Simyo DE cuts international calling rates
 

It's about time - they've dropped the call rates from the previous EUR 1.84/min to 12 cents (landline to Morth America and Europe) and 29 cents (mobile Europe). It's not as cheap as Solomo or Fonic, but hopefully it's the start of a trend.

simyo - Aktionsseite > Preissenkung > Telefonieren ins Ausland

FWIW, the 1.84-1.99/min price charged by the major operators has remained unchanged since the introduction of prepaid in 1996 (3.99 DM = 1.84 EUR - most operators in fact raised the price after the euro was introduced, to 1.99) even though times have changed since then - at the time Deutsche Telekom had an expensive landline monopoly, and international calls were based on 23 pfennig (12 cents) units depending on the distance of the target country. A unit to Argentina or Australia lasted 5.33 seconds. This was abolished in 1998, and prices dropped dramatically, but not for mobile users, especially not prepaid users.

The same did Blau, of course... but with a setup fee which Simyo doesn't have.

I think it's interesting that because of roaming charges cap it would cost you at most (around) 50 eurocents to call from roaming (within EU) to any phone (within EU). So basically roaming was 3 times cheaper than calling from your own network. Quite funny.

Indeed. The international call prices are outrageous. But Simyo is the first "fake" MVNO to cut them (it's a 100% E-Plus subsidiary) so there's some chance this might herald cuts among the major operators. But I'm not holding my breath.

AldiTalk cut their international rates back on July 1st:

Europe/North America landlines €0.12/minute
Europe/North America mobiles €0.29/minute
Rest of the world €0.99/minute

The following countries are included in the Europe/North America group: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Gibraltar, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Islands, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican

Aha, apparently I wasn't paying attention then. That must be why Simyo and Blau charge 12 cents - to match Aldi's prices (and I suppose Aldi picked 12 cents to make it the same as their national per-minute rate). Too bad they couldn't have gone with 9 or less, like Fonic or Solomo.