Israel GPRS rates

[sperial]

A new player recently joined the Israeli Prepaid scene: Home Cellular, an MVNO marketed by the Home Center hardware stores.
A prepaid SIM card (called Home Cellular Card) costs NIS 29 (about EUR 6.00). The basic rate is NIS 0.39/min, and the cedit is valid for 12 months. Text messages are charged NIS 0.39 (EUR 0.08 ) and data surfing NIS 0.50 (EUR 0.10)/MB.
Customer service can be reached by dialling *111, and the language can be selected ( Hebrew, English, Arabic or Russian).
The MVNO uses Cellcom's GSM 1800 and HSPA 2100 networks, and it's number format is (0)55-22xxxxx
This leaves one MVNO, YouPhone without a prepaid plan. Such a plan is posted as "coming soon" on their web site (called YouTalk).

The really good news for visitors is that tho two new mobile carriers - Golan Telecom and Hot Mobile, added very cheap international calling rates from every Israely phone. Golan is the cheapest to most countries at NIS 0.08 (EUR 0.016)/min to landlines in most european countrieas and to all numbers in Continental USA and Canada, and calls to most West European mobile numbers are NIS 0.49 (EUR 0.20)/min. Access is by dialling the international access code 016 followed by the country code. The corresponding rates fot Hot are NIS 0.15 (EUR 0.03) and NIS 0.50 (EUR 0.10)/min, and the access code is 017. Note that these rate include air time, so calls to the USA, Canada and most European landlines are actually cheaper than calls inside Israel.