Germany's Mvno List Grows

[MATHA531]

So what you're saying that by making local sims very attractive to foreigners, the local company is sort of encouraging people not to use their home roaming company but that should hardly be a concern of the local sim provider; again it seems to me they would want to sell as many sim packs as they can, especially to foreigners visiting their country. And although I am not one who thinks that everything in the world should be in English, it is an undeniable fact that English is the world's 2nd language witness the fact that in almost every international airport in the world signs are almost always in local language(s) and in English yada yada yada....that being the case if a company wants to pick up business from foreign visitors, then English should be available as an option for the voice menus.

Several years ago, when I first got my Orange FR sim during a visit to Paris, they had some of the menus available in English; since then that has been withdrawn. I have local sims in Ireland, Germany, France, Holland and the UK. Of course Ireland and the UK make voice menus available in English, not surprisingly so does Holland (although it took a while for me to figure out the Dutch commands to get this done) and the German one I have, vodafone DE also has voice menus in English although it took a couple of e mails to Vodafone in Germany to get it done but I did get it done....I have been told by Effendi that several of the Italian ones to also....but apprently the only one that does so in Germany is the one I have.

My basic use of the cards has always been to receive anyway with very very limited calling out...other than the UK and apprently Italy calling North America on local sims is very expensive and no cheaper than using my own home carrier (T Mobile US) and its overpriced international roaming rates...then about a year ago at around this time, we were kicking around on this forum buytel which turned out to be a disaster and then riiing came along which seems to have solved the problem and made local sims not very necessary. I went on a tour this past summer which included 5 days in Poland and a cuople of days in a bunch of the other countries in that region and I had been all prepared to buy a Polish sim at least and kept trying to figure out which Polish sim had English voice menus available but it became a moot point as soon as I got to Poland and discovered that riiing functioned almost perfectly as far as receiving calls was concerned and then discovered how to use enlinea and callbackworld and for the most part they functioned perfectly also. But as we all know, intermittent problems have been occurring with cbw and enlinea and I was pretty glad I had both the French and German sims towards the end of that trip....

But as with everything, I suppose it is how you intend to use the thing. If I were to settle down in a country for more than a week, I suppose local prepaids would be best as it would probably be necessary to make local calls. I spend much of my time out of the US visitng friends in London and so of course it is best for me to have British sims but they are pretty cheap both for local calls and for calls to North America, at least Orange, Virgin and now O2 with their free bolt on are and so is Mobile World despite its limited validity. But that's an exception.

I will be in Germany for about 3 or 4 days in January and then again this upcoming June and July so I suppose keeping my German Vodafone sim makes sense and since it is vodafone, I guess I can top up while in London with a vodafone voucher and with some of the difficulties riiing has experienced in France, I usually scramble to leave France with an Orange voucher for 10? to at least keep that sim active every 9 months. Other than that, it is riiing for me I suppose.

Unless some other carrier can come up with a better alternative for multi country travel and has voice menus available in English.

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

So what you're saying that by making local sims very attractive to foreigners, the local company is sort of encouraging people not to use their home roaming company but that should hardly be a concern of the local sim provider; again it seems to me they would want to sell as many sim packs as they can, especially to foreigners visiting their country.

All what I say is a hypothesis only. Maybe lack of English menus and instructions is just a result of stupidity of marketing people, and not a conspiracy to force people spend more on roaming . You're right of course that selling as many SIMs as possible improves the company's market image (1 SIM sold = 1 new customer ). But OTOH think about another index: ARPU. Consider that: a foreigner who comes to some country, buys a prepaid SIM for a few dollars, uses the credit to notify about his/her new number, mainly receives calls (something just what say below about your usage) and makes no extra top-ups (or small ones). Such a person is a valid user in statistics at least until SIM expiration: for a few months, in some cases a year or even more. And IMHO it doesn't look good if all what such an occasional user brings to the operator is 10 or 20 dollars per year (maybe a little more if include termination fees for incoming calls from other networks). And this profit may be multiplied if the foreigner chooses roaming instead of using local sim (especially conditional diverts to VM in home country and listening to the VM at international rates may be a financial horror ).

Originally Posted by MATHA531

And although I am not one who thinks that everything in the world should be in English, it is an undeniable fact that English is the world's 2nd language witness the fact that in almost every international airport in the world signs are almost always in local language(s) and in English yada yada yada....that being the case if a company wants to pick up business from foreign visitors, then English should be available as an option for the voice menus.

