hey guys welcome back to how to switzerland
sarah here today and in today's video i'm going to be talking all about cell phones in switzerland
so this video is actually episode number five in our series called switzerland basics so this
series is dedicated to those of you watching that are in the process of moving to switzerland or
you're planning on moving to switzerland or you're thinking about moving to switzerland
and you want the real basic information in today's video i'm going to be talking all about
cell phones because obviously this is something that is one of the first things that you need to
get sorted out when you move here i know whenever i make a move to a new country
within the first 24 hours i'm making sure that i get a cell phone plan all up and running
and i know that when you're in the stress of moving you can sometimes jump into quick
decisions and then you can later regret it and it can be kind of hard to change it sometimes
or a real pain or expense to change it so i hope with this video you can make a better uh educated
cell phone decision when you first move here so today's video is gonna be you guys in three parts
first i'm going to be talking about the device the hardware what you need to know about that
second i'm going to be talking about plans and the carriers and then at the end i'm going to
mention what you should do if you are a tourist in switzerland you're not moving here you're just
traveling and i'll put in the time stamp here if you just want to skip ahead to that part so part
one the phone itself what do you need to know well the main question most people ask themselves is
i already have a phone can i bring it to switzerland can i use it there is it going to work
and of course this is the best thing you can do if you already have a phone um i'm sure that you
do if you're watching this video you're probably watching it on a phone so it's silly for me to say
um but if you have a cell phone already yes you can bring it to switzerland and use it here
but only if it is unlocked so if you live in the united states and you have a plan with a t
and in your contract it says that that cell phone will only work with a t or only work with a t
until you've been a customer for two years you need to look into those details if you are not
sure if your phone is unlocked or not please find us out before you come to switzerland before you
leave the country because if it is locked they might your carrier might be able to help you but
once you're overseas they're not going to be able to help you a whole lot with getting your phone
unlocked so figure out if your phone is locked or not call your carrier ask them if they say it is
locked figure out if there is a way that you can get it unlocked you might have to pay a little bit
of money to get it unlocked and sometimes that can be worth it but look into that first so the next
option if your phone is locked and your carrier says it will not work in switzerland it only works
on a t or sprint or whatever and uh you decide then to say sell that phone and come here without
a phone and you need to get a new one let me tell you the best way to do that of course you can get
cell phones directly from the cell phone carriers but you guys you know i'm a budget girl i i try to
be sustainable i try to you know be financially responsible and that's why i'm definitely going
to not recommend to you to go out and just buy a brand new phone what i would recommend and
again this is not sponsored but go to revendo.ch this is a really really great company that sells
second-hand uh cell phones they sell all sorts of apple products samsung products basically like the
the kind of electronics that people actually want um they're a great company i bought two iphones
from them one laptop and two apple watches so i have a lot of experience as a customer
paying customer of this company and i definitely would recommend them so i have an iphone 7 plus
only paid a couple hundred bucks for this and it works amazingly well so i would recommend
that you go online to revendo.ch or they also have stores get yourself a phone they'll all
be unlocked they'll all be ready to go and then you can take that unlocked phone and go and find
your plan okay third option you're like sarah my phone is locked i can't use it i don't want a
secondhand phone because i want the latest and the greatest phone let me tell you what your option is
of course you can straight up buy it from the cell phone company you can walk in and pay your 1 000
1000 swiss francs for your latest iphone you can just buy it outright and then it will be
unlocked or what most people tend to do is they go to the cell phone carrier they pick out a phone
nowadays i think you can put basically no money or like one swiss franc down as a down payment and
then they will divide up the price of the phone and bill you for that with your cell phone bill
so say you're paying 50 bucks a month for your cell phone service they will then add the 50
or 50 francs a month uh to it to pay off your iphone if you don't pay it all in once and uh
sorry the personal finance in nerd in me just has to say that i wouldn't recommend
this even though this is very popular because say it takes you two years to pay off that 1000
uh swiss franc iphone at the end of the two years guys it's gonna be worth absolutely nowhere near
what you paid for it that's called depreciation that phone will have depreciated a whole lot
and the most you'll be able to get for it is like a couple hundred francs if you're lucky
so just go directly and buy secondhand sorry i gotta i gotta push a sustainability circular
economy and saving money okay i'm gonna put this down i'm like waving this phone around
so the next thing you have your device next thing to do is find a carrier so in
switzerland you have three major carriers that you will hear everybody talk about and they are
salt sunrise and swisscom so in my personal opinion it seems like most swiss people are
heavily biased towards swisscom and if you tell them that you don't want to go with swisscom
a lot of people look at you like you're crazy that's what happened to me anyways um but yeah
those are the three main carriers and most swiss people will probably tell you to go with swisscom
but it is the most expensive one so those are the three main carriers they will also be the more
i guess normal price higher price carriers but they do they do have a few budget carriers in
switzerland as well you can get a cell phone from aldi i think even from liesl from cope from negro
there's a lot of smaller um other not smaller companies but less popular cell phone carriers out
there and actually most of these small companies they buy access to the swisscom um cell phone
tower network coverage so you're often getting the exact same coverage just without the name brand
so of course this part is pretty personal and up to you how much you want to pay every single
month what kind of plan you are looking for but my personal recommendation guys would be to go for an
unlimited everything plan these are pretty popular in switzerland so that means you can get unlimited
data calls and text messages for one flat fee and i would really recommend this because although it
might sound more budget friendly to get like the 19 franc a month plan you're going gonna
get nickeled and dimed if you go over on your um wireless data or you go over on your phone
calls and those bills can really add up so in my personal experience here and i'm a girl who's done
that i've done like the budget plan thinking i'm gonna save money and then i end up getting a bill
that is much higher than if i would have just gone for the unlimited everything plan so you probably
want to look at the unlimited everything plans and these range from let me see here what do we say
