Out of habit I stuck with the old plan of the Israeli cellular service provider Orange. According to this plan originating from 2000 I paid only for outcoming calls, no fixed monthly fee. When I switched from my old Nokia to new smartphone I got message from Orange that mobile data service is enabled for my account. I tried it once, it was so excruciatingly slow that I dropped any thought about using it. Still there was some passive data exchange from applications running on my smartphone and in the end of month I found that Orange charged me NIS 150 for about 40 MB, an outrageous rate. A brief conversation with smirking and rude Orange service representative only strengthened my impression that customer traps are part of Orange dubious service practices. I immediately closed account in Orange and switched to low-cost Golan Telecom plan, NIS 10/month:
9.90 ₪
100 minutes to israel and 55 countries
Unlimited SMS
100MB internet browsing
Tariff per minute: 0.18 ₪
MMS: 0.02 ₪
Mb: 0.09 ₪
One time handling fee: 49.00₪
Does not include premium numbers
SMS- up to 300 different numbers each billing cycle.
Orange’s mobile data rate NIS 4.069 per MB is about 40 times higher than that of Golan Telecom. Orange’s mobile phone rate (Tariff per minute: 0.904 ₪) is about 5 times higher than that of Golan Telecom.
Later on I switched to more expensive Golan plan (NIS 100) including browsing abroad and free calls from abroad to Israel – so far, so good. I tested it in Germany and Netherlands, no complaints on service, no overcharges.