I've sent an email to CS to ask for the availability of austrian numbers on Toggle, since they've recently launched lycamobile.at. Their answer is surprising, do they realy know about the other parts of their company?

BK


"Further to your email, we are sorry to inform you that currently we do not support Local number feature for Austria. We are always trying to add more countries to our local network hence we hope to be able to add Austria in the future.

We are sorry to say that at the moment we are unable to give you exact time frame for local network in Austria. However we have forwarded your comments to our respective department to explore the option with regards to your query and we will ensure that it will be done at the earliest.

If you would like to be informed about our latest news and offers please let us know and we will add you to our mailing list."

Hi bourbonkiller,

in general their left hand doesn´t seem to know what the right hand is doing.

See Belgian numbers (discussed a little earlier in this thread). Toggle actively promised they´d be available "in two weeks" at some stage. That was roughly 3 months ago, and so far: nothing!

I wouldn´t count on what their customer service guys say. I´m not saying it´s the agent´s fault (it´s not), but rather their internal communication seems to be non-existant.

Hence, while actually recommending this product to my friends, I always warn everyone to accept this card "as is", not counting on its reliability and always assuming it could go offline at any time.

It´s a pity, as the underlying idea is really great. But their approach leaves me worried enough not to turn this into my 1-and-only main SIM (unfortunately).

Rgds, Christian

Hey Christian,

you are right, a wonderful underlying idea with a mediocre operation. To me the card is quite reliable, never had too much of a problem calling out.

I haven't (or better stopped) given out the local numbers of the Toggle Sim to friends and business partners, therefor I do not know how reliable incoming calls are. I've opened a case with CS asking about the possibility of restoring ALL phonenumbers in case a Simcard dies or get lost. The answer has been quite frustrating! They can move all numbers to a new simcard, but not the one, the simcard has been registerred in the network at the last moment before you lost the sim or the simcard died. In my case, I am mostly in the Swiss network and I thought about printing the number on my business cards. But since this number can not be restored on a replacement sim in the event of damage or loss, it simply doesn't make sense. This is just for general knowledge of you guys and have stopped me from using Toggle as my primary SIM. This may change, when austrian numbers gets available, since I live in Austria (close to the swiss border) and would give me the opportunity to restore my swiss toggle number if anything happens to my sim card.

Have you checked lately about Belgian numbers? I've been checking frequently local number availability for the last weeks (for austrian numbers) and there ARE Belgium numbers available within the "my toggle" area. Belgium appears as the last in the drop down list, next to US!

BK

For me Belgium also shows, but I cannot actually obtain a number. All that shows is an error message "Country alias is invalid " - that´s it :/

Also, when logging in, the Belgian flag doesn´t appear next to the advertised countries.

Did anyone manage to actually get a number?

Ouch! Another reason not to rely on these guys.

I hope someone comes up with the same product, but implemented in a meaningful manner!

Lycamobile Italy has officially launched its Full MVNO activities on the Vodafone network. Maybe sometime in the future they'll add Italy as a 'local rates' country on Toggle Mobile. (Lyca numbers start with (+39) 351, as I told you in my previous posts)

Apparently Lycamobile hopes to launch in eight further markets by February 2014, including Canada and countries across Latin America and Asia.

Probably shouldn't take the date too seriously, but there will be more countries.

Just had a case recently that somebody simply returned a call to my UK toggle number displayed on his phone instead of dialing a local number. Caused him quite high bill. Since then I always try to ask callers whether they are calling a local number. Hopefully toggle will be at some time able to arrange for a local number to be displayed when calling numbers in that country.

September 16th? Just remembering because I´m in Belgium, and these Toggle/Lyca customer service guys really have no clue what their operative arm is doing.

At least some substance for this post: I asked whether it´s possible to de-activate service texts "welcome to country"... Reply: It´s not possible to de-activate them.

Rgds, Christian

Just FYI: https://twitter.com/ToggleMobile/sta...78202922979329

Anyone else seeing crippled caller IDs for incoming calls on the US number? When I receive calls from Germany on my American number the international code is being omitted.
E.g. a German caller with the MSISDN +49 157 12345678 is shown as +1 57 12345678 on my phone.