about 40 francs on the low end from aldi and salt and about up to 65 on the high end from
sun or from swisscom and sunrise so these are unlimited everything within switzerland you can
expect to pay anywhere between 40 francs and 65 francs but again that is only within switzerland
this will add up if you want to add europe um the rest of europe north america or other countries
i have to point that out though that is one of the downsides of switzerland since 2017 all europeans
anyone in the eu or eea does not get charged data roaming anymore so if you are german and you have
a german cell phone plan and you go to france you don't have to worry about paying more money
because you're in france people in the eu really get a nice perk there but here in switzerland we
are not a part of any of those agreements so if you have a swiss cell phone plan and you go to
germany you can expect to be charged roaming at my plan at sunrise it's one frank 90 per day for
like a limited amount of data and phone calls but that has really worked for us okay another thing
you need to keep in mind when you're picking out a cell phone plan is your age so in switzerland
if you are under 30 you will be able to benefit from a good amount of discounts most cell phone
carriers do have a special price for people under 30 which is really nice because i know in a lot of
places you have to be like a student to get a discount or stuff like that but most of
the carriers here will offer you a discount if you're under 30 which is really nice so since i'm
under 30 i do get a discount so i have a plan at sunrise and i get 10 bucks off every single month
the plan i have is unlimited everything normally costs 65 francs but i only pay 55 which is really
nice and i also get some other benefits so this is something you can ask about what additional
benefits come with signing up with them so for me since i'm under 30 and i have a plan at sunrise
i get for example 50 off my sbb half fare and that's like a 90 franc value every single year
which is really nice so that's the half fare that gives you half off public transportation the cell
phone company covers half of it and i can actually then pay that um in my cell phone bill if i want
it's like five or eight bucks a month not a lot at all so those are basically my recommendations
when you're picking out a plan make sure you see if there are any discounts you can qualify for
try to go for an unlimited everything so you don't have any unexpected bills and the last thing that
you really need to keep in mind especially if you are new in switzerland you are an expat here
you're just immigrating here please get yourself a no contract plan you want to ask about contract
terms you have to be really careful about this because i've made this mistake before
um and i didn't realize i had signed like a three-year cell phone contract
and then to get out of it it cost me almost 400 swiss francs to get out of this contract
so again i'm going to keep talking about sunrise because that's what we have but in my cell phone
plan it is a no contract plan i can cancel at any time so if i leave the country or another
carrier comes out with a better price i can switch very easily so i would recommend to
you especially if you're new here because you don't know if things are going to change if
your situation is going to change and you might have to leave you don't want to have to cancel a
bunch of cell phone plans you know to the tune of like 400 swiss francs per line so just be careful
about contract terms ask for no contract if it's possible so let's say you did your research about
cell phone plans i would definitely recommend that you look that up online and get all your
information most of the carriers let you just really simply pick your pan
pick your plan and then you can just click and they'll mail you a sim card and you can
pop it in your unlocked uh phone or they'll mail you the phone with the sim card very very easy
to get started i would recommend that you do all the signing up online just because in those stores
sometimes it can take very long to get things done you guys know how it is if you've ever been in a
cell phone store it can be a little bit stressful of an experience and often people want to upsell
you and they want to encourage you to like add a tv and add your internet and all that kind of
stuff and you might end up getting up sold into a plan so i definitely recommend go online i can
recommend sunrise what we use they have a really really easy sign up process again no contracts
great discounts great perks and when it comes to coverage i find that i haven't had any kind of
issue even though swiss people will probably tell me that sunrise doesn't have as good of coverage
as swisscom i've never had an issue at all so that's about it for if you are moving here that is
all that you need to know i hope that helped you understand what you can expect to pay and what you
should look for but let's say you are visiting switzerland for a week or a week and a half
um what do you need to do to have a cell phone to be connected it's obviously really important
when you're traveling to be able to get online to look things up to be able to make phone calls
so the first thing that i would recommend is that you look at your current cell phone carrier so say
you have a t or verizon or whatever talk to them and see if you can set up a plan before you come
and visit europe or switzerland because if you just come over here and start making calls and
using internet data you can really get a very high cell phone bill so definitely see if there's
something that you can add on to your plan for the week or for the month um before you come
over here that's going to be your absolute best bet and if your cell phone company doesn't have
an option like that or it's too expensive bring your phone and get a local sim card when you get
here so you can just pop into any cell phone store you can pop into sunrise you'll see sunrise stores
everywhere salt stores or swisscom store and buy yourself a prepaid sim card that has data on it
and everything like that it's not going to be like dirt cheap but i think it's a good option
to get yourself connected while you are here and avoid super high roaming charges
but again your phone needs to be unlocked if you come over here with a locked phone and you
spend 50 bucks on a sim card and you put it in it's not going to work and that's going to be
really frustrating for everybody so make sure if you are coming over that you have at least
one unlocked phone for your trip you know when matias and i travel we don't ever really
use data on two phones we just get it on one so one person can kind of navigate
and all of that but you're not gonna have a problem with like finding a place to get a sim
card or having network coverage or anything like that switzerland has really really good network
coverage i actually read that switzerland has the highest amount of smartphones per capita probably
every single person in this country close to every single person in this country has one
so there is a lot of cell phone coverage everywhere you go all right you guys
that is it for today's video i will link some of the stuff i talked about in the description box
down below to help you find prepaid cards and plans and phones and all that kind of stuff if
you have any specific questions leave them in the comments i will do my best to answer them
otherwise for all the swiss people watching please help people out in the comments that have
questions i think it's really awesome when you guys are able to kind of help each other and help
us with answering the questions so that's it for today's video and i'll talk to you guys soon bye
you