I feel like every two years I need to call my carrier and complain if I want a decent deal. They will do things like upgrade my plan on their website to have 10 extra gigabytes of data but won’t upgrade me to it until I contact them. There’s also all the new member exclusive deals that I feel make it impractical to just sit on one plan for an extended period of time.
Unlimited calls/texts and 5GB in Germany is currently around 8,99€/28d on prepaid (incl. VAT). Yet Germany is one of the more expensive countries in the EU. Prepaid plans from most other EU countries would likely not be cheaper but include more data. E.g. 3 Austria has a postpaid plan for 12,99€/m that includes 40 GB of data and unlimited calls/texts (that’s randomly the first provider I looked at).
Back in Germany, you can also get super-expensive postpaid plans with a device included of course. Economically, for private users that usually makes no sense though. These plans are often used for corporate phones or by people who want bragging rights.
(On the flip side, I guess the pricing pressure may be part of what apparently drives telecom companies to outsource even more of their business functions here than they do in the US.)
You don’t need to sell me on Germany. I’d move there in an instant if I had the resources.
Sorry if my comment came across overly braggy. Couldn’t help myself.