Hi inquisitor,

just tested for you. I receive calls from Switzerland on togglemobile just fine (for example +41761234567).

Did anyone manage to register a Belgian number?

Rgds,
Christian

Did you test on a US number?

Customer support has just called me back and obviously the issue of lacking country codes when being called on the US number has been resolved. By the way I was impressed that toggle supports call waiting, which not many prepaid operators do.
On that occasion I also asked for Belgian numbers since I'm also getting the "Country alias is invalid" message when trying to register such and the gentleman told me that Belgium should not appear on the website as it has not been launched yet as toggle country.
I also made them aware of Switzerland being called "Swiss" in the drop-down menu, after the retired senior marketing officer for toggle obviously didn't consider my long list of issues and proposals I sent her almost a year ago.

Hi inquisitor and everyone else. Yes the "Swiss" thing also somehow bothers me everytime I travel to Switzerland. It does seem a tad bit unprofessional. ;)

From what I can see though, everyone here at least seems to have a little better luck with Toggle customer service than I do. Any tips or pointers on how I can escalate things with them? I have emailed them, called them etc. and someone always promises to get back to me, but several days have gone by without any resolve whatsover for fairly straight forward issues. On the off-chance that they read these forums, (as I saw higher up), let's see if this can speed things up.

My first experience of roaming outside of one of the Toggle Mobile countries has been disapointing. I am in Mexico, and was receiving calls to my normal UK toggle number without problems. It works as advertised at 19p per incoming call which is all good. I then phoned them to specifically query how much I would get charged to recieve an incoming on my Spanish number (which incidentally was not working originally). I was assured that this would be charged the same though straight after this I was charged almost 20 pounds on a single incoming call (around 10 mins). Apart from the fact that it is contradictory to what I was told, this does not seem to match up with any pricing they have listed anywhere!

Does anyone else have experience of receiving a call on another local number while outside of the main Toggle countries? How much do you get charged at?

I do apologise for not being so active on this forum anymore. I do realise I am the one missing out!

You really should not believe what Toggle CSRs tell you...

That having been said, the service is pretty good as a basic Toggle 20-country-plus voice facility ...

+Steve :)

Hi Petkow,

toggle has never applied different inbound tariffs for any of the local toggle numbers, so it should not make a difference when you are being called on your British or Spanish number. That said your experience sound like a billing error.

Unfortunately I have no experience in non-toggle countries, but so far customer service has not only responded very quickly to me (usually <2h) but they have even called me back to make sure my issues have been resolved, which left me quite impressed.

I don't know if there's still a toggle representative following this thread since the lady who did it before does no longer work for toggle, but I would try it by email again.

Today, more than 4 months after Belgian numbers were promised for "next week", Belgium has been deleted from the dropdown-menu of possible countries.

Not sure if that´s a step forward or backwards, probably neither!?

And Switzerland is still listed as "Swiss". Why the hell has lycamobile built this sophisticated and innovative platform but then totally neglects its website and marketing? If they just gave some love to their website and actually explained the product properly immediately on the start page, they would increase sales dramatically.

And Switzerland is still listed as "Swiss". Why the hell has lycamobile built this sophisticated and innovative platform but then totally neglects its website and marketing? If they just gave some love to their website and actually explained the product properly immediately on the start page, they would increase sales dramatically.

When I have been within Toggle countries, I have always received calls as normal on any of my Toogle numbers free of charge. This I have tested with the German, "Swiss" and Spanish numbers. I also applied a USA number though have never received a call on that outside of the USA so no idea if it is free to receive or not. Unfortunately my experience suggests that when outside of any of the Toggle countries, you do not receive calls on any other local number (apart from the UK number) at the standard published rate. Worse still, there is absolutely no way of knowing what you will be charged. In my case, receiving a call in Mexico to my Spanish number was charged at almost 2 GBP per minute whereas calls to the UK number where charged at 0.19 GBP per call... regardless of length!! Quite a difference!

