Are Swisscom cell phone subscriptions for business customers really that much more expensive than the competition?

I work in the field for a Swiss SME (approx. 300 employees)

Unfortunately, our business cell phones run on Sunrise. However, I have massive problems with my business cell phone due to poor network coverage and am often difficult to reach or cannot always contact my customers as desired when I’m on the move, or I don’t have a stable connection.

It starts with the fact that I have a really bad and unreliable mobile phone connection with Sunrise where I live, which is also my (home) office location. It’s neither the building (it’s no better outside), nor the device (I received a brand new one a few weeks ago), but solely the Sunrise network. Even when I’m on the move, I always have problems with phone calls dropping off or the voice quality simply being poor. The data connections are also usually very slow with Sunrise, apart from a few places. It’s not uncommon for the connection to be impossible inside buildings, although I usually still have good reception on my private cell phone.

My colleagues from other parts of Switzerland also report some similar problems.

Privately, I use a subscription from “Wingo” (which uses the Swisscom network) and I have to say: the difference is massive! While at the office location with Sunrise I only achieved a download speed of 0.3 Mbit/s in a speed test, at Wingo this is over 550 Mbit/s!

Telephoning with Wingo over the Swisscom network also works perfectly and even when mobile (in the car with a hands-free system), you can always have conversations without interruption and with good voice quality. Even in places where I drive through regularly and know that I will be 100% interrupted with Sunrise because there is no Sunrise network on a section of the route, I make calls via the Swisscom network without interruption.

I reported the problem internally and since Sunrise’s business support couldn’t help, I suggested that we switch our business cell phone subscriptions to Swisscom.

Unfortunately, the management decided against it. The higher costs were cited as an argument; Swisscom subscriptions were over 50% more expensive than Sunrise’s! And these days, unfortunately, people are saving money everywhere… (in my opinion, saving in the wrong place, but unfortunately it’s not my decision).

Question: Can it really be that Swisscom’s business subscriptions are over 50% more expensive than Sunrise? We don’t have any subscriptions with a lot of bells and whistles or roaming services included, as our area of ​​activity only covers Switzerland.

Or maybe our responsible people at Swisscom simply didn’t get an offer from the right contact person but simply used the prices from some price list as a comparison?

Sure, I can imagine that there is a price difference between Swisscom and the discount provider Sunrise, I notice the difference every day in the network quality and quality probably has its price, but I still find the price difference stark.

Mobiliar Insurance recently stopped the switch from Swisscom to Sunrise due to the inadequate mobile network: [https://insideparadeplatz.ch/2023/01/13/debakel-bei-mobiliar-wechsel-zu-sunrise-gestoppt/](https://insideparadeplatz.ch/2023/01/13/debakel-bei-mobiliar -switch-to-sunrise-stopped/)

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I don’t know the prices of the business subscriptions. But I think this is largely a question of negotiation and certainly depends on what other services and products are purchased from the respective provider. But I also think that if a company runs a business where good accessibility and network availability is important, you should be prepared to pay more.

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@rbrech

Swisscom Business Mobile subscriptions are more expensive than if you had a Swisscom private subscription

Mobile subscription has where you get up to CHF 30.00 per month if you have an internet subscription.

But it would be interesting to see exactly what kind of subscription is available to make a comparison.

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Installationen, Netzwerk, Internet, Computertechnik, OS Windows, Apple und Linux.

Hello @rbrech

The question is also when was the last offer received from Swisscom.

If the boss says it is too expensive and the offer is 6 years old, then he is making a false comparison.

Because you can’t calculate the price of an SME cell phone as x number of employees, at some point there will be discounts.

Every large company has a loyalty program somewhere where they may also offer mobile subscriptions and these are really cheap for what they include.

Greetings Lorenz

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No, Swisscom Business subscriptions are not generally more expensive and are often even cheaper than private customer subscriptions. But of course it can always be the case that the other providers offer competitive prices in order to win a customer. This is no different than in the private customer segment.

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So, I’m assuming around 50 subscriptions, since many people who work permanently at one location don’t have a mobile phone.

We currently have the Business Mobile M Basic subscription at Sunrise.

But I don’t know how much the company pays for it.

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@MagicMax I can confirm the problem, only Sunrise is very inflexible when it comes to early contract changes/termination due to poor reception quality.

I solved it like this: everything was redirected to my private cell phone (Swisscom). If reception is good then call via business telephone.

I’ve been waiting for 1.5 years for our department to switch back to Swisscom.

