Moving to Switzerland (Phone question)

CrazyMoney

Hi guys, I'm moving to Switzerland early next year and am wondering what to do with my voda contract and nokia phone. Would I be best getting a payg over in Switzerland and using this in my current phone ? Any adivce on a good payg sim out there if anyone has experience ?

I guess there's little value in using my voda unless I'm in UK

Thanks in advance for any help

gizmoleeds

Have you read Martin's roaming article?

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cgi-bin/viewnews.cgi?newsid1119870249,48922,

mand1_3

Oh I am so jealous

Sorry no advice but wish you luck, can I come and visit please, pretty please....

CrazyMoney

Hi yes I've read the article and researched what he wrote about further but I was interested if anyone had specific experience out there.

redux

I think you should almost certainly get a Swisscom SIM

Here is a rather eccentric Google translation* of a recent Teltarif article about Swisscom tariffs to Swiss landlines and Swisscom mobiles dropping from 64 or 59c per minute to 80c per hour. Calls to other mobile nets are still charged by the minute.

http://translate.google.com/translate?sourceid=navclient-menuext&hl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Eteltarif%2Ech%2Farch%2F2005%2Fkw43%2Fs4654%2Ehtml

* the most eccentric part of the translation is Rappen, which is a Swiss-German nickname for cents, becoming blackhorses


Here's the Swisscom tariff page
http://www.swisscom-mobile.ch/scm/prv_abos_und_tarife-en.aspx

If you to combine this SIM with a calling card ordinary landline access number, you could be calling UK for an hour for a bit over £1, 2p per minute - nb use the calling card follow-on call facility, by pressing the # key, to combine a series of calls into one Swisscom call.


For the future of your Vodafone contract, I assume you cannot cancel it yet, but perhaps you could downrate the tariff to a cheaper option? Register for the Passport scheme, and for a fee of 75p per call you can use your inclusive minutes abroad and receive calls without further roaming charges. This could be useful in most countries with a Vodafone network, but in Switzerland this new Swisscom tariff surpasses it.

gizmoleeds

No advice, but... it is easy to move to Switzerland? I presume being outside the EU it will involve residency visas and stuff. It is a beautiful country (as far as I can tell) and I would love to live there :rolleyes:

CrazyMoney

Yes visas are involved and these are easy to obtain if you have the right experience for a particular job I've been told.

I'll investigate the Swisscom tariff further so thanks for that redux

innovate

redux wrote:

I think you should almost certainly get a Swisscom SIM

Are you sure? I would think Swisscom is almost certainly not the cheapest provider since they are "the BT" of Switzerland. Sunrise and Orange are the alternatives, with Orange being the only one with a pan-European presence, and therefore probably good roaming arrangements.

The great new about Switzerland is that English is widely spoken, and a lot of the web pages are available in English.

Here's a link to a mobile tariff comparison. Lots of other useful looking info available from this site.

redux

innovate wrote:

Are you sure? I would think Swisscom is almost certainly not the cheapest provider since they are "the BT" of Switzerland. Sunrise and Orange are the alternatives, with Orange being the only one with a pan-European presence, and therefore probably good roaming arrangements.

Sorry - perhaps wrongly, I assumed that to begin with, the OP would be making a larger proportion of foreign calls than most Swiss nationals, like back to the UK, so I did not assume that calls to UK from 2 pence per minute was too expensive (ie 36p connect + 1.3 p per min).

Perhaps you can vindicate your assumption that you could make calls home for down to 2p a minute?

For local calls, it is true that Pronto and OrangeClick have cheaper cross-net call tariffs than Natel, 32p and 26p as against 47p ...

BUT ...... for Swiss landlines, - 36p on Swisscom pays for up to an hour. Several calls together could be followed-on with a calling card, as I suggested, to pay only one CHF 0.80. For Swiss mobiles, 28p per min using the calling card method is in the same range as the others, but using a callback arrangement would be cheaper than all of them.

For roaming outside Switzerland, the OP's Vodafone Passport will "probably" have better tariffs than Orange, in the countries where it can be used - but why did you mention it? - the OP did not ask us about use in other countries.

I based this on fact, not assumptions. I'd recommend the OP get Swisscom Easy Liberty to start with, and think about adding OrangeClick if new acquaintances are on the other networks.

innovate

redux wrote:

Perhaps you can vindicate your assumption that you could make calls home for down to 2p a minute?

Sounds a bit like the Spanish Inquisition

redux wrote:

If you to combine this SIM with a calling card ordinary landline access number, you could be calling UK for an hour for a bit over £1, 2p per minute - nb use the calling card follow-on call facility, by pressing the # key, to combine a series of calls into one Swisscom call.

I was probably thrown by the "a bit over £1, 2p per minute" - interpreted this as "one pound two pence per minute" but you probaly meant "one point two pence per minute", LOL. In which case, I agree, that is cheaper than CHF 0.80, the cheapest per minute for CH-UK calls on any of the standard plans. I am still not convinced that Swisscom is the best supplier to go with, though, based on what I know [not assume] about the Swiss telco market.

As to roaming - even though there wasn't a specific question about this, I would always consider roaming charges when buying a mobile service in Switzerland, since you can so quickly end up in France, Italy, Germany - i.e. abroad - from almost anywhere in Switzerland.

redux

innovate wrote:

I was probably thrown by the "a bit over £1, 2p per minute" - interpreted this as "one pound two pence per minute" but you probaly meant "one point two pence per minute", LOL.

I meant "you could be calling UK for an hour for a bit over £1" ... and that is what I said - 2p per minute, despite your scepticism.

innovate wrote:

In which case, I agree, that is cheaper than CHF 0.80, the cheapest per minute for CH-UK calls on any of the standard plans.

For Swisscom mobiles and Swiss landlines, the charge is per hour or per call, not per minute. I posted a link to this tariff which, as you kindly suggested, is easy to read as it is in English.

innovate wrote:

I am still not convinced that Swisscom is the best supplier to go with, though, based on what I know [not assume] about the Swiss telco market.

innovate wrote:

Are you sure? I would think Swisscom is almost certainly not the cheapest provider since they are "the BT" of Switzerland.

Then read the choice of tariffs on the link again, instead of hinting I don't know what I'm talking about.

I stick with the recommendations at the end of my last post about starting with Swisscom for int'l calls, Swisscom mobiles and Swiss landlines.

And to add - although I see the mvno's Yallo, M-budget and COOP have cheaper tariffs than Sunrise or Orange - CHF 0.49, 0.44, 0.46 per minute respectively, all around 20p, a callback service would be similar cost - and simpler than having 2 phones or SIMs - use it for calls to other Swiss mobiles, and calls that would be expected to last under about 2 min on Swisscom.