Text 31819, 86 rader
Skriven 2009-04-26 12:40:18 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 31799 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: Cellphone prices (was: Imageshack)
==========================================
26 Apr 09 11:22, Robert Bashe wrote to Roy Witt:

 RB> Roy Witt wrote to Ward Dossche on Saturday April 25 2009 at 16:28:

 WD>>> Cellphone use in Belgium is the most expensive in the world. I
 WD>>> decline to use it when I don't have to.

 RW>> Over 20 cents each?

 RB> Twenty cents per what?

Message! That's what he was discussing before you jumped to conclusions
and wrote;

 RB>  Minute? And cents Euro or cents Dollar?

 RB> After answering that, you have to dig deeper and ask "with a contract
 RB> or prepaid"?

Both are the same price.

 RB> And follow up, if prepaid, with "how old", since the rates for
 RB> prepaid SIMs in cellphones have been dropping precipitously
 RB> in the last few years, at least in Germany - BUT old SIMs still run
 RB> at the original rate, i.e. (much) higher than new ones.

LOL! You guys sure have a screwed up system. Messaging here can go several
ways. You can do a few messages per month for 20 cents each or you can
sign up for unlimited text messaging for $4.99/month. SIMs are nice and I
really like their features, but they're going the way of the Dodo bird as
more and more people buy phones with Virtual-SIMs built into them.

 RB> The current rate for a new prepaid SIM would be around EUR 0.09 per
 RB> (begun) minute - i.e. 2 x EUR 0.09 for 61-120 seconds - in Germany.
 RB> If you use an old prepaid SIM (3-4 years), you pay as much as EUR
 RB> 0.39 per minute (generally, howevever, with a 10 sec rate, i.e. every
 RB> 10 seconds you pay 1/10 of the rate per minute). Really not
 RB> worthwhile "topping off" the balance on such old SIMs when the
 RB> balance gets down close to zero.

 RB> The only reason to keep an old SIM is the problem you have (in
 RB> Germany) keeping your cellphone number. Sometimes this isn't possible
 RB> at all when you switch prepaid providers. And if it is possible, the
 RB> "standard charge" for the service is EUR 26 in Germany (Michiel notes
 RB> this is free in NL, something I wish were true here as well). This
 RB> naturally causes some cellphone users to grind their teeth and
 RB> continue paying higher rates than necessary just to keep their
 RB> present cellphone number.

I had a SIM that was issued to me by AT&T when I switched from Verizon in
2004. I carried the same phone number from carrier to carrier and it
didn't cost a cent. I say HAD because I lost my phone a month or so ago
and had to replace both. AT&T issued me a new SIM for my backup phone and
thus I kept my original number. Fortunately, I keep my Address Book and
some special ringtones on this computer and was able to reload it on the
new SIM.

 RB> And of course, to compare rates, you have to remember that _in_coming
 RB> calls are NOT charged to the cellphone owner in Europe, whereas they
 RB> _are_ in the USA - although there may be exceptions to this too.

Yeup...but that no longer applied after 'free long distance' became the
norm and rates became packages. i.e. they stopped issuing call statements
on your bill because they got tired of listing the calls with 0 charges.
You now have to request the call statements if you want to see who called
who.

 RB> The whole thing gets very complex when you also try to add the
 RB> non-GSM phones in the States and Canada plus the GSM phones whose
 RB> owners have a contract with the provider (rates different than
 RB> prepaid, but extra conditions) - very hard to make meaningful
 RB> comparisons.

I'm glad I don't have to live with such a complex system. I have one of
AT&T's prepaid phones that I take along on trips in case of failures. That
happened to me while visiting up north and had to buy it to replace my
regular phone until I got home. Instead of buying prepaid minutes though,
I just replaced that phones SIM with mine.

                R\%/itt




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