Lidl

[inquisitor]

I'm not aware of any new law. The obligation to register customers' identity has been in force for years. Either the regulatory authority has ordered Fonic to somehow verify the correctness of registration details by sending out this letter since the former registration process has been found being insufficient or Fonic indeed try to ban shorttime visitors (who usually lack a proper address in Germany) from becoming customers. Operators usually pay license fees for their billing and CRM systems based on the number of customers, so a visitor using his SIM only once for a week or two may become unprofitable if they need to pay license fees for months or years.

[kuba.g]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Either the regulatory authority has ordered Fonic to somehow verify the correctness of registration details by sending out this letter since the former registration process has been found being insufficient

But this would hold for pretty much all operators in Germany, don't you think?

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Operators usually pay license fees for their billing and CRM systems based on the number of customers, so a visitor using his SIM only once for a week or two may become unprofitable if they need to pay license fees for months or years.

That's also quite interesting, as Germany is the only country I know of in Europe, where operators give you unlimited account validity! (Suggesting that they don't mind inactive customers). It all seems rather contradicting...

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by kuba.g

But this would hold for pretty much all operators in Germany, don't you think?

Indeed. However few have such lax registration procedures like Fonic. Some operators require an ID upon purchase (e.g. T-Mobile, Vodafone) while others perform some form of verification by selling their SIM cards only online and so customers are forced to provide credit card or bank account information besides a valid address in order to get their SIM cards.

That's also quite interesting, as Germany is the only country I know of in Europe, where operators give you unlimited account validity! (Suggesting that they don't mind inactive customers). It all seems rather contradicting...

Yes, but they all reserve the right to cancel the underlying contract at some point and e.g. T-Mobile and Vodafone have been doing so. One of my Vodafone Callya SIMs was recently disabled after three months of inactivity. However they immediately reactivated it upon my request.
I guess it's a question of operators' license agreements/costs and of the ratio of unused SIM cards. At some point they will all start acting if necessary. In any case I'm a bit surprised by Fonic taking such measures since their tariffs are pretty good so I expect them to have a rather high ARPU for a prepaid provider.