Roaming with cheap brands is expensive – business

They call themselves Wingo, Yallo and "The Subscription": The Swiss mobile service providers Swisscom Sunrise and Salt propose secondary brands outside their main brands to address different target groups. An attractive clientele is made up of younger people looking for low-cost offers with little frills.

This group of customers is ready to change and ensures growth in a saturated Swiss market for mobile communications. With cheap brands, sellers are competing for these urbanized users.

But cheap does not always mean cheap, as a recent comparison of Moneyland.ch shows Roaming tariffs for secondary brands of local mobile operators. To this end, the comparison service has calculated costs for one gigabyte of data consumption and 60 calls each for an average of two minutes in five popular vacation destinations. The speech comes from Spain, the United States, Thailand, Vietnam and South Africa. The assumption is that the user has spent two weeks in the vacation country.

Spotlight on Swisscom

Roaming charges are incurred for the customer of a Swiss mobile phone provider to use a foreign network Swiss operators thus realize half a billion francs. However, roaming revenues have been falling since 2011. The reasons are the increasing pressure on prices and the ability to call the Internet wirelessly rather than on foreign mobile radio networks.

With the results of the comparison, the leader of the Swiss market stands out. Customers of the low-cost brands of Swisscom Wingo and Simplymobile pay more for roaming abroad than Swisscom customers themselves. In Spain, Wingo costs 46% more than the usual brand. Outside of Europe, Wingo is almost four times more expensive.

"Swisscom rapping its customers at low prices while roaming." Ralf Beyeler, Expert Telecom Moneyland

There are also differences at Simplymobile: Roaming in the European Union is 83% more expensive than the main brand. In the other countries surveyed, Simplymobile users pay up to four times more than Swisscom customers.

The telecom expert Ralf Beyeler of moneyland.ch criticizes: "Swisscom is exploiting its low-cost customer base." Swisscom pays the same amount to foreign mobile service providers for the use of third-party networks – regardless of the customer's subscription. "

Waiver of extras

Swisscom refutes the allegation of scam. With Wingo and Simplymobile, l & # 39; The company's address to other target groups than Swisscom, according to Swisscom spokesperson Sabrina Hubacher, these customers have different expectations of their supplier and they are not 39; solid service, dense distribution network or other extras.

Attractive prices on the Swiss market would be at the forefront of the offer. not how many customers make calls with secondary brands

Sunrise in Spain cheaper [19659007] At Sunrise, Yallo, Lebara, Ortel and Era in Spain are cheaper than the main brand. Lebara and Yallo are even cheaper in Europe than all the other offers of Swisscom and Salt and their low-cost brands.

In almost every other country, it becomes expensive. A gigabyte of data and 120 minutes of calls can cost more than 16,000 francs, depending on the price list. After all: In practice, the customer will not receive a horrible bill, because the number two in Switzerland breaks the links well before.

From the point of view of the user, it would be good for customers of low cost roaming brands in Europe to pay less, says telecom expert Ralf Beyeler. "But outside of the EU, prices are so astronomical that no customer can use the Internet abroad significantly." Here, it would be useful to offer data packets similar to Sunrise itself. "

Salt surprise

Sunrise left concrete questions about the policy of roaming secondary brands unanswered.These products are not comparable to the offers of the Main brand, said company spokesman Rolf Ziebold.Sunrise Sun is a full service provider, which, for example, a free customer service is included.On the other hand, the services offered by Yallo, Ortel and Lebara are in most cases attributable.

Things are also changing, as shown by Salt (formerly Orange) .The low-cost brands "Subscription" and "Prepayment" sold in the Post Offices have generally the same price of 3 Roaming as the smallest Swiss supplier, Salt also offers all the options and packages. Ralf Beyeler's conclusion: "Salt behaves here in an exemplary way."

(Tages-Anzeiger)

Created: 10.07.2018, 21:17