Just back in October I’ve been writing how Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNO’s) have revolutionized the mobile telephony market in Germany. Now it looks like they’ve discovered mobile Internet access as an attractive market and have started to offer very competitive prices. Over at m-trends, I’ve been discussing the far reaching implications of this move. While I think German MVNO’s have done the biggest step yet, operators in a number of other countries have also introduced interesting prepaid data offers in the past months.
Germany
Currently, E-PLUS MVNO’s Alditalk, Simyo and Blau are offering mobile Internet access for 24 cents per megabyte. Access is charged in 10 to 50 kBytes blocks depending on the operator. This article on Teltarif mentions that Alditalk customers can use the UMTS network with the offer, while Simyo and Blau customers for the moment seem to be restricted to the slower GPRS network.
Austria
‘Three’ offers prepaid Internet access as part of the 3Reload Data option. Price per megabyte is 80 cents.
Italy
Italian operator ‘Wind’ offers Internet access for prepaid users in three different packages. 100 MB for 8 euros a month (Mega 300), 1 GB for 20 euros and month (Mega No Limit) and 5 GB a month (Mega 15000) for 30 euros. The hurdle to use Internet applications with a prepaid card are a bit higher due to the package system vs. the pay per kilobyte in Germany and Austria but the price per mega byte is a lot cheaper.
Other countries
If you have heard of other operators in these or other countries to offer prepaid Internet access for reasonable prices (i.e. 1MB < 1 Euro) please leave a note below. It is offers like these and others like ‘Three’s recent announcement to get rid of international roaming charges for voice and data that pave the way for the mobile killer environment!
Hooray for affordable prepaid data!
Here in the USA there are 3 prepaid providers with reasonable data rates.
STI mobile (Sprint MVNO, 1RTT ) unlimited including Java – $0.30/day
Boost (Sprint/Nextel WiDEN)) unlimited including Java and tethering – $0.35/day
Amp’d (Verizon MVNO 1RTT/EVDO) no Java, no tethering – $0.30 MB
Hello,
Here in Poland we have only one reasonable mobile internet offer, but it seems to be the best in Europe.
Simdata (Plus GSM): prepaid, 0.03PLN/100KB = 0.30 PLN/MB = 0.08 EUR/MB.
Details: http://tiny.pl/wzw3
hi,here in india,airtel offers prepaid data service for 4 euro per month for unlimited data and this is valid till we roam on their network.in metro cities it is EDGE AND then its plain gprs,Speed is ok.other includes state owned bsnl, same tariff for data,but their network is spread in remote areas as well.worst data charges are on hutchison’s hutch service.they charge 20 rs per mb.that’s approx.half euro per mb.and their speed is pretty low.that’s about indian gsm scenario.CDMA Support for data service is most costlly option.
In Switzerland Sunrise has affordable interesting mobile data offers!
You need
a sunrise relax libero plan (59 Rp./hour) (CHF 0.-/month) or another plan.
and one of the following options (start/stop per SMS for each month)
– 5 CHF. / month 5MB included, 3.50 one more MB
– 20 CHF. / month 100MB included, 3.50 one more MB
Togheter whith http://www.fring.com on Nokia N-Series mobile phones, you can use your mobile phone for very cheap calls (SIP and Skype!!) 1 hour talk uses aprox. 8MB of Data.
More Information:
http://www.sunrise.ch/privatkunden/mobile/mob_angeboteundpreise.htm
http://www.fring.com
Hello Diego,
yes, the prices for mobile access to the Internet are quite interesting indeed. It looks like, however, that they are only available with a contract, i.e. not with a prepaid card.
Cheers,
Martin
In the Philippines, Smart http://www.smart.com.ph offers prepaid mobile 3G broadband for only USD$ 0.22 / 30 minutes.