Here comes some more experience with toggle:

Although local numbers may expire the related local IMSIs seem to remain active forever. So despite you may have lost your local number, your toggle SIM will still use the local IMSI to register on the local network and you will be charged "local rates" even if your local number has expired long time ago. So there is no need to re-activate a local number if you don't need a local number but only seek the lower local rates.

Although the tiny state of Liechtenstein has its own cellular networks (MCC 295) and despite toggle lists quite expensive rates for Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein is being treated as Switzerland by toggle.
On the one hand that means if you have a Swiss IMSI you will get the cheap local rates also in Liechtenstein. On the other hand, however, you cannot roam using the "Roaming" IMSI anymore but you must use the Swiss IMSI which can only register on "swisscom FL" (295-01) (once you have a Swiss IMSI registration through the Roaming IMSI is rejected by all Liechtenstein networks (FL1, Orange FL, swisscom FL)).
This is very likely a side effect of the fact that swisscom offers free roaming between Liechtenstein and Swisscom for their customers from both countries. By the way the Swiss swisscom network, which is Lycamobile Switzerland's physical home network, uses 228-01 as MCC/MNC-tuple, so Liechtenstein and Switzerland have at least different virtual Radio Access Networks (which however probably both use the same core network).

Toggle's text messages are still full of grammatical and typographical errors. The SMS providing written APN settings as well as their website still say "Swiss" instead of "Switzerland" while the earlier SMS clarifying call rates gives the correct country name just to be followed by a double flaw: "Welcome to Switzerland. Its costs £0.28/min....".
By the way, why doesn't toggle send those APN settings as OTA SMS so the phone can take these settings automatically after user approval? It's pretty stupid to send APN settings as plain human-readable SMS when there's a so much more convenient way.

Toggle's STK application does not work at all on a Nokia Asha 210 DualSIM. My phone did neither register automatically on any Austrian network for 30 minutes nor did it on any network available in Liechtenstein (which includes all the Swiss networks beaming from the surrounding mountains) although it was in automatic IMSI selection mode (set in the STK menu) as well as in automatic network selection mode (set in the phone settings).

Thanks, Inquisitor, for all the details you keep providing! Very interesting!

I have a problem with toggle: For a few days now I do not receive my mTANs from my bank when trying to effect a transaction. That´s text-messages to my German Toggle#.

I rebooted the phone, logged it into the Swiss and German networks, all to no avail.

I do receive all other text messages, both from other mobiles and from internet sites.

The bank (DiBa) sais that they do not have generel problems in this regard.

It´s odd - any idea of what I could do short of changing the number with DiBa?

Thanks for any possible ideas,
Rgds, Christian

I would rather assume an issue with your bank's SMS routing. These bulk SMS service providers which banks and other online services use for SMS delivery often fail to deliver SMS to full MVNOs (such as Lycamobile/toggle) as they either don't have a working route to the corresponding network or because of failing number lookups on the porting database which reveals to which network each single number belongs. It would be interesting to see if German Lycamobile subscribers can receive SMS from your bank which would allow to isolate Lycamobile Germany or toggle as point of failure. But that's obviously impossible from your bank account.
In any case you should complain again with your bank and tell them that you strongly suspect an issue with their SMS provider when delivering SMS to Lycamobile Germany, which is a full MVNO and so requires individual interconnection.

Thanks a lot!

I´ll get back to the bank in any case.

Seems I forgot to mention a pretty important piece of information: It worked since I have my toggle#, and just stopped working 2 days ago.

At first I hoped it´d fix itself after a while, now I´m starting to get worried.

I´ll bug the bank and wait another few days, then I´ll just change the SMS-destination. :/

Thanks again, Inquisitor, for your professional insight!

Tried again today, and it´s working now.

Bit of a strange feeling to maybe not being able to effect a transfer, or receive all kind of SMS. :/

Rgds, Christian

Hi Chris,
We could help you with the issue?
Can you please explain the issue you are facing with SMS ?

best,
toggle team

Hi Toogle Team,

good to see you here.

The following would be nice:

• option to disable "welcome to (country)" messages (i commute each day, 6 mssgs every day are annoying!)
• (serious) data packages
• option to port numbers from each possible country to (and from!) the sim
• numbers from Belgium (as promised about a year ago :p)

I have a feeling that your product could be a really serious mass-market-product, especially for business customers. But in order to be the same it would need above features (except Belgian numbers ;))

New lower European regulatory price caps will be force from 1st July 2014, so what will Toggle's new GBP prices be? The price caps are specified in EUR without VAT in Articles 8(2), 10(2) and 13(2) of Regulation (EU) No 31/2012, and in order to convert the price caps to GBP, the EUR/GBP exchange rate is calculated in accordance with Article 1(7) by taking the average of the exchange rates published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 1st March 2014, 1st April 2014 and 1st May 2014, which is 0.82581. Consequently the price caps will be £0.1569/min for outgoing calls, £0.0495 for outgoing SMS and £0.1652/MB for data. UK VAT of 20% is then added when roaming inside the EU VAT area, but not when roaming in parts of the European Economic Area that are outside the EU VAT area, specifically Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Åland Islands, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, in accordance with Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992. The United Kingdom opted to exempt non-EU VAT area roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 ("the Sixth VAT Directive") so that it could impose UK VAT on services used in the UK but billed outside the UK (e.g. US-based services marketed to UK residents).