I just got back from my trip and unfortunately more than 10 days after receiving some misinformation and blatantly being overcharged 100 times the stated amount, Toggle still have not refunded. In summary, they let me down badly as based on the misinformation, I had planned a redirect from a few important Spanish incoming numbers, which did not work as planned. While I was there I received daily "cut-paste" emails from them saying they were "escalating" to this team or the other, but absolutely nothing resolved. Now they have just gone quiet.

Toggle is run on the network of Lycamobile. All things outside normal operation can work but may not. Plesse avoid asking the service special questions. :-)

Gesendet von meinem Cynus E1 mit Tapatalk

I would rather say: Everything that has not been tested by one of their customers may not work. Once a problem is reported and fixed (may take few weeks), it starts working for others in the same situation as well.

A friend of mine recently (Dec 2013) got a new Toggle-UK-SIM.

The SIM has several pre-defined country profiles in the Sim-Tool-Kit. To use any given number it still has to be activated via the website, just like before.

"Swiss" is now Switzerland. :)

The major problems remain: No number-porting, no international data-packages.

Interesting alternative (with its own problems which are different) is www.simquadrat.de (only attractive within the EU - all other countries are 99c/min)

Rgds,
Christian

Thanks for the update Chris.

I am very happy with my Toggle Sim. It works great. A dual sim phone is advised until they add data packages.

As an interesting aside, I gave a friend a Toggle SIM card with £10 credit on it for use when calling Poland from the UK - saved him a lot, and he used up £3 worth of credit.

He didn't register the card as I suggested, so when he visited Poland, it didn't access the Polish networks.

This is one interesting limitation of Toggle - useful to know.

(And yes, I have registered the SIM card for him now)...

+Steve :)

What do you mean by he didn't register the card? Didn't he run through the initial registration/activation process or did he just not register for a Polish number/IMSI?

Are you absolutely sure he used the Dutch Vodafone IMSI (called "Global" in the STK menu)? Did he also try to register on the Polish networks manually?

As far as I know there is no registration/activation process necessary in order to be able to use the card in the UK. You can receive calls there and as long as there is enough balance available, you can call and use data and SMS.

Out of UK no calls or data is possible without registering personal data with Toggle first. When a SIM is ordered online and paid using a credit card, mostly this at the same time registeres the SIM, being able to use it on foreign networks as soon as it is delivered.

It's as Peter Doo says - worked perfectly in the UK, but because he failed to register the SIM card online (I bought it on FleaBay) it didn't work. I DID tell him to register the card... :)

This may be interesting for users in the EU, and specifically in the German/Swiss border area:

base.de now offers a flatrate @ €28. Within EU+Switzerland+Liechtenstein+Iceland+Norway it includes:

• all incoming calls
• all outgoing calls to Germany
• 500 MB/month data at a fast speed
• all-you-can-surf after that, but at a lower speed

So if you get two of the above you can call, without limit, between those 2 numbers, throughout all of the EU!

Interesting for German users: You can port an exisiting German # to this SIM.

ALDI offers something similar: Prepaid, without flatrate, but incoming calls free.

I just ported my German # to Aldi to be able to receive calls on my "usual" number, in Switzerland, free of charge.

It´s a shame toggle doesn´t offer porting. Overall, there doesn´t seem to be any movement anymore. They just leave the product rotting away. It´s just such a pitty!

The new toggle SIM cards come with a couple of IMSI's in them, and Sweden for example is missing, and when I try to activate a Sweden IMSI I get a message "local imsi is not greater than max imsi index". Can we go to Sweden and be on the "romaing" profile, or is there another trick for that? Can anybody confirm this for me please?

Anyone use/test Toggle in the USA?
 

Has anyone used or tested Toggle in the USA?
How has it been. What network[s] does it use?

I used them quite a bit on my last trip accross the pond (January 2014). Worked very well both for incoming and outgoing. I made several lengthy outgoing calls to US phones at 3p/min as well calls back to Spain, UK and Germany (all at 3p/min to landlines). A good product overall.

