Comparison of prices for calls to Orange mobiles, Switzernet, data from comparis.ch and vergleiche.ch, SIP, Switzerland, Voice over Internet, VOIP

The rates to Swiss mobiles offered by VOIP providers operating in Switzerland

2007-10-04

Switzernet remains the leader among telephony operators with its exclusive rates to Swiss mobiles, Swiss landlines (free of charge), and to International destinations. Switzernet is not a yet another retail operator. Switzernet is a gateway to the wholesale market for individual customers. The wholesale market which is exclusively reserved for large operators such as Swisscom, Orange, or Sunrise can be now accessed by each individual customers of Switzernet. There is only a monthly fee of 9 Fr/month for Switzernet’s wholesale market accounts. Everything else is at wholesale prices. Certain destinations are so cheap in the wholesale market that the calls are rounded to 0 Fr/min (CH, FR, DE, US, and UK). From another side Switzernet does not provide standard retail services. For instance the customer service is not at the same level as a typical retail operator should maintain. Our team is rather busy with operations in the wholesale market continuously trading and seeking for the best price and quality offers and only a limited number of operator hours are provided for customer support.

We provide here a comparison of rates obtained from the most referred independent Swiss comparison sites. The chart below is obtained from www.comparis.ch:

[xls]	VOIP operator	call to Orange mob
	Switzernet	0.28
	Swiss IP Com Basic	0.38
	Swiss IP Com appels CH illimités	0.38
	Swiss IP Com appels internat. illim.	0.38
	Extrafon	0.39
	Peoplefone	0.43
	Netstream Netvoip	0.45
	Guest-voip.ch	0.50
	E-fon	0.50
	Onephone Swiss	0.50
	Mexan	0.50
	TIC VoIP	0.50
	Sipcall.ch	0.51
	Ticinocom Digitel	0.51
	Dynamic-phone.ch	0.51
	Voiplink	0.52
	Onephone International	0.52
	Phonestar	0.53
	Citytel	0.53
	Sunrise ADSL Talk & More	0.54
	Give-me-fon	0.55
	Green.ch Home IP Phone	0.57
	Bluewin Phone	0.60
	Bluewin Phone demi-tarif mini-combi	0.60
	Bluewin Phone demi-tarif national	0.60
	Bluewin Phone demi-tarif internat.	0.60
	Bluewin Phone demi-tarif combiné	0.60
	Forfait Bluewin Phone	0.60

Screen shot from www.comparis.ch:

Data is obtained from www.comparis.ch on 2007-10-04

Note that the monthly bill is often higher than it has to be according to the rates published by the operator. This occurs due to rounding of calls, rounding of cost, and charging of the connection fees. These traps are not represented in the table. Note that since Switzernet is a gateway to the wholesale market, the communication is billed second by second without connection fees and any type of rounding. Hidden fees used in the retail market do not exist in the wholesale market. Only the rounding of calls can increase the true cost by 40% or more.

Comparis provides a possibility to compute call costs for different durations. The data used in our calculations is based on the comparis’ default duration of 1min. Therefore the effect of call rounding of certain operators is not considered. Refer also to the following note of comparis.ch:

Comparis shows all costs including setup fees and interval charges, e.g. the 10 centime interval charge by Swisscom. The tariffs shown can therefore differ from the charges per minute published by providers.

Whether a provider charges for the exact second or for example in 30 second intervals is especially important for short calls. You will probably be charged 15 seconds too much for every call, if a 30 second interval is applied. So that you do not fall into this "trap", you have the possibility to enter a duration of 1 minute 31 seconds . Using this duration none of the providers who use an interval based charge will receive preferential treatment.

Many providers also charge a minimum interval. Even if you only call for one second, you pay for example for 30 seconds. This particularly affects the bill, if you often call expensive destinations only to find an answering machine.

Another very interesting comparison site is www.vergleiche.ch. This site provides you an estimation of your monthly invoice, taking into account the monthly subscription fee and the communication cost. The table below represents the monthly expenses of the customer for a simplified communication pattern of an average user. The web site www.vergleiche.ch assumes that the customer makes daily 10 minutes calls to Swiss landlines and 5 minutes to Swiss mobile, both at normal tariff.

Anbieter

Produkt

monatliche Grund- Gebühr

einmalige Aufschalt- Gebühr

monatliche Kosten

Gesprächs- Aufbau Gebühren

CH Festnetz Nieder

CH Festnetz Normal

CH Mobilnetz Nieder

CH Mobilnetz Normal

CH Festnet Weekend

CH Mobilnetz Weekend

Anbieter

Operator

Product name

Monthly fee

Installation fee

Total monthly expense (computed)

Connection fee

Rates to Swiss landline (reduced)

Rates to Swiss landline (normal)

Rates to Swiss mobiles (reduced)

Rates to Swiss mobiles (normal)

Rates to Swiss landline (weekend)

Rates to Swiss mobiles (weekend)

IP Tech AG

voice4you

0.00 CHF

38.06 CHF

0.0000 CHF

0.0300 CHF

0.2900 CHF

0.0300 CHF

0.2900 CHF