I am trying to understand the Swiss rules for the landline phones.

You have to sign up for Swisscom because they have monopoly for landlines.
Once you get the number from them you can stay with Swisscom and pay 4-8 cents/min for national calls to other landline phones.

There are other operators like Econophone, Sunrise, etc that provide phone service. But even if you choose them you still have to pay Swisscom monthly fee for the line, correct?

I looked on the comparis.ch and there isn't really another operator that gives you considerable savings on the cost of the calls to national landlines (I will primarily call through 10787, or access numbers for helvatel, teletel etc. I guess that would be considered calls to the national landline)

Is anyone aware of better deals than Swisscom?

Thanks in advance...


P.S. After US all these is annoying... there you pay one fee per month and call as much as you want... per minute fees for regular phones are unheard of...

Yeah the US, where you pay for recieving texts (SMS) I think the Swiss are less in favor of flat fees... it starts with the beverages in McDonald's.

The real competition in digital phone/TV/internet combinating offers is relatively young. Two companies offer all three services: Swisscom/Bluewin and Cablecom.

From the Swisscom competitor Tele2's website:
If you want to quit the Swisscom subscription, you have to use the Cablecom network for your fixnet phone. There may be third party offerings (VoIP? Skype?) for the Cablecom network or generally internet but I'm not sure. (On the other hand, you could do without the Cablecom network and get ADSL internet from Bluewin.)

pssst - to get ADSL, you need Swisscom fixnet line

Cablecom is not available in my building...

Thanks for the information.

Tele2 - is it ok service-wise?

You can use Tele2 on top of Swisscom fixed line, using their 10753 - prefix. Simply phone them and register (which is for me the flexible option). Or you can go the whole hog, and operate preselection...
Seems to work fine for me. It measn you have an extra bill to pay too, which doesnt seem to be itemised..

dave

Tele 2 cannot access some UK 0800 numbers (free bank servioce calls for example). Sunrise can...

sunrise have talk&more option but it comes with the ADSL package although you still have to pay Swisscom the 25.25CHF.
Calls to local swiss network are charged at .069 in peak hours and off-peaks are free including weekends.

So it will be 25chf for swisscom + 49chf for Sunrise ADSL+phone service talk and more?

My french is not very good - their website sayas something about limit of 3600min/month? Also, access numbers for long-distance providers, are they considered regular national landline calls?

Why not calling the sunrise customer care and get more information. Maybe they can give you some discounts like first 3 months free. Check there options as they are offering sunrise desktop tv access free of charge with this subscription.

I am not sure of any limitation of 3600min which is 60 hours per month. If you mean access numbers like Helvatel or raptel then they have some premiums and they are not free from any network.

Yes I mean Raptel or helvatel or phone cards access numbers. Besides what I pay for actual long-distance are calls to these numbers are more expensive than regular landline calls?

If you call to Raptel or Helvatel you pay what you hear in the announcement. If you calling UK it is usually 2 or 3 Rp per minute. Better ask this question to sunrise directly if you have any confusion.

Multiline line ISDN 43Fr. enables you to have three lines/ with one line.

Fax No.
Tel. No.
Tel. No.

Abo. for ADSL3500 for internet 49Fr.

Half price mini combo 7.80Fr calls half price from 19.00 until 07.00 next day . Worldwide.

Full price combo. allows you to telephone whole day half price.

Depending on your call pattern you may want to have a look at the sunrise select unlimited offer. It's CHF 24/month (that's on top of the 25.25 you pay to swisscom) and you can call national landlines as long as you want, up to 600 calls per month.

Just found out that Helvatel is charging 10Rp per connection for calls to UK on top of normal tariff. There is no connection charges in Teleswiss and Raptel.

Raptel 3Rp/min with 0 connection charges
Teleswiss as above
Helvatel 2Rp/min with 10Rp connection charges.

It means that calls less than 10 minutes duration are better off with Raptel or Teleswiss. But calls longer than 10 minutes are good with Helvatel.

I reasonably sure you have to get your phone line from either Swisscom or Sunrise. However any swiss phone company can provide the phone services you and each offers special plans. (i.e. you can select who bills you and whos network will carry your telephone traffic).

Several of the companys are also capable of sending your mobile, DSL, and Fixnet bills as one bill instead of three seperate bills. Until recently only Swisscom could bill you for the Fixed line rental, but that has changed.

One of my clients is TalkTalk ( http://www.talktalk.ch ). I am admittedly biased and I think they are a good deal, but I'll use them as an example of the things they offer and what you might want to look for from other Swiss phone service providers.

- one bill per month containing your DSL, FixNet, and Mobile charges
- detailed billing information, each call is shown
- no fixed monthly fee for your SIM card
- calls between you and other TalkTalk customers are free. This includes your mobile phone to your home or anyone else who is a TalkTalk customer
- 100 MB free data per month on your mobile, plus very low rates for additional data
- low international calling rates

End of commercial now.

Oops. I only meant to post the message once. I thought the first one failed because it told me a I was logged out. :-(

You need to use a code prefix to revert to the Swisscom service each time you dial such a no - I think it is 10741