In terms of network I think it was T-Mobile. Only one thing to note however. Initially it did not work at all when I had the "Automatic" mode selected from the Toggle menu. (I really do not know why...) Its only when I went into the Toggle menu and selected the USA IMSI that I managed to connect to a network. Strangely, the "Roaming" IMSI does not register with any local carrier.

That's with intent. Once you register a local IMSI roaming through the "Roaming" IMSI is blocked for that particular country (this has actually been implemented only in early 2012).
As mentioned earlier in this thread the "Roaming" IMSI comes from Vodafone Netherlands and so any airtime generated using the Roaming IMSI must be bought from them. In contrast local IMSIs come from the numerous Lycamobile subsidiaries which can buy the same airtime at significantly lower wholesale tariffs than the earlier because from a technical point of view using local IMSIs is no more roaming but covered by Lycamobile's MVNO wholesale agreement with the local MNO partner.
That said toggle has no choice but to charge higher tariffs when using the Roaming IMSI. Given that most subscribers won't understand the technical background of this multi-IMSI solution there is a significant risk of subscribers using the Roaming IMSI (in particular because the SIM toolkit application does not work reliably on all handsets and so automatic IMSI switching will not work always as in your case) but to expect being charged the local IMSI tariffs.
By disabling roaming through the Roaming IMSI for those countries you have a local IMSI from this risk of unexpected substantially higher charges is eliminated while also increasing revenues of Lycamobile's local subsidiaries.

Thanks Inquisitor for that very detailed reply. The particular problem I experienced was I was coming into the USA from Mexico where I had the "Roaming" profile selected (as they do not have a local IMSI option there). Understandibly (by your explanation) the phone did not register in the USA on this profile. I then put the phone to "Auto", thinking it would automatically change the IMSI to the USA one but this also did not work.. so the only thing left to do is manually select USA in the toolkit option. Out of habit now, I always my phone in manual and then manually select the required IMSI.

Interesting point about the Lycatel MVNO under each local IMSI. As a side thought, I wonder if calling any of the Toggle numbers are counted as Lycatel (LycaMobile) numbers in their current promotion of free calls to other Lycamobile numbers: http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8457
If so this could indeed be a very interesting extension to the Toggle roaming product. Has anybody got a normal LycaMobile SIM to try that out on?

Auto works for me here in the US and everywhere else I have traveled. But it can take a long time, like 5-15 minutes before it finally registers. Once it has registered, if I turn the phone off and back on it seems to re-register faster.

Reliability of the automatic IMSI switching very much depends on each handset's STK implementation. So this is rather a question of which device you use than which country you are staying in.

@ petkow

I have tried to call my swiss toggle number with my swiss lycamobile sim and it does not recognise the toggle number as a lyca own number. By the way, this is in line with the information of the lycamobile hotline which told me that it will not be charged as on net call of lyca mobile.

While using my toggle SIM in Germany using its local IMSI yesterday, I could not connect to the voice mailbox by dialing the short code 121, as this failed with the announcement that "the number is invalid".
Dialing the long number (+44 7438 646121) did however work. Obviously the short code (121) does not work in Germany.

EDIT: Customer service has just informed me that short codes won't work outside the UK. It's not very far-seeing to store the short code instead of the full international number on their SIM cards and to include only the short code in voicemail notifications, especially not for a product that is addressing frequent travellers.

Anyway I would prefer if we could completeley disable voicemail.

I called the CS immediatelly after receiving the SIM. They have disabled the voice mail after requesting that. It has never answered any call since.

The short code to disable the voice-mail is the same as the lyca one.

I think it was *185#, but you can verify this on the website.

I sent an email asking to have voicemail disabled - and it is!


Along the D/CH border I tried "automatic" IMSI select extensively. On my crappy C2-00 phone it just crashes the phone and doesn´t work.

So my procedure at the border now is: Manual select, phone off, phone on.

What I find most annoying are the then-following confirmation SMS "welcome to", which cannot be de-activated. That´s ~6 SMS every day, with no value whatsoever. :/