Back story: Austria is one of the most competitive countries as far as mobile phone plans go. There were three big companies, A1 (previously state-owned, a bit similar to AT&T), One (now Orange, owned by French Telecom) and Max (now T-Mobile, owned by German Telecom). In 2003 a new company, Hutchinson 3 (branded as "Drei") emerged. Backed by (for a small country like Austria) seemingly unlimited money from Hutchison Whampoa they built a completely new network (again: Austria is pretty small). They only cared about getting customers and started a price dumping war with the other three players.
In 2007 Hutchison 3G introduced a new kind of mobile plan called Sixback. Because of the - in their opinion - high termination fees they offered 6 (Euro-)cents per minute on incoming calls from the three other providers. In Europe you don't pay for incoming calls like you do in America, but getting paid for incoming calls was new. The plan became quite popular, there have been reports of peoply having over two dozen SIM cards from other providers just so they could "load" their Sixback plan using the free minutes from the other plans and then transferring the money via a 0900 number. (0900 is the area code for phone sex and similar numbers where you pay a lot of money per minute and the receiver of the call receives most of that money).
Of course the other providers hated Hutchison 3 for that plan, but that quickly turned around when the regulation body lowered the termination fee, so that every Sixback call now loses money for Hutchison 3. They don't offer that plan anymore, but there are lots of customers who still have that plan and obviously refuse to be switched to a newer plan.
Back story: Austria is one of the most competitive countries as far as mobile phone plans go. There were three big companies, A1 (previously state-owned, a bit similar to AT&T), One (now Orange, owned by French Telecom) and Max (now T-Mobile, owned by German Telecom). In 2003 a new company, Hutchinson 3 (branded as "Drei") emerged. Backed by (for a small country like Austria) seemingly unlimited money from Hutchison Whampoa they built a completely new network (again: Austria is pretty small). They only cared about getting customers and started a price dumping war with the other three players.
In 2007 Hutchison 3G introduced a new kind of mobile plan called Sixback. Because of the - in their opinion - high termination fees they offered 6 (Euro-)cents per minute on incoming calls from the three other providers. In Europe you don't pay for incoming calls like you do in America, but getting paid for incoming calls was new. The plan became quite popular, there have been reports of peoply having over two dozen SIM cards from other providers just so they could "load" their Sixback plan using the free minutes from the other plans and then transferring the money via a 0900 number. (0900 is the area code for phone sex and similar numbers where you pay a lot of money per minute and the receiver of the call receives most of that money).
Of course the other providers hated Hutchison 3 for that plan, but that quickly turned around when the regulation body lowered the termination fee, so that every Sixback call now loses money for Hutchison 3. They don't offer that plan anymore, but there are lots of customers who still have that plan and obviously refuse to be switched to a newer plan.