2007: News on German prepaid cards, VAT increase, court order on credit validity
 

First of all: effective January 1st the German VAT has been increased from 16% to 19%. The operators have the right to increase the call charges according to the VAT increase, therefore i.e. from 0,39€/min to 0,40€/min. Most operators however chose not pass this increase on to their customers, I'll be noting it in the cases where a currently offered tariff is affected by such an increase


T-Mobile

Xtra Smart, Classic and Friends: nothing new
Xtra Click: prolonged once again, this time until March 31st, it is not listed on the normal T-Mobile page anymore and can only be ordered through the webpage www.t-mobile.de/xtraclick
Xtra und Los: no news here
Xtra Plus: is no longer being offered

Xtra Nonstop: not available at the moment


D2

Callya Compact: no news
Callya Comfort: instead of the current bonus ("Wochenende" unlimited free calls on weekends within the D2 network) you may also chose two other options. One of them is "SMS", when recharging you get 50 SMS within the D2 network for one month. The last one is "Zuhause" though it's a bit more complicated, I suggest we leave that one out.

Callya OpenEnd: available until March 31st, dial 12060 to activate and 12061 to deactivate it, other conditions unchanged
BestFriend: may be removed from page since Callya Special is no longer being offered


E-Plus

E-Plus has started using a new prefix: 0157


O2

Loop Classic: prices have been increased due to new VAT, they are now 0,29/0,19 on-net and mailbox, 0,81/0,40 to landline and other networks. (0,07 to landline on WE stays the same)
Loop Alltime: nothing new here
Loop S/M/L: this is a new plan, standard charges are 0,25€/min and 0,15€/SMS. When recharging 20€ you get 5€ of bonus, when recharging 30€ you get a 20€ bonus. Bonus credit is valid for 6 months after the last recharge that gave you a bonus and may be used on standard calls and SMS within Germany.

For all tariffs: When buying a new Loop card you usually get 10 free SMS per month for the first year (national and international)
Loop Weekend: may be booked with all loop tariffs, for 5€ you get unlimited calls on saturdays and sundays within the O2 network and to landline for one month.
10€ refills are no longer available and have been replaced by 15€ refills.


So much about the MNOs, I'll be writing about the providers in a new post.

2007: News on German prepaid cards, VAT increase, court order on credit validity
 

Aldi Talk, Penny Mobil, Smobil, Tchibo: no news

Simyo and Blau: Christmas offer is still in place
And a new function: to check whether a number belongs to the same provider, you can dial 2145 from Simyo cards and 2159 from Blau cards. (free of charge of course)

Rewecom is no longer being offered. Instead it will be replaced by a new tariff called "Ja!Mobil" being sold at Rewe etc. stores, the charges and functions of this new tariff are excactly the same as Penny Mobil's, therefore one doesn't even need a new page for it. Current Rewecom customers are not effected by this and may continue to use their current card and plan.

There is also another internet-based prepaid card on the T-Mobile network called Simply. It costs 15,50€ including 10€ of credit, calls from Simply to Simply cost 0,04€/min, standard calls are at 0,14€/min debited by the minute though. National/international SMS are at 0,11€ and 0,30€. Calls to Europe and North America cost 1,54€, to the rest of the world it's 2,04€/min. Other conditions are listed here.

Apart from the current five offers for international calls there are three more offers: Ortel has a plan on the E-Plus network very similar Blauworld's, while The Phone House is offering Just Talk International on both the E-Plus and D2 network (with conditions similar to Blauworld's and Mobi's respectively). I'll be gathering some more information in the near future, hopefully.

2007: News on German prepaid cards, VAT increase, court order on credit validity
 

Court order on credit validity

Until recently you had regularly recharge your prepaid cards, otherwise you'd not only lose your SIM card and number, but also all of your credit.
Last year court decided that some clauses leading to this loss of credit are null and void, so far this directly affects D2 and O2, though to a different extent.

The two operators have reacted as following (this is summary, the details are even more complicated that this):
- D2 has decided to cancel expiration dates on it's Callya cards. However so far Callya cards from providers (recognizable by a second logo on the SIM card like Debitel, Mobilcom, Talkline etc.) are not effected by this yet and still may expire.
- O2 has instead decided to continue letting the cards expire, however when they do you may send in your SIM card and O2 will transfer the remaining credit to your bank account.

Apart from that some providers have reacted even without a similar court order:
- Simyo cards don't expire anymore. No expiration date will be shown either.
- Blau is using a trick by recharging SIMs close to expiration with 0,01€, thereby enlengthening the validity by six month or so

But don't forget reading the fine print. They reserve to deactivate Callyas that are not used. So it's more like one of these British "do something at least every six months" offers.

Well... theoreticly yes. But we'll have to wait and see how D2 is going to handle this in practice.

Just today I received news that starting next tuesday the old Loop tariffs (Classic and Alltime) will no longer be offered to new customers, leaving only Loop S/M/L.
(Existing customer using Classic, Alltime or Mobile may keep their tariff, however on Classic and Mobile they are faced with a slight increase of charges due to new VAT, as mentioned above.)

A note to non-Germans: By "D2" Gryphone means Vodafone.

Concerning "Mobile Number Portability" et sequentes
 

One correction, about Loop it should say:

"Loop: Send an SMS containing "Netz" to 4636 followed by a blank and the number."

The last paragraph should be shortened from currently
"The virtual operators, instead, only offer an on-tariff discount (i.e. Tchibo to Tchibo) and there's usually no way to check numbers for that. The only exception from that is Aldi Talk which currently unofficially charges the same for the entire E-Plus network. Therefore one should include the same note as with Free&Easy."
to
"The virtual operators, instead, only offer an on-tariff discount (i.e. Tchibo to Tchibo)."
since Aldi is now charging normal rates to non-Aldi numbers on the E-Plus network.

For Simyo and Blau I've listed the number above, to check whether a card belongs to Aldi Talk you can dial 1142 (free of charge).


The following part about "Cheaper international calls" is quite outdated, AFAIK the numbers listed there are no longer active, some of the rates have changed as well, if someone is interested I'll see whether I can write a revised version of it.


About the networks: small glitch, it should say "strongly" instead of "stronly", and the following cards can now use the UMTS network: Xtra, Callya (now also without special option), Aldi Talk, Smobil, Penny Mobil and Ja!Mobil (even though you can't even use data calls with the last two).

The 0180-5151051 is still working.
You can reach most destinations there. (http://www.easytelecom.de/rates.php - the destinations with 0180-1 0180-3 and 0700 dial-in number are also reachable on the 0180-5 -- and the rate from the prepaid-cards is always the same anyway).

So we'd just need to check the new rates for the 0180-numbers.

Chris

I didn't want to open a new thread for this, since so far it is just mere speculation. According to an article from Teltarif (in German) there will be a new auction for the remaining UMTS (W-CDMA) frequencies next year.
Possibly Germany could finally get it's fifth mobile network, the article suggest 3 (Hutchison) and AT&T.

Interesting that someone at 3 UK (in India) thought that 3 already had a German network, and that there are a few places where 3 says it has 9 networks worldwide