Yes, I agree with you. After all, we discuss here in English though the site itself is Italian based and English is a foregn language for many (probably) most forumers .
I think that making sims foreigner-friendly might be profitable but it requires extra effort e.g. by providing "formatted content" via USSD/SMS/MMS/WAP/downloadable Java apps. I mean something like tourist information (hotels, restaurants, museums, timetables, etc.) "joint" with SIM localisation service...

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Several years ago, when I first got my Orange FR sim during a visit to Paris, they had some of the menus available in English; since then that has been withdrawn. I

As I've already mentioned before the same happened in Poland. When Idea got painted Orange English and German menus disappered from Pop prepaids.
Orange prepaids are now the most foreigner-unfriendly offer in Poland - despite the worldwide brand :P.

[snaimon]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

My basic use of the cards has always been to receive anyway with very very limited calling out...other than the UK and apprently Italy calling North America on local sims is very expensive and no cheaper than using my own home carrier (T Mobile US) and its overpriced international roaming rates..

Everyone's needs, phone calling habits, skills are different. The family and I speak German and have German friends and relatives whom we often call. Due to CALLER PAYS, they usually DON'T call us. We do give out cell #s to our USA relatives, etc, but apart from ME calling to my wife and son last summer, nobody has ever called us. We do call amongst ourselves, too. The need for voicemail and instructions in English is also not essential for us.

I cannot exactly remember -- it has been 2 years -- but I don't believe either of my D1 cards allowed us to reach the ATT German 800 number. The ATT # was reachable from the hotel room and we were able to pick up local calling cards. That was before I picked up a Riiing card and CBW and a new SIMYO card for my wife last July. I have one of the D1 cards tied to an XtraOne as a local number for the Enjoyprepaid (Nobelcom) LD service and that usually worked well, even for dialing to local German #s in the day instead of 79 e-cents per minute.

Not to be totally contrary, as you, I cannot recommend using the home carrier with its overpriced roaming rates -- except for those who would be travelling once for just a short time. My Riiing card is currently loaned out in Jamaica. My theory is that if you ask around, someone can usually help out with a loaner SIM/phone. A friend was going to Portugal on business and he declined the offer of the Riiing card as he had access to a Portugese SIM.

Stan

[AdmiralAK]

LIDL has stores in many countries, including Greece.
I wonder if their MVNOs will hop borders

[snaimon]

Lidl is the main rival to Aldi in Germany. According to teltarif, Lidl has been contemplating a low-price mobile offering for some time. The hope was for 9.9 e-cents per minute. This is more speculation than cold, hard facts in my opinion. Time will tell.

OT:

It is somewhat amazing to me, a relative outsider, that in the last 7 - 12 months there has been such a change in the German prepaid mobile market. TRUE, Europe has free incoming, but rates in Germany are reported to be or have been relatively stable and relatively high for YEARS.... until Spring this year (2005).

It is also reported that T-MO DE is going to reduce its Click and Go network internal rate to 5 e-cents to match the Aldi-talk offer, down from 15 and reduce the landline rate to 25 cents, down from 30. To bad those are the only rates that may be in flux.

The family will probably be headed to Europe again next summer and I am holding off making any additional SIM purchases or tarif changes until just before the trip. I am questioning the value/usefullness of my 2 D1 cards. Versus the SIMYO card, the only advantage is 9 e-cents on weekends to German land lines. Otherwise, SIMYO or Alditalk beats my XtraOne tarif. It might be possible to switch to the XtraClassic and then apply for NON-STOP. NON-STOP is in trial until Jan 31, so there is not point at this time. It costs 5 Euro to switch rate plans.

Stan

[andy]

Originally Posted by snaimon

It is somewhat amazing to me, a relative outsider, that in the last 7 - 12 months there has been such a change in the German prepaid mobile market.

It is pretty amazing that not very long ago, typical daytime same-net tariffs were 39c per minute, and cross-net much higher

Now it needs to happen in France - maybe the huge fines they've all been dished out will kick the networks in the arse, but not yet - Orange are claiming that France is the cheapest country in Europe! [more than double the prepaid rates on Orange UK] - but they have also said that there will soon be 13 brands ...

