Creating comparison chart of rates for all Swiss landline and VOIP operators to a selected international destination using comparis.ch

2009-01-22

Switzernet

Follow the instructions to retrieve the data

Go to http://www.comparis.ch/

Click on the comparison of landline operators:

Choose either a comparison across VOIP operators (the 1^st option) or across all classical landline operators (the 2^nd option without selecting any operator). We must collect (and merge in future) the data retrieved from both places:

For a call made from a VOIP operator, select your international destination and type of the destination network, i.e. mobile or fixed line:

The same selection shall be made in case of calls made from a Swiss landline operator: choose the international destination (with the type: mobile or fixed line):

For calls from Swiss landline operators to India fixed lines you will have such a list:

For calls from Swiss landline operators to India mobiles you will have the following a list:

If we choose comparison of calls made via Swiss VOIP operators, then for calls toward India fixed lines we will have the following list (the true Switzernet rate will enter into force in 48h). Pay attention that the header of the table indicates that calls are made from VOIP and that the list of operators is now different:

Similarly can be displayed a comparison of VOIP operators for calls to India mobiles:

In order to create a full comparison of all Swiss operators (VOIP and landlines) toward a certain international destination with the mobile and fixed line rates, we therefore must rely on four tables retrieved from four different menus of comparis.ch.

Before starting copying the tables, there are two important points to pay the attention on.

At the end of the page you may see a drop down menu for the display mode. By default this menu is set to standard view mode. Presence of this menu indicates that there are too many entries and only a subset of operators is shown.

You must obligatorily change the setting from the standard mode to the extended mode, and the full list of operators will be displayed:

Another setting to change is the duration of the call. As comparis.ch suggests, the costs shall be compared for calls with durations of 1m31s in order to keep into account all factors affecting on the cost of the call. This permits to show whether the operator uses rounding of call duration, or whether the operator applies other “hidden” fees.

comparis.ch indique tous les frais, càd et les frais d'installation et le coût des unités téléphoniques, comme p.ex. l'unité à 10 centimes de Swisscom. Les tarifs indiqués peuvent donc différer des prix par minute publiés par les opérateurs.

C'est surtout pour les appels de courte durée qu'il faut de savoir si l'opérateur facture l'appel à la seconde près ou par unité de 30 secondes par exemple. Dans ce dernier cas, il arrive souvent de payer 15 secondes de trop pour chaque appel. Pour ne pas tomber dans ce "piège", vous pouvez entrer comme durée 1 minute 31 secondes. Cette durée ne favorise aucun des opérateurs utilisant une méthode de décompte basée sur le temps.

Beaucoup d'opérateurs facturent en plus une durée minimale. Ainsi, même si vous n'avez téléphoné qu'une seconde, vous pouvez payer 30 secondes. Ca peut devenir important si vous appelez souvent une destination chère et que, là-bas, vous ne tombez que sur un répondeur.

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We must therefore retrieve costs of calls with durations of 1m31s and from there only compute the rates per minute. In the drop-down menu at the end of the page we must select the duration of “1 minute 31 seconds” and then redisplay the page again. By the way this is the average call duration to Swiss mobiles (even though this duration may appear too short):

The header of the table will indicate now the changed duration:

Do not forget to check whether the display mode (shown at the bottom of the page) is extended or standard (must be always extended in order to show all operators).

Comparis.ch always displays two tables. The first one concerns calls during weekdays, and the second one concerns calls during the weekends. The list of operators is the same in both tables, but they may appear reordered (due to different rates). We are interested only in the first table, therefore the second one we can always ignore (note however that the display mode’s drop-down menu is at the end of the second table, but it applies to both tables).

We are now ready to copy the tables and paste them into MS Word for further retrieval of pure numerical data. Select a table with an empty line above and an empty line below, exactly as shown in the screenshot:

The following instructions describe the retrieval, formatting and processing of data for bringing the entries into a useful format (e.g. for importing into an Excel document, for further advanced comparisons, and for visualizations). Each step that will follow is accompanied with a link to the corresponding version of the intermediary file. Click on the link to see the corresponding intermediary result.

Copy and paste the interested tables into a word document. In our example the word document contains four tables: for calls from Swiss VOIP to India fixed, from Swiss VOIP to India mobiles, from Swiss landlines to India fixed, and from Swiss landlines to India mobiles [doc].

Select the tables and remove the spacing between the cells [doc].

The setting is in Table – Properties – Options panel:

There are tiny rows between the rows containing operator names. You must remove them. Select the tables and specify a row height equal to 0.4 cm. The tiny rows become visible. Remove all intermediary rows [doc].

The setting is in Table – Properties – Row panel:

Remove all rates of specific hours for the operators having peak and off-peak time periods (select these cells and press Delete). Merge the cells (Table – Merge Cells) into a single sell with the main default peak-time rate [doc].

Use the show special symbols button of the MS-Word menu in order to make sure that all spaces and non-digit symbols are removed from the cells containing the rates.

Remove the useless columns and keep only the columns containing the operator name and the rate [doc].

Select the entire tables and remove a table width and column width options so as to auto-size the tables according to width of the content [doc].

Remove in subscription names all return symbols and replace them by “ - ”. Use the show/hide special symbols button of MS-Word menu to catch the line break symbols [doc].

You can now copy-paste the tables into an Excel file [xls].

Use VLOOKUP function to bring the mobile rates next to the landline rates for each operator [xls].

Copy the four tables’ values-only into a new sheet, without conserving the formatting. Name the tables (see the screenshot), and use VLOOKUP for collecting data from the four tables “voip_proper”, “voip_mobile”, “landline_proper”, “landline_mobile” [xls].

Below is the list of names used four the four tables:

Attention, If you name wrong areas, you have to delete the entire sheet and restart.

Create labels with names of the operators but max 20 symbols. Sort the operators (landline and VOIP mixed together) according to their average rate. Create a chart [xls].

Format the chart [xls]: