Get your contract mobile phone

For those who have recently moved here, or have not yet moved from pre-paid (pay-as-you-go) mobile phones to the post-paid (contract) phones, here is some relevant information.

When I moved here, I was told that Lebara and Ortel (also Lyca) are the ones that offer the cheapest call rates to India. At least for the calls you make directly from mobiles, it is true. My friend here had Lebara but I found Ortel better. Each call had a start tariff of 7 cents and then there was a per minute charge. It was 12 cents to landlines, both local as well as in a few select countries (likes the US and UK) but the charges to mobiles were high. Charge to India is 21 cents. Even at that time, these charges seemed too high.

And they were. I used to see ads of post-paid connections. They used to offer X minutes and/or Y SMSes per month. I was not sure if they were limited to calls to landlines or not (they include calls anywhere in Netherlands, though special numbers cost more). Also, I was not sure if I could get it (I'm still on a six month contract here so my residence permit also has a limited validity). so I waited till a colleague got his connection before I tried my luck.

And I got mine in two days flat!

I opted for the Vodafone Scherp (Sharp) 250 (no longer sold, check vodafone website for SIM only offerings). It gives me 250 minutes and 75 SMS messages monthly for € 8,95. That turns out to about 3.6 cents per minute, with no per call charge. See the difference? Its a great saving. All I had to do is to go to their website, apply online and wait for their call. The form on their website is really small and asks for only the minimum required information. My friend had a Telfort subscription which actually turns out to be cheaper than mine but does not include SMSes.

Pros

• As long as you are within your monthly quota of minutes and/or SMSes, you can make tension-free calls. You are paying much less than you did earlier with the pre-paid phones.
• Your payment is auto-debited from your account. No hassle of topping up your phone every now and then.
• In case of emergency, you don't run out of credit on your phone. It actually happened to me and I realized how important it could be to have a post-paid mobile.
• You can use it to call services like DialNow to make really cheap calls to India (more on that some other day)

Cons

• Once you run out of your minutes, you pay quite a good amount for your calls. Its about 25 cents per minute or per SMS when you have exhausted your quota. Though its not a very high price, the issue here is that though you get charged per minute here, you used to get charged per second with Ortel. But at the same time, your savings on those minutes more than offsets your expenses here.

Tips

• As soon as you get your residence permit, apply for a contract. The sooner you change your number, the better
• You can opt for number porting, but that might take time. If you cannot afford to carry two phone numbers and broadcast your new number to everyone, pay the price and wait till they port your number. I am not sure, but it may take more than a month for them to do that.
• Check for www.bellen.com for the cheapest sim-only deals. In case you wan to also buy a new phone, you can see those offers there too. My experience with Vodafone has been great till now and hence I would suggest the same.

Hope this information helps. If you have any comments or feedback, don't hesitate to leave a comment.