At 12:47 AM 4/10/02 +0100, Adam Back wrote: >But from what I saw it was around 4x more expensive. A SIM with a >years contract (all paid up front) is pretty easy to obtain for 10 - >50 pounds depending on number of free minutes included. > > > And some people even like anonymity. > >Yes other things being equal I would find the anonymity aspects of >buying SIM without contract etc quite cool if there was not such a >price disparity. > >Adam
I bought my Nokia a year ago for £29.99 on BT Cellnet from Carphone Warehouse. I had it delivered to my hotel. Last Christmas I was in Ireland and bought a SIM (subscriber identity module) for about 15 Punts just before the Euro arrived. The services were in a Pay As You Go price war during 2000 and 2001 so some phone got under 20 quid. They stopped doing this towards the end of last year and concentrated on subscription services. The phones are still fairly reasonable. Cards to feed the phones can be bought for cash at any news agent. You just punch the appropriate menu item on the phone and key in the number to add money. £10 to £50 denominations with low denominations predominating. Here's the current Carphone Warehouse catalog for Pay As You Go sorted by price: http://www1.carphonewarehouse.com/NASApp/commerce/gben-express-GBENExpressPurchase?xpprevutilname=ExpressUtilModel&xputilname=ExpressUtilModel&prodgroupid=none&pricelistid=WWW&prodcatid=PPAY&model=&network=&tar_id=&tarvar_id=&NEXT_LOCATION=gben-express-GBENExpressPurchase&NEXT_KEY=model&ITEMID0=&PRODDISPLAYPAGE=0&CATEGORY=HANDSET&ITEMSELECTED=false&ISSELECTED=false&pag=0&sw=Lowest+Price You can get a SIM for £9.99 and a phone (with SIM) for £39.99 and up (mostly up). Verizon offers a Pay As You Go phone (FREEUP) in the US for $99. http://www.verizonwireless.com/ics/plsql/prepay.intro Unfortunately, US prepay plans don't use SIMs (save for a few geographically limited prepay services). SIMs are advantageous because they allow you to easily change numbers without changing phones. Note that some GSM phones are now tracking handsets as well as SIMs so this privacy aspect may be disappearing in Europe. DCF ---- "It doesn't matter what your race, creed, or color is; you can still be a son of a bitch." -- Duncan Philip Frissell 1899-1965