[Triband81]

Originally Posted by snaimon

Lidl is the main rival to Aldi in Germany. According to teltarif, Lidl has been contemplating a low-price mobile offering for some time. The hope was for 9.9 e-cents per minute. This is more speculation than cold, hard facts in my opinion. Time will tell.

OT:

It is somewhat amazing to me, a relative outsider, that in the last 7 - 12 months there has been such a change in the German prepaid mobile market. TRUE, Europe has free incoming, but rates in Germany are reported to be or have been relatively stable and relatively high for YEARS.... until Spring this year (2005).

Stan

Stan,

Your observations are very solid. What amazes me is that most of these MVNOs are on E-Plus. This means that future MVNOs could also choose to move to O2 since that is the only other smaller network with less than 20 million customers and one that hasn't even reached capacity yet.

As for LIDL joining the MVNO club, there hasn't been a solid announcement just yet but I would expect them to follow in the next couple weeks. The price shakeup was quite overdue for the entire German market but the fact that outgoing calls were so expensive was due to the fact that the costs of offering free incoming calls had to be recovered elsewhere.

[snaimon]

Originally Posted by Triband81

..... The price shakeup was quite overdue for the entire German market but the fact that outgoing calls were so expensive was due to the fact that the costs of offering free incoming calls had to be recovered elsewhere.

Thanks for the info.

On teltarif there is some dissatisfaction about poor E+ rural coverage. Only experience with SIMYO was in Duesseldorf and coverage was ok there.

Don't know much about 02 -- isn't Tschibo using the O2 network?

I guess I have some gereral questions that you may be able to answer or clarify.

ELSEWHERE?

I guess ELSEWHERE means BY CHARGING HIGHER OUTGOING RATES. Or are there other options for paying the [high?] termination fees? Are German [or is it European] termination fees high? I heard the German rate is 15 cents per call to mobile lines, but what do I know. And if it IS indeed 15 cents, how can AldiTalk make any money? Now granted not all calls will be to mobile lines and network internal calls may have lower or zero termination fees. But Aldi's margins must be very low. And who sets the termination rates anyway? Do the carriers have anything to say about it? And I have read these rates have been falling. Is that true?

And you may have seen Andy's messages on Orange FR's responses and the recent fines levied in the French mobile industry, but rates there are also very high -- 55 cents. He believes that market is also overdue for some true competition. Do you know anything about the French market?

Not that I understand these things, but let's take T-MO USA prepaid. The lowest voice rates they offer are 10 US cents and of course if a T-MO prepaid customer calls another T-MO prepaid customer, the total revenue is 20 cents as the caller also is charged for the inbound call. I think we can assume that T-MO is making money at these rates. Of course if the call is to a land line or mobile carrier other than T-MO the revenue is only 10 cents and they are still or must be making money.

My brother has me on his family plan 1000 anytime (weekday) minutes for $70. That is 7 cents per minute. There are unlimited nights and weekend minutes. Now granted there is a $35 one time charge to activiate post paid service on each T-MO line (I had a coupon and my charge was waived!). There are 2 additional MONTHLY $10 lines charges added into the basic rate of $70 making his basic bill BEFORE TAXES be $90 -- still 9 cents per minute without looking at the FREE unlimited time which will lower the overall rate.

The bottom line is that T-MO is making money in the US charging 10 cents per minute OR LESS. Factoring in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate we are probably talking 8 euro cents per minute. WHY ARE GERMAN [EUROPEAN?] RATES [STILL] SO HIGH?

Stan

[Triband81]

Originally Posted by snaimon

Thanks for the info.

On teltarif there is some dissatisfaction about poor E+ rural coverage. Only experience with SIMYO was in Duesseldorf and coverage was ok there.

Don't know much about 02 -- isn't Tschibo using the O2 network?

I guess I have some gereral questions that you may be able to answer or clarify.

ELSEWHERE?

I guess ELSEWHERE means BY CHARGING HIGHER OUTGOING RATES. Or are there other options for paying the [high?] termination fees? Are German [or is it European] termination fees high? I heard the German rate is 15 cents per call to mobile lines, but what do I know. And if it IS indeed 15 cents, how can AldiTalk make any money? Now granted not all calls will be to mobile lines and network internal calls may have lower or zero termination fees. But Aldi's margins must be very low. And who sets the termination rates anyway? Do the carriers have anything to say about it? And I have read these rates have been falling. Is that true?

