Wolfgang Karall wrote: > Just jumping in on this: here in Austria I guess 80-90% of phones are > sold by mobile operators including a contract (binding customers usually > for 24 months). The phones are usually SIM/Network-locked and also > branded by the operator, but usually way cheaper than when buying them > without contract (most low end phones are given away with the contract > for free), which is probably the reason why they do get sold that way at > all. Well, so maybe we are lucky in Czech Republic after all. That number 70% of customers with prepaid cards I found in some press release of one operator here. I also found we currently have 11.45 milion active SIM cards (population is less that 10milion) so it means 114 active cards to 100 people. Sim locking was used here too but it was abandoned year or two ago by all operators. Probably because customers hated such phones. It was harder to use when switching prepaid cards and harder to sell them second hand. Phones are branded too which is still reason why not to buy them :-) They are (IMHO) cheaper only if you really call a lot (i.e being a businessman with expensive contract) otherwise even 'discounted' operator phones (even with contract) are still a bit more expensive or have similar price like regular ones you buy on each corner. Also young people switch phones like socks (I mean often :-) so new 'discounted' phone after two years of contract is not very attractive. As for operators all three we have were local but were recently bought one by one by T-mobile, Vodafone and O2 so maybe things will get worse. But maybe not. But we have similar monopolistic behaviour with banks. You pay monthly fee for simply having bank account and then pay for each little thing you do (local money transfers both for send and receive, drawing cash from ATM, ...). Banks were recently sold too but this still remains. One bank here recently cancelled fees when you receive money because some people wanted to annoy co-worker and told friends to send him 1CZK via money transfer and he had to pay hundreds (incoming fee was 5CZK) and balance went below zero. It was a bit medialized then :-) But this is really off topic now :-) Frantisek
