Yeah but they used Nextel phones. I do remember that scene. It was a metal railroad boxcar buried out in the middle of the desert and the phone worked from inside. Obviously, the series' writers had never lived in the country. I'm in the hills of rural New Hampshire at the moment. No T-Mobile, no ATT, no GSM at all. Verizon is the only carrier with a usable signal and it comes and goes.

P.S. Yesterday I was in downtown Boston and my Telna phone flipped around between working, "No Access to Net", and "Unregistered SIM" at random intervals. Even turning it off and on did not always fix the problem.

Like the recent movie Battleship. Their depiction of space aliens was completely believable. Their depiction of the US Navy was completely beyond belief.

Telna has been doing various minor improvements. Has anyone tried them recently?

Only in the US. I'm about to send my Telna SIM on a Mediterranean cruise with friends. I recently tested both ends of their VoIP service: the inbound SIP address and the WiFi calling.

Stu, in my opinion, Telna's reliability has been questionable lately. There is no way I will depend on it as my primary sim when I travel. Even here in the US, gave it to my son to use. Most of the time he is not reachable. Even when the phone is showing full bars, one still gets a message that it's not reachable about 50% of the time. Had to dish it and give my son a TMobile payg sim.

Interesting who Pirahna seems more reliable than Telna inside the US. I have their SIP Client on my Android phone and it seems reliable. I have a virtual number which can receive SMSes set up as my virtual "mobile number." It simulrings Telna and iPhone. When I am at home, I use my Android as a cordless phone and save the minutes. It works well.

I'm probably going to be in Canada over the weekend. Telna dropped Telus roaming and only roams on Bell, but you can direct dial. I may give it whirl as an experiment. My wife is working in Alberta at least one week a month right now and I'm simply paying the extra $20 a month to ATT for Nation Plus Canada so it will be a pure experiment. My Canadian coverage is better than my US coverage. I roam on Rogers, Telus, and Bell. When coupled with our unlimited international data plans Canada feels like home until I try to buy something in a store and see that 15% HST. Then I feel like I'm in Chicago:)

My sim will not even register at all today. Even though I have turned the phone on/off about 4 times. I certainly do not plan on contacting them.

I'll probably get the Pirahna sim for my next trip, which is not till the end of the year.

Mine just registered immediately and rang my home phone with no problems. I'll get a better idea of how it works abroad when my friends return from their cruise in September.

Have you tried to manually select a network? If not try to select each available network at least 4 times until your phone registers on one. The reason for your phone not registering may be, that Telna like most operators, use roaming steering to force your handset onto that network on which they have the cheapest wholesale costs. In order to prevent your phone registering on another roaming partner's network they may refuse the first three requests for permission sent to their HLR as it is assumed that the first three attempts are part of your handsets automatic network selection process and that your handset will move to another network after three failures to register. However if their preferred roaming partner's network is unavailable at your location, steering may end in up your handset not registering at all.
Usually steering servers are configured to stop refusing permissions after the third denied request, thus you should try it four times manually to circumvent the steering mechanism.

So, signed-up for telna mobile and got the SIM card yesterday (I'm in Vancouver area, Canada) and SIM won't register on any networks. Called-in, they opened a "ticket". 24 hours later - still won't register. Supposed to be supported on Telus and Bell but neither will register using automatic or repeated manual attempts, phone reboots or power-cycles, always "SIM card registration failed" (automatic) or "no access" (manual). Called in again and gave them 24 hours to fix or I apply for a charge-back on my credit-card for the $19 plus shipping charges.