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November 2003

Rates of Success

How to keep your phone bill down

Arriving home recently after a long day at the MUNICH FOUND offices, absentmindedly sorting through the day’s mail, not bothering to take off my coat and scarf, I did something I never normally do: I opened my telephone bill. Usually this unwelcome document is jettisoned, unopened, straight in to a drawer marked “Taxes” and handed over to my tax advisor with all other bills. A minute later I was laid out on the sofa like Madame Bovary, whimpering about € 225 worth of telephone expenses. Time to investigate those cheap telephone rates, said a little voice in my head.

As most of you will know, the cheap prefix numbers apply only to fixed-line phones (Festnetztelefone). If you wish to find the cheapest network operator for a mobile phone, your best bet is either to take your mobile phone bill (Telefonrechnung) or a profile—a piece of paper you have drawn up listing what type of phone calls you most commonly make, i.e. local, national, international and, more importantly, which other networks you most commonly call—to the network operator shops such as O2, Vodaphone, E-plus or T-mobile. Compare offers from various networks to see which is the best package for you. Each company has very specific offers. O2, for example, offers its so-called Genion package, which allows you to call on your mobile using a flat rate. However, such deals are not available to everyone, so check carefully before you decide on an operator. Alternatively, there are companies, such as Debitel and Talkline, that are known in the business as service providers and who resell packages of the networks listed above sometimes at cheaper rates or in a package better suited to your needs.

To reduce your home phone costs there are three options: either, check out the deals offered by Deutsche Telekom (see below), switch to another fixed-line provider, such as Arcor or M''net, or go hunting for those cheap predial numbers. As the rates and numbers are constantly changing, the best place to go for information is the Internet—www.teltariff.de is a good site.

The option offered by Deutsche Telekom is called Aktiv Plus. This is normally part of a package called XXL. In order to obtain the XXL advantages you will need either to visit one of the Telekom shops or call 0800 330 10 00. The XXL rates are available for those with a T-Net connection and also an ISDN connection. These rates have the following advantages: local and national calls are cheaper and international calls to many other European countries, Canada and the United States are also at a reduced rate. Calls to North America currently cost 04.6 cent per minute. Also if you call a mobile number that is either D1 or D2, this is also cheaper. XXL allows you to make free calls on weekends within Germany and German national holidays are free too.

Until last year there was another, simpler option for anyone wishing to reduce their phone costs. A small device known as a tariff router could be installed on your phone jack (TAE Dose) and would automatically select the cheapest rate available at the time. Though there are still some on the market, most shops selling electronic equipment in Munich no longer stock routers because the software in these appliances cannot keep up with the wide variety of and constantly changing rates on offer at any one time.

Admittedly, all this is a forest of information, but when I looked at my latest phone bills and found I had made a saving of € 150, it seemed worthwhile to have taken the trouble.

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