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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.
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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