In view of the new price caps and the existing VAT rules, please could the Toggle representative confirm the new prices from 1st July 2014?

The published Toggle pricelist is not really up to date. Recently I received a call in a EU country where the Toggle pricelist claims it would be charged 19p per call. I was happy to see, it has been charged according to the current EU price cap regulation instead.

In the case of data they charged me 67p/MB in some EU countries few months ago. Way above the EU price cap regulated price.

Dear fellow Togglemobile users,

I've been travelling extensivley this spring and my togglemobile UK SIM has served me very good in India. Call rates as follows:

Making calls 1.64 £/min
Local calls 2.35 £/min
Receiving calls 0.00 £/min
Send SMS 0.48 £/SMS
Data 1.34 £/MB

Then I went over to the toggmobile NL website to check rates and found to my surprise the following rates:

Making calls 1.61 ct/min
Local calls 2.32 ct/min
Receiving calls 0.00 ct/min
Send SMS 0.14 ct/sms

I am curious if this is just a typing mistake or if the togglemobile NL SIM has realy so much lower call rates than the UK SIM. Has anyone experiences regarding this?

BK

that's one of their lovely typos on the website. Of course they mean € and not ct.
Also SMS from all non toggle countries are written with 41ct, from india with 14 - again i suppose a typo ;-)

Was this really toggle mobile, or just some troll?

Anyway, they did what I expected: Nothing.

It´s a tragedy! The best product in the mobile world for years, going down the chute... :confused:

changed rates!?
 

Dear fellow togglemobile.uk users. I've just experienced changes on the togglemobile.co.uk website. As it looks like, they have changed rates. The only one that are obvious to me is the tariff in Austria.

Since I live in Austria and have a Swiss and German Incoming number, I've often diverted calls to my togglemobile.uk simcard when going to remote places in Austria, since they roam on the A1 network which has the best coverage over all.

Today I went to the website to randomly check some rates and they are now displaying GBP 0,04 for incoming calls in Austria. However, the banner on the website still shows Austria as one of their free incoming countries. Haven't checked if they really charge for incoming calls, but maybe some of you can check the tariffs for their respected country use to see if they have changed silently as well...

BK

update
 

Whilest I went over to facebook to send the CS a message the website seems to be down. Tried to reload the tariff page and got a error message. When enterring www.togglemobile.co.uk a empty page appears.

Let's wait and see what's going to happen with our beloved tariffs...

BK:eek:

Their website shows incoming costs @ 4p/minute for Germany as well.

I already received several calls in Germany today, and they were not charged.

However, this is yet more proof that it´s impossible to use toggle as a main card, which I deeply regret. They are just not reliable in any way. :mad:

where did you find this rate sheet?

Just follow this link: http://www.togglemobile.co.uk/tariffs/en and then use the second part (non toggle countries)

Your post gave me a hint. I've gone through all their toggle mobile countries and except Switzerland, they show for ALL toggle countries without a local number (even UK)

calls 18p
incoming 4p
SMS 5p

maybe their underlying roaming IMSI provider has changed rates? :eek:
BK

Does this mean that without a local number it's 4p and free with a local number?

Lots of Toggle's published prices are wrong, particularly as they breach Regulation (EU) No 31/2012.

First you need to understand how GBP prices are calculated for UK-based operators. The price caps are specified in EUR without VAT in Articles 8(2), 10(2) and 13(2) of Regulation (EU) No 31/2012, and in order to convert the price caps to GBP, the EUR/GBP exchange rate is calculated in accordance with Article 1(7) by taking the average of the exchange rates published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 1st March 2014, 1st April 2014 and 1st May 2014, which is 0.82581. Consequently the price caps are £0.1569/min for outgoing calls, £0.0413/min for incoming calls, £0.0495 for outgoing SMS and £0.1652/MB for data. UK VAT of 20% is then added when roaming inside the EU VAT area, but not when roaming in parts of the European Union and wider European Economic Area that are outside the EU VAT area, specifically Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Åland Islands, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, in accordance with Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992. This is because the UK opted to exempt non-EU VAT area roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 ("the Sixth VAT Directive") so that it could charge UK VAT on services used in the UK but billed outside the UK (e.g. US-based services marketed to UK residents).

Have a look at Toggle's prices for roaming in Norway for example. It publishes a price of 7p for sending SMS, which breaches the price cap by 41%.

current rate for norway:

Making calls 0.18£/min
Local calls 0.18£/min
Receiving calls 0.04£/min
Send SMS 0.05£/SMS
Data 0.67£/MB

Seems they changed some parts yesterday.

