Swiss Airline launches Swiss-Mobile

[inquisitor]

Congratulations to your first posting, dear Danidw! Reads like fabricated PR writing though.

There's nothing explicitly cheap nor sensational in Swiss Mobile. The only innovation I can see is that rates for South Africa are quite low, though totally overpriced when you compare to South African prepaid offers like those of Cell C. In South Africa you can get a SIM card including 1.2 GB of data for R89 (CHF 7.60). This amount of data would cost more than CHF 80 with Swiss Mobile.

Btw, the Swiss Mobile website does not disclose what happens once you've consumed your data allowance. Will data stop? Will bandwidth be throttled? Will exceeding traffic be billed based on volume? Can subscribers immediately reorder another pack?

In many other countires including USA, Australia and many European countries Toggle Mobile is much cheaper for both, data and voice and has the unique feature of having up to 9 local numbers from a choice of countries including Switzerland. Especially Swiss residents will find it great to have a Swiss number at which they can be called from Switzerland at local rates, something included in Toggle. In contrast to Toggle and to what the product's name suggests Swiss Mobile does not include a Swiss number but only a British one, which is usually expensive to call from Swiss cellular networks.

And regarding data Toggle gives you 1GB for CHF 30.45 which converts to unit costs fo CHF 0.03/MB:
http://www.togglemobile.co.uk/roaming-data/en

With Swiss Mobile data costs between CHF 0.078/MB (+260%) and CHF 0.09/MB (+300%) depending on which data pack you select. Depending on how of you allowance you actually need/consume, Swiss Mobile is up to three times more expensive that toggle.

Als Swisscom's "Natel Data Travel 1GB" is cheaper in many regions and comes with a native Swiss number:

Thailand
Swisscom: CHF 99
Swiss Mobile: CHF 1,220 (CHF 1.22/MB)

China
Swiwsscom CHF 99
Swissmobile CHF 12,290 (CHF 12.29/MB)


Lastly the fact that this company is hiding its shareholders and recalling memories of how many of us lost their prepaid credit when United Mobile went bankrupt, Swiss Mobile appears even less attractive to me, even though it comes with the logo of a prestigious airline.

Originally Posted by Danidw

[...] I have relatives in Swiss Airlines [...]

Interesting. Family relationships. Is that a hint?