Virgin Mobile goes to France

It was announced some time ago, but now it's not only official, but also already active with its offers: Virgin Mobile started a new MVNO in France, while it's probably leaving the UK market.

The new French offer has the lowest base per minute rate (still quite high, anyway) and an interesting option with which you can add some sort of "bonus credit" with a validity of just 30 days in order to have cheaper national rates for voice calls, plus the normal credit for other services at standart price and validity.

This time Virgin starts not only with prepaid but also with several postpaid options including forfaits, very popular in France.

You can find all the information about Virgin France prepaid offer on PrePaidGSM.net.

New MVNO in Belgium

Belgium confirms to be the country of MVNOs; our friend Vincent tells us about a new one, called 1 Mobile. "1" is a brand of the low-cost food products of the supermarket Carrefour & GB in Belgium,
1-Mobile is of course their prepaid MVNO offer.
Rates are at 24c€ per minute to all Belgian numbers, SMS at 11c€. Simple tariff, low-cost and no-frills offer (no MMS, no data), which permits the mobile number portability from another Belgian number free of charge.
The network is once again offered by BASE. You can find all the information on our Belgium pages.

Updates and two MVNOs in Latvia

Thanks to our dear friend Börje, I updated the Latvian pages, correcting some old tariff rates, and adding 2 new MVNOs with very interesting low rates.

The first one is Hallo, roaming on LMT net, and it's the only "real" MVNO and not just a new brand from the home operator. This offer is the answer to Bite's Toxic tariff which was the cheapes in Latvia so far (but with very little coverage from the latest arrived operator). But Tele2 couldn't resist offering something even cheaper, so here it is Urā with the incredible on-net rate of 0.7 eurocents per minute! The off net rate is almost the same as Hallo, just 0.1 cents less in order to say they are the cheapest! SMS are incredibly cheap as well, so it seems to be really the cheapest solution for Latvians and travellers to this beautiful Baltic country.

You can find all the information on the Latvian pages.

New internet-based offer in Lithuania

Thanks to our friend Raimis, I updated the pages about Lithuanian GSM operators, and added a new internet-based offer by BITĖ, called BITĖ online.
It has a simple flat-rate tariff of LTL 0.32/min to all destinations in Lithuania, and features also cheap SMS tare (LTL 0.10) and a very interesting international tariff to call all Europe, former Soviet Union countries and the Americas.

I added a second offer by Tele2 as well, called Mažylis, which seems to be Tele2's answer to Omnitel's second brand "Ežys", with very cheap calls and free SMS to other Mažylis users. The bad thing of this tariff for foreigners is the higher cost for international SMS, so Pildyk seems to be probably still the cheapest option for visitors to Lithuania.

German MVNOs keep on growing

The German market confirms its great price competition, thanks to the many MVNOs which lowered the prepaid tariffs really a lot.

Let's start with Simply. This MVNO roaming on T-Mobile net now has 2 offers, a postpaid and a prepaid with the cheapest per minute rate in Germany, € 0.14/min (promotionally till the end of February, then € 0.15/min). Unfortunately also the prepaid offer still has a contract, with unlimited validity, and you need to be a German resident, with a "Schufa" they will check. So it's not an interesting option for tourists or businessmen travelling to Germany.

There's a prepaid MVNO offer by Debitel as well, called Debitel-Light; this is a "normal" prepaid offer, internet based, roaming on e-plus network, and looks really identical to Simyo and Blau offers: € 0.16/min for all calls and € 0.11 for texts to German numbers.

There's a third offer, Jamba SIM, again on e-plus network, which seems to be the same tariff as Schwarzfunk, so not so interesting for voice calls (€ 0.25/min), but good for SMS lovers, since it has the cheapest price for texting, just 9 cent each (to German networks). It also has a 12 months validity, while Simyo, Blau and Debitel have just 6,

There's also a promotion for new Blau.de customers: the startpaket costs € 19.95 including €20 startguthaben, so it seems to be a better choice than Simply or Debitel right now.

Added Thailand to PrePaidGSM

Thanks to our friend Christian, we could add information about the 4 GSM operators in Thailand: Thai Mobile (1900 MHz), AIS (One-2-call), Orange and DTAC.

As usual you can find all the precious information on Thailand page on PrePaidGSM.

New MVNO in Switzerland

Once again the Swiss market sees a new MVNO with a "no-frills" offer, increasing the fight for the cheapest tariff of the Confederation. The new operator is called Cablecom and it's already a landline, internet high-speed operator, which now signed an agreement with Sunrise for a national roaming, launching its first MVNO offer. The tariff is prepaid and all internet based. Rates are CHF .39 per minute to all Swiss numbers (promotionally CHF .35 to landline) and CHF .20 for SMS (promotionally CHL 0.10). Calls to Liechtenstein are CHF .37 per min, which make calling a United Mobile/Riiing card very cheap for Swiss customers.

As usual, you can find all the information about Cablecom on our Swiss pages.

Updates from Germany

Thanks to our friend Snaimon, I just updated the German page adding the new MVNO MoxMobil (roaming on T-Mobile net), particularly interesting for immigrants from the middle east, Poland and former Yugoslavia, living in Germany. It doesn't seem very interesting for tourists or busisenssmen travelling there.

I also updated the prices of Blau.de, now with a "real" 16 cent/min tariff and of KlarMobil.de with its brand new two tariff options, with per minute or 60/10 billing.

You can find all the information on the page about Germany.