Swisscom’s budget brand Wingo is updating its roaming offers with immediate effect. Its plans now include 1 gigabyte of data roaming in Europe while its price remains unchanged at 25 Swiss francs.
Wingo remains an interesting option for both light and heavy data users. Customers who use less than 1 gigabyte of data in Switzerland pay 25 francs for both phone calls and data within Switzerland. As before, every additional 1-gigabyte tier for data in Switzerland costs an extra 5 francs. Heavy data users pay 55 francs per month for unlimited Internet access in Switzerland. The Wingo plan includes unlimited phone calls to Swiss numbers in its flat fee.
Wingo has also revamped its data roaming bundle offers for Europe, Canada and the Unites States. It now offers 3 different data roaming bundles: 250 megabytes for 9 francs, 1 gigabyte for 20 francs and 3 gigabytes for 50 francs.
Prices for data roaming outside of Europe remain largely unchanged. The 100-megabyte data roaming bundle for South Africa is still priced at 27.50 francs. Wingo users pay 69.50 francs for a 100-megabyte data bundle for the Central African Republic.
Verdict by moneyland.ch telecom expert Ralf Beyeler
For 25 francs per month, customers receive a plan which includes 1 gigabyte of data roaming. “The product is priced to compete,” states moneyland.ch telecom expert Ralf Beyeler from online comparison service moneyland.ch.
Plans from other telecom service providers which include a 1-gigabyte monthly data roaming allowance are generally priced upwards of 90 francs – and generally include unlimited local data for Switzerland. Wingo users now pay 55 francs per month for a plan which includes unlimited data in Switzerland and 1 gigabyte of data roaming. With that offer, Wingo delivers a standard plan at a price which competes with occasional special promotions offered by its competitors. Other telecom service providers have already offered similar plans for under 50 francs per month, but as limited promotional offers.
The costs of Wingo’s data bundles for roaming in Europe are similar to those charged to customers of its parent company Swisscom. The smallest Wingo bundle is slightly more expensive – but also slightly larger – than Swisscom’s smallest bundle. Wingo works out slightly cheaper when you compare the cost of identical amounts of data across the two plans. The two large packages (1 gigabyte and 3 gigabytes) are priced almost identically to Swisscom’s – with a difference of just 10 centimes.
Wingo works out somewhat more expensive than Swisscom for roaming outside of Europe. For example, Wingo users pay 27.50 francs for 100-megabyte data roaming bundles for countries like Bangladesh and Tunisia. Swisscom sells bundles twice that size for less than 20 francs. Comparing the two based on 200 megabytes of data roaming, Wingo works out nearly three times more expensive than Swisscom. It is also worth noting that in countries like Burkina Faso, Swisscom customers receive double the amount of roaming data offered by Wingo for around the same price. Swisscom charges 69.90 francs for 200 megabytes of roaming data, while Wingo charges 69.50 francs for 100 megabytes.
It is unfortunate that data bundles expire after 30 days. Removing the validity limit of just 30 days would be a customer-friendly move. It is also unfortunate that Wingo has not lowered its prices for making phone calls from outside of Switzerland. “Wingo’s call roaming pricing is not competitive,” concludes Ralf Beyeler.
The question now is whether Swisscom will cut ist data roaming prices across its other brands like M-Budget and SimplyMobile. These brands could certainly benefit from timely price reductions.
More on this topic:
Mobile roaming calculator
Mobile plan comparison
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