billag is the company in charge of billing consumers for the monthly radio & television fees in switzerland . in switzerland everybody who owns a television is supposed to pay these quite substantial fees, and it does not matter if their tv is even hooked up to receive public television as it may only be used to watch dvds or play games.
recently billag has announced, that in the near future all owners of computers will also get charged these radio & tv fees, because with the advances in technology they could be receiving public television via streams. in the meantime things have evolved and it became clear that from a legal standpoint this wont be possible. but is it not amazing that they even tried?
meanwhile they are actively driving through neighborhoods trying to catch offenders who dont pay the fees and are watching tv anyway. just a few days ago one of my neighbors got caught this way and will now get billed a few years back. dont they have better things to do? for instance produce a better quality public television…
k-tip, the swiss monthly magazine for consumer rights, has published a study showing that all the 3 swiss mobile phone companies are charging about double as much in call fees as the rest of europe. compared to austria with similar topographical problems (in the alps) all the prices are a minimum of 99% higher. one explanation is that the market got opened relatively late with formerly state controlled swisscom keeping monopoly till 1999. then the 3 competitors pushed prices down for a short while, but since then not much has moved. sounds like a lobby to me… [link to the article: here user: k-tipp password: handy] [and here’s a questionaire re: mobile phone companies as pdf]