Swiss Mobile flies ahead of the competition
Despite Swisscom's roaming offensive: The cheapest way to make calls abroad is with Swiss Mobile, as the NZZ am Sonntag reveals.
Last week, Swisscom provided good news for customers with its new mobile subscriptions: roaming is being abolished. Even with the cheapest - unchanged price - subscription "Natel infinity plus XS" (59.-/month), customers can make unlimited calls within the EU for 30 days a year. With more expensive subscriptions, this is possible on 100 (129.-/month) or even 365 days (179.-/month). This is an attractive pricing model for travelers, as roaming was previously a very expensive "fun" for Swiss end customers. Even if the competition appears to be unimpressed, Swisscom's new roaming policy is likely to force them to follow suit sooner or later.
Swisscom is also lowering its standard roaming prices for customers with "normal" subscriptions to 45 centimes per minute within the EU. "Swisscom thus has by far the cheapest roaming offer on the Swiss market and is also ideally positioned compared to the most important European providers," the telecoms provider wrote in Thursday's press release.
As the NZZ am Sonntag points out in its current issue, this is not entirely correct. Swiss offers the cheapest roaming tariff. The airline entered the telecommunications market last October (Werbewoche.ch reported) and has been offering a SIM card in its duty-free store ever since. With success, as Swiss spokeswoman Sonja Ptassek reveals to the newspaper: just two months after its market launch, the offer is the best-selling duty-free product after cigarettes.
With the Swiss offer, not only can calls be made from 180 countries to Switzerland for 14 centimes per minute, but calls can also be received free of charge. The airline thus offers a significantly cheaper product in all respects, including mobile Internet. However, Swiss Mobile also has disadvantages: The SIM card has to be changed and you get an English telephone number. In addition, customers do not enter into a contract with Swiss, but with a Thurgau-based company called Naka. The company is stingy with transparency and keeps a low profile when it comes to management and shareholders. In the DNS of the domain Nakamobile.com the name Achilles Rupf also appears. Rupf was in the management of the liquidated company United Mobile, which had a similar business model to Naka. However, the NZZ am Sonntag emphasizes that this is not sufficient proof. Swiss also emphasizes the professionalism of the cooperation and that the investors are known. (hae/NZZaS)