And you may have seen Andy's messages on Orange FR's responses and the recent fines levied in the French mobile industry, but rates there are also very high -- 55 cents. He believes that market is also overdue for some true competition. Do you know anything about the French market?

Not that I understand these things, but let's take T-MO USA prepaid. The lowest voice rates they offer are 10 US cents and of course if a T-MO prepaid customer calls another T-MO prepaid customer, the total revenue is 20 cents as the caller also is charged for the inbound call. I think we can assume that T-MO is making money at these rates. Of course if the call is to a land line or mobile carrier other than T-MO the revenue is only 10 cents and they are still or must be making money.

My brother has me on his family plan 1000 anytime (weekday) minutes for $70. That is 7 cents per minute. There are unlimited nights and weekend minutes. Now granted there is a $35 one time charge to activiate post paid service on each T-MO line (I had a coupon and my charge was waived!). There are 2 additional MONTHLY $10 lines charges added into the basic rate of $70 making his basic bill BEFORE TAXES be $90 -- still 9 cents per minute without looking at the FREE unlimited time which will lower the overall rate.

The bottom line is that T-MO is making money in the US charging 10 cents per minute OR LESS. Factoring in the Euro-Dollar exchange rate we are probably talking 8 euro cents per minute. WHY ARE GERMAN [EUROPEAN?] RATES [STILL] SO HIGH?

Stan

I'll do my best to answer your questions, Stan even though I don't have an answer for each one.

1) Isn't Tschibo using the O2 network?

Yes, they sure are and so far I don't that changing since O2 hasn't made any moves to allow new MVNOs onto their network. The fact that E-Plus and O2 are very close together in subscriber numbers (E-Plus: 10.1 Million vs O2: 9 million) indicates that O2 would be the next logical network to offer more MVNOs since they have the network capacity.

O2 Germany has been around since 1995 when it started out as Viag Interkom. It was bought by mmo2 in 2000. Earlier in the fall, O2 was bought by Telefonica of Spain which also owns all former Bell South properties in Latin America and has also established a number of its own networks through that portion of the continent.

2) Or are there other options for paying the [high?] termination fees? Are German [or is it European] termination fees high?

I'm not familiar with how exactly these rates are set or how they compare with the rest of Europe. What exactly do you mean by termination fees?

The termination rates are either set directly by the carriers themselves or even by the German FCC, the RegTP (Regulierungsbeh?rde f?r Telekommunikation und Post - Regulatory Agency for Telecommunications and Postal Services). I imagine that the carriers definitely have some if not complete say.

3) Do you know anything about the French market?

Other than the facts about who operates what network in France, I'm not familiar with how their rate structures are set.

4) WHY ARE GERMAN [EUROPEAN?] RATES [STILL] SO HIGH?

The best guess I can come up with in this case in that it probably is tied (also for question 2) to the high German/European sales tax rate. German and European sales tax rates tend to be 8-15% higher than the highest sales tax you know in the US (CA with 8-8.25% if I recall correctly). Germany's national sales tax rate is 16%, Italy has 19%, Sweden has the highest rate at 25% and the UK is at 17.5%. All German prices already have the sales tax factored into them.

That's all I know, it is not the most solid info but would also partially answer your questions.

[snaimon]

Thanks for the answers. Very helpful.


You might try this link for termination fees:

http://www.teltarif.de/arch/2005/kw36/s18555.html

"Das ist L?ddemann zu wenig. "Wir gehen ganz klar davon aus: Ein wirklich reeller Preis f?r die Terminierung liegt irgendwo bei zwei Cent."

[2 cents termination fee per minute is cleary more realistic according to one expert]

There may be other articles. Is seems that these fees may not be related to taxes, but in any event, I did forget the higher tax rates and general VAT in Europe and that may indeed be part of the difference in prices between USA and Germany. If the article is indeed correct about the 15 e-cent terminiation fees (18 US cents), then US T-MO would be losing 8 cents on every prepaid call. That rate must be much lower or non-existant here.

On US PREPAID services sales taxes do apply to refill cards at least in states where there are sales taxes, but these are APART FROM any of the carrier charges or revenues.

On the postpaid accounts, taxes are added in to the bill AFTER the basic and other add-on charges. It is assumed and hoped that the carrier will pass such collected taxes to the appropriate taxing authorities, city, state, federal, etc.

Stan