Gabriel wrote: > Swisscom's prepaid cell phone service does not allow one to > make calls from outside Switzerland. Receive calls, yes, make > them, no. The issue has become murky along the way. I have > had two swiss pre-paid cell phones and even while still in > the Geneva area, if you're too close to France (very easy to > do here) you lose the ability to make calls because you get > caught up in a french network. Something is not being > reported or something is being misreported on this one.
Swisscom offers two pre-paid roaming services: "Natel easy" and "Natel easyRoam". I don't know what roaming features that more common "Natel easy" service offers; perhaps it only permits incoming calls when roaming outside Switzerland. The easyRoam service most definitely permits both incoming and outgoing calls to be placed from just about every country that has a GSM provider. In addition, incoming SMSs are free and outgoing SMSs are very inexpensive. It is the easyRoam service that is being discontinued. Of course Swisscom in the notice that they sent to their customers makes no mention of the fact that the service is being discontinued because it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only near-global prepaid GSM service and as such attracted international customers world-wide. --Lucky
