the "genion s card online".

[babble]

Just in case I have confused anyone, let me say that telephone support calls are free with a "genion s card", but they cost 62 cents/Min with a "genion s card online".