I never looked at the "outside toggle" rates before as i only use the card in toggle countries...

Well, the data rate of £0.67 is really far over the EU cap of £0.1652/MB. Four times higher !

The SMS sent in Toggle countries are listed with 0.07 £/SMS. Over the EU cap as well. Or making calls in the EU member country Croatia: £0.28/min.

On the outgoing calls from Toggle countries which still have good pricing, unfortunatelly more and more often the call is delivered without a caller number to the destination (EU mobile or fixed). This makes me impossible to reach many people that have a line configured in a way that does not accept anonymous calls.

At the end of the day the only advantage that remains for me is the additional number in Toggle countries. As caused by the other problems this has not removed the need for using a second SIM, I am considering returning to the usual double-SIM operation without Toggle.

As ChrisNeedsToKnow mentioned often, Toggle is a good idea, however with too many practical limitations that have not been solved over the time and will probably make it unusable at the end.

Toggle Roaming Data Bundles available
 

I've just checked for rates when going to Spain later this month and found out, that Toggle has launched (finally) roaming packages for their Toggle countries!

http://www.togglemobile.co.uk/roaming-data/en

1GB for GBP 20
2GB for GBP 30
3GB for GBP 40

This (if it works) is a very good reason to stay with Toggle!

thats nice! Especially when the package is for all toggle countries - so activated once and use in germany, france, switzerland, ... etc.

It is so typical Toggle. If there is light, there is also (minimum one) shadow. Just wrote a review about the SIM for the austrian UMTS-Link Forum and wanted to list the countries with free incoming calls. Guess what - they are gone from the website.

It seems that there is a new Data-Package valid for all Toggle Countries, but free incoming calls in those 20+ countrys are no more.

As it looks like, they have changed tariff's when I posted it 10 days (or so) ago and took away the "free incoming calls Banner" now.

Personally, to me this is still a "good trade in" since I've been rarely outside any Toggle Mobile countries. Let's hope they add more countries soon...

BK

some of the free incoming contries vanished, some are still existing in the rate calculator (e.g. USA, India, Australia, ...)

@bourbonkiller thanks for the heads up.

... Switzerland is still free too.

So, does this leaves us with the 13 Toggle countries with free incoming calls if you have the local number (and free in some like USA, Switzerland, Australia, UK,... even without the added local number).

India seems to be the only non Toggle country with free incoming. This means we now have 14 free incoming countries instead of 20+ (?).

I've been aware of India but haven't checked the others mentioned since these are Toggle Countries and incoming should always be free.

I've bought two Toggle UK simcards this spring and on these, all toggle countries are already "activated" but no incoming number. Seems that the Sim know how to register on the network but has no active mobile number.

With that in mind it is clear to me, that incoming calls in toggle countries are free of charge...

BK

For US and Australia this might be a good offer. However for the EU it is a great disappointment. With the spanish Orange SIM Mundo, I can get 100 MB/day @ 1 EUR. This is 1 GB at 10 EUR or 3GB within 30 days at 30 EUR only. In all EU countries except Spain. Toggle rates of 0,67 GBP/MB in the EU are abusive, far over the EU caps.

The difference is that you can use voice, SMS and data on one SIM for a reasonable price within the whole toggle countries now. This is convenient even if you might have some cheaper option by picking a few more SIM cards.

@peterdoo, calling the data roaming packages disappointing is far from normal. I have a business contract in Austria for my mobile and they charge me EUR 50 for 1 GB roaming data. When I leave my house and walk down the road for 200m to cross the Swiss boarder, the cheapest offer for 1 GB domestic data (not roaming) is around CHF 15 (12 Euros).

I live in Austria, do Business in Switzerland and Germany so I have two phones (AT & CH) always with me and when I go to Germany, I have a prepaid card too for cheap calls and data.

All this comes to an end now, because I only need one Simcard for all of that. I would rather call that sensational!

I do not know, whether you have tested Toggle already. As far as I understand, Toggle still charges 840 EUR per 1 GB data in Austria (0,67GBP/MB verifyed by me in june 2014). Data roaming packages do not apply to Austria. If you plan to use Toggle SIM only, you might soon change your mind ;)

If you read reports from ChrisNeedsToKnow, who seems to often use it in the countries you mention, you will see that with the Toggle SIM a change between the countries is not always as smooth as one would expect. Also, having many identities on the SIM means that in the case of bad coverage, the phone has to circle through all of them, causing longer intervals without network coverage than using a normal SIM.

As I mentioned below, in the last months more and more often the call from a Toggle country is delivered without a caller number to the destination (EU mobile or fixed) and with a reduced voice quality (delay, noise, echo). This makes me impossible to reach many people that have a line configured in a way that does not accept anonymous calls. Due to the lower quality it takes longer to finish the discