Overview:
In Germany, supermarket chains REAL and DM, to be found in many cities and villages in Germany, offers a prepaid GSM/GPRS/UMTS SIM card from "CONGSTAR". In addition to reasonably prices voice calls (10 cents a minute to all fixed and wireless destinations in Germany and 10 cent for each SMS to Germany), the SIM card offers an attractive prepaid Internet access for low to medium usage.

CONGSTAR Prepaid is a subsidiary company from T-Mobile - and offers, next to Vodafone, a superior network coverage. In addition, EDGE is available almost countrywide.


Price:
The price per megabyte is 0.35 Euros and is billed in intervals of 10 kb. Congstar doesn't advertise this price on its website and it's actually quite hidden in a downloadable PDF price sheet. This a bit more than other MVNO's such as Simyo, Blau or Alditalk which use the GSM/UMTS network of ePlus. Nevertheless, it is an interesting alternative for eMail and web browsing with mobile devices as the amount of data required for such activities is low and the network coverage of the T-Mobile network is far superior to the network coverage of ePlus.

The SIM card itself can be bought in any REAL discouter for €9,99 with €5 prepaid balance or online at the Congstar website.

Note: The 0.35 Euros per MB tariff is valid until 31st December 2008and it is not known at this time if it will revert to the old tariff (9 cents per minute) or stay the same or if a completely new price tariff is offered. In other words, stay tuned in for possible changes.

How to buy Top up Cards:
You can buy Top up Cards in each REAL- and extra-markets. The Top-Up-Code is printed directly to the Bill - so ask the cashier. Top ups are also available at 'DM' stores.

Activation:
The card must be activated online http://www.congstar.de/ (then 'PREPAID' and 'SIM freischalten'). No German bank account or German passport number is needed if bought in a store. Buying the SIM card online, however, requires a German bank account.

Misc:

• All services are open, e.g. web surfing, SMTP and POP3
• APN:internet.t-mobile
  
• Username:t-mobile (usually not needed)
  
• Password:tm (usually not needed)
  
• T-Mobile has full EDGE-Coverage and HSDPA in many areas.
• To check the account *100# or call 9577
• Hotline 324444 (0,49€ per Minute)
• Complete Pricelist (PDF)
• Network Coverage (GSM / EDGE / UMTS/HSDPA)
• VoiceMail (free of charge) call 4712