Israel GPRS rates

[wolfbln]

Originally Posted by sperial

The wiki needs an update. The Hot prepaid plan, as well as the improved Pelephone plan are new, marketed for less than a week. Other companies also have better offers than the basic rates those shown this site's "national operators" page.

Faking an Israeli ID is not like faking an Italian tax ID, it is unique, and an ID card (or passport, or Israeli driver licence) have to be presented to the sales representative when signing a contract. Internet registration of a postpaid line is possible only with a credit card, and the credit and ID details are checked against a central data base.

On the other hand, SIM cards can be bought anonymously and paid cash.

All I want to stress is that with HOT Mobile like on GOLAN, you'll be on a recurring contract (which is prepaid and can be terminated at any time), not a regular prepaid or PAYG SIM as it is known in the rest of the world. Both of them simply don't sell genuine prepaid SIM cards like in most other European nations.

GOLAN is the only of the new providers who lets foreigners (= people without an Israeli ID) officially to make a contract. HOT Mobile doesn't do this according to user reports. But some users were successful online when they gave instead of the Israeli ID another "fictional" number.

So what are you trying to say?
- HOT is a good offer. that's right. But only to Israel citizens - so of very limited use for 99% in the forum.
- You can't fake an Israeli ID, well some did it obviously - and you don't need to present it to anybody because HOT is an online operator after all.
- And the "anonymously bought SIM cards paid in cash" obviously don't refer to the contracts of HOT. HOT links to a credit card.
= I only wanted to stress that your HOT offer has some strings attached if you not happen to live in Israel and have an Israeli ID/credit card.

What Pelephone is concerned, they only have their website in Hebrew (as the only of the big MNOs) which is spoken by 0.1% of the world population (9 millions out of 9 billions). Obviously, they are not so interested in the rest 99.9%. So may be you can update the WIKI on their part???

The problem with Israel and the phone market there is similar to France: In both countries there are contracts which can be terminated anytime by free will. This makes real prepaid quite expensive. So many "new offers" like Walla Mobile (Pelephone) or 012 Smile (Orange/Partner) pose two problems to visitors:
- they are sold online only and sent to an Israeli address
- they need to be linked to an Israeli ID and credit card, which closes the door for all Non-Israelis.
-> that's why they are not on the WIKI. "Real" prepaid cards (not recurring contracts) are still pretty expensive in Israel.