End of EasyRoam??
 

I bought my Swisscom EasyRoam SIM and subsequent airtime from GSM profi, a German service provider. They have provided me with good service and their prices are cheaper than the US providers. Although I can't fully understand the brochure they sent, they have announced that Swisscom has decided to eliminate EasyRoam as of Dec 31 of this year. Since I am not fluent in German, I can't read the fine print.

They will offer Kiwi Mobilux in its place (www.kiwi-prepaid.com). This looks to be a much better deal than EasyRoam as it will cost 0.89 Euros/min to place calls in most of Europe and the US to any of the zone 1 countries (Acores, Andorra, Belgium, Danmark, Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Canada, Lichtenstein,
Zone 1 Madeira, Monaco, Norway, The Nederlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, USA (excl. Alaska and Hawaii), Vatican, UK ( incl. Channel Islands).

Yep, Swisscomm is killing it. I would love to know why, whether it was lack of take-up or high costs??

I received this email from swisscom:

HELLO,
<[email protected]>

EASYROAM WILL COME TO AN END DURING THE YEAR 2003 - NORMALLYS END 2003 - INFORMATION WILL FOLLOW VIA WWW.EASY-ROAM.COM ONLY OFFICIAL INFORMATION SOURCE! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO CUSTOMERS? THEY WILL USE THE PRODUCT UNTIL THE END, NO TRANSITION WILL BE DONE AS THE PRODUCT WILL COME TO A COMMERCIAL END!

A quick search of the net located what appears to be a news story (in German I think) that indicates there may be an extension of the cut off date sometime into 2003. Here's the link:

http://www.teltarif.de/arch/2002/kw35/s8691.html

BTW, One of the greatest features of the web is it ablity to offer fast, somewhat accurate translation services on line. There are several sites that offer free service of translating web pages (such as the one above), web sites and simple text (such as from emails). Here are a couple:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/
http://www.freetranslation.com/
http://translation2.paralink.com/

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Michael Steinberg
Editor
BizTrip
http://www.biztrip.com

My service provider tells me that the deadline has been extended until June 2003. Several US providers are still selling SIMs with no mention of the closing of service.

easy roam web site now says service will terminate Nov 30, 2003