Again, café-cum-retailer Tchibo is selling its prepaid starter package including a SIM card and an UMTS surf stick for just EUR 29.95 (plus EUR 4.95 for delivery) to netbook and notebook users. The prepaid starter package does also include the flat rate tariff “Internet-Tages-Flatrate” for three single days. Usually, this flat rate tariff costs EUR 2.95 for every day the Tchibo customer is accessing the internet via GPRS or UMTS over the network of O2 Germany.

This is quite a bargain for netbook or notebook users looking for a new UMTS surf stick in order to access the internet on their way. The UMTS surf stick comes without SIM-lock and can at least be used with any other SIM card over the network of O2 Germany. In order to use it over the network of another German operator users must pay EUR 49.00 to unlock the UMTS surf stick.

However, the UMTS surf stick sold by Tchibo is not really up to date and does only support data transmissions with up to 3.6 mbps (download). The network of O2 Germany provides data transfer speeds of up to 7.2 mbps in areas with UMTS coverage. When a data volume limit of 1 GB is exceeded Tchibo slows down the maximum transfer speed to 64 kbps for the remaining hours of that day.

Tchibo offers three different mobile data price plans to netbook, notebook and smartphone users. A monthly flat rate tariff for mobile internet access called “Internet-Flatrate XL” is available for EUR 19.95 for a 30-day period. Data transfer speed will be reduced for the remaining days of a month when overstepping a data volume of 5 GB. A prepaid package of 500 MB data volume costs EUR 9.95 for four weeks. Without any flat rate tariff Tchibo customers are charged EUR 0.24 per megabyte when using mobile data services.

Overview of current prepaid plans for mobile internet access in Germany:
Prepaid Price Plans for Mobile Internet Access