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It really seems to come down to negotiation. Or probably also how many cell phone connections should be offered. There may have been a lot of negotiations in my IT department about an umbrella organization. But, for example, the Natel go Swiss Premium subscription (flat rate data and calls in Switzerland) is so cheap at my Arbeitgeber that I can hardly imagine it being cheaper (I don’t know whether I should or can write the price here). The Neighbors and Europe variants are also really cheap.

Maybe your Arbeitgeber should make a current, tactically clever offer request. Maybe they just don’t want to…

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My Arbeitgeber also switched from Swisscom to Sunrise. SME (<50 subscriptions) and pays ⅓ (!!) as before with Swisscom, same services. Negotiations were held, unfortunately without success. I know of other companies that have the same problem and only got a good price from the competition. At the moment, Swisscom can apparently afford not to offer very good prices for SMEs because the competition unfortunately often has (sometimes massively) poorer coverage. Unfortunately, Wingo is only available for private customers

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@user109 wrote:

I solved it like this: everything was redirected to my private cell phone (Swisscom). If reception is good then call via business telephone.

Thanks for this tip! Since I have a dual SIM device, I will probably get a Swisscom prepaid SIM in the next few days and then forward the business number to this prepaid number. Of course I will put this prepaid SIM on the expense report with Arbeitgeber, it’s my own fault if those responsible don’t move their butts…

Top solution really!

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At our company we have Swisscom and Sunrise subscriptions. The main telephony system has always been with Sunrise and we have mobile subscriptions (Natel Go) with Swisscom. Since we have a special softphone solution in which the landline is forwarded to the cell phone and during Corona all around 250-300 employees used the solution, the costs exploded due to the Sunrise landline -> Swisscom mobile network. Sunrise was pretty clever and offered to offer connections for free if we ported our cell phone subscriptions to Sunrise.

Unfortunately, GL decided to do so at the time.

Since Sunrise was so terrible in our own building at our headquarters in Bern (even though there is an antenna nearby!), GL itself got upset about it and we ported the entire back office back to Swisscon. Unfortunately, the “normal” employees still have to make do with Sunrise and have fun with WiFi calling.

I can say the following about the prices. We belong to a larger company and have a total of over 2,500 subscriptions to Swisscom. We have pretty good prices for Natel Go. I can well imagine that the prices are more expensive with fewer subscriptions. Without mentioning the exact prices, I can say the following from my point of view:

Subscriptions with a telephony flat rate and 500 MB of data -> Sunrise is around CHF 4 cheaper per subscription

Subscriptions with CH Flat (telephony, SMS and mobile data limited to 100Mbit/s -> Swisscom is approx. CH 7 cheaper per subscription

Subscriptions with CH and Europe Flat -> Swisscom is around CHF 20 cheaper per subscription

It’s definitely worth requesting an offer.

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a month later

Hello everyone

@“x”#865892Go Prices:

- for clubs can be found via Google, for example. discounted Natel Go prices. Certain clubs (e.g. SAC, STV, others) offer their members Natel Go subscriptions at reduced prices (look for “Natel Go member shop”).

- There are different conditions for companies depending on their size and scope. In my experience, Sunrise comes in very cheaply (but also in my experience it doesn’t keep up with the performance).

- There are special conditions for cantons (agreement with the Swiss Computer Science Conference). I once worked for a canton and knew the prices at the time - they were incredibly cheap; With a little searching in Google you can even find them. But I can’t imagine any private company receiving these awards.

In my opinion, the Natel Go was the best subscription I’ve ever had. Performance is great, support (if necessary) is great. If anyone has any good input on how I can get one as a private individual, please send me a PM.

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7 months later

Unfortunately, no switch to Swisscom has been made to date.

Apparently the whole thing was discarded after the last negotiations and apparently the newly introduced limit of 60GB / month for high-speed data was also decisive.

Someone probably has no idea, 60GB works out easily, unless someone misuses their business cell phone subscription by, for example, all private data traffic being handled via this business subscription, including streaming at home.

Making calls on the Sunrise network is still a disaster, and I’m not even talking about the ultra-slow internet.

The joke: With Sunrise I probably can’t reach 60GB in a month, because at their speed the cell phone would probably have to download data non-stop for a month to get to 60 GB (in my home it’s “TOP” on the Sunrise network). Performance of around 0.5 to 0.9 MBit/s, Swisscom delivers a multiple of around 500 MBit/s).

I will continue to annoy those responsible because the performance is terrible until a switch to Swisscom is finally initiated, or at least to Salt. I tested the network performance with a prepaid SIM, it is a little worse than Swisscom, but it is in the acceptable range and is still several times better than the performance that Sunrise delivers. I’m really amazed that they still have customers.

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