Mobile voip now dead in Germany
 

In Germany, Kabel Deutschland has launched it´s own "Mobile Phone" sim card that effectively "kills" all previous tariffs for mobile voip if you have your own Asterisk server, or a Fritz Box 7270, 7170 etc.

With such a sim, you could phone your own box (if connected to a Kabel Deutschland landline) from anywhere in Germany and use call diversion, or callthrough for free! Well, for a monthly fee of 19.90 euro on the Paket Classic (6 Mbit/s broadband and 3 landline numbers).

Mobile voip is now dead, in Germany!

Kabel Deutschland mobile tariff

Kabel Deutschland Paket Classic

not so different from my 1&1 SIM that i have for over a year already. I also call my Fritzbox or my SMSDiscount access no for free ... :-)

Chris

Arcor and Alice also give away free SIM cards to their customers, which allow free calls to landlines. Afaik Arcor's and 1&1's flatrates are valid to calls to all landlines (not just to their own landlines).
Kabel Deutschland may be the cheapest offer for a broadband connection with a flatrate SIM, but they require a 24-months contract, whereas Alice don't have a minimum term if you go for a standard tariff.

It's very interesting to see the differences in the different european countries.

Where Germany is really offering massive flatrates, for both cellphone, internet through cellphone you see other countries like belgium that have crazy high rates. Flat rate callphone just 89 euro per month, mobile internet, limited data at crazy prices.

It looks like prices in bigger countries are more competitive than smaller. You would expect smaller countries to be cheaper as their infrastructure would require less investment. Take for example Netherlands, highly populated or germany having large area's of spece that has limited people. Even there they have to place cell phone antenna's.

But yes using these flatrates why us voip. The only reason is simplicity as not everyone can setup callthru or want to take the time to use it. so no voip is not yet dead it's just beginning.

Well here in Czech Republic I use Neon XL package from O2. For about Euro 37 a month I can call all Czech landlines and O2 mobile numbers for free plus I have another 400 minutes to call T-Mobile and Vodafone numbers. So you can get a similar deal also in smaller countries. I think Austria is far cheaper.

Of course the relative costs of building and operating a network increase with the population density, but a far more relevant factor is competition. The more operators compete in a country, the lower are the tariffs (as long as there are no cartels like in Eastern European countries).
Austria isn't a good example, because they have a lot of tourism and so operators have huge earnings from roaming customers. Before EU-regulation of roaming tariffs became effective roaming customers accounted for approx. 30% of Austrian operators' revenue.

I am on a business contract with Vodafone Hungary. I have been using an option for two years now which gives me 1000 minutes of domestic landline calls (hardly ever do I use more than about 200...), plus a Budapest landline number (DID) for my mobile for cca. 12 EUR incl. VAT/month. Incoming calls on the landline number are of course free.

Fritzbox voip credential question
 

dg7feq and inquisitor,

I wasn´t aware of the 1&1 and Alice products. The german press is so saturated with 1&1 and Alice advertisements that I ignore them automatically.

What really surprises me is that KD offer the Homebox 7270 for just 80 euro to new customers. You probably already know how easy it is to convert into a FB 7270: just unclick two or three tick boxes and you have a FB with firmware 54.04.67, which can then be provisioned with up to 10 sip voip accounts. Very nice and so simple!

It´s a pity that callthrough can only be made via one sip account, and not via two or three voip accounts. The FB would be unbeatable if callthrough could also be received and made through a sim card in a UMTS USB stick.

Does anyone know if it is possible to use Fbeditor, or JFritz, etc, to extract voip credentials?

inquisitor,

Yes, the contract small print gives the impression that the minimum contract period is 24 months. However, the minimum contract period is really only 12 months:

- Aktionspreise ab dem 13. Monat gelten die regulären Preise in Höhe von 19,90 euro (Paket Classic), 29,90 euro (Paket Comfort) bzw. 29,90 euro (Flat Comfort) pro Monat; bei Festnetz-Telefonanschluss gilt der Dauertiefpreis von 9,90 euro/Monat. Bei Buchung des Paket Classic oder bei Buchung von Festnetz-Telefonanschluss ist die Option Telefon-Flatrate 3 Monate gratis, ab dem 4. Monat 9,90 euro/Monat. Die Option ist mit einer Frist von 4 Wochen kündbar. Für alle Produkte gilt: Mindestvertragslaufzeit 12 Monate.

Pardon me for being really dumb and probably asking the blindingly obvious, but why does a flatrate from Kabel mean mobile Voip is dead in Germany? I may need a bit of getting up to speed.

Did I exaggerate about the death of mobile voip?
 

For 19.90 euros a month, Kabel Deutschland (KD) offers its customers:

- a 6 MBit/s broadband connection
- 3 landlines
- a sim card which can be used to call other KD sims and KD landlines for free

If a KD customer has an asterisk server, or a Fritz box, it can be set up to provide a voip callthrough service. In other words, the customer can set up his/her own "betamax-like" voip service.

For some people, this setup (together with the associated voip charges) will be cheaper than using mobile voip to make calls. For example, in my case, I pay 5.82 GBP (approximately 6.50 euro) for the Tescointernetphone "Anytime" tariff to make all my landline calls to:

Andorra, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Gibralter, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, USA, Vatican City and Venezuela. Plus calls to mobiles in Canada, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and USA.

Using callthrough on my own Fritz box, I have very little need to use mobile voip.

In practice, yes, your granny is going to find it difficult to setup her voip accounts in a Fritz box. However, if you set it up for her, you can also store the numbers that she needs in the memory of her telephone or mobile phone. For example, to call the ficticious telephone number of say, Gordon Brown, you would only need to store the sequence:

Telephone number of Granny´s Fritz Box + PIN + 0 + 0044207210xxxx

When she wants to speak to Gordon, she would find his name in her mobile phone phonebook and then press the "dial" button just as she normally does.

Okay, I have to admit, for some people it will make more economical sense to pay for mobile voip. So, I guess that I exaggerated a little about the death of mobile voip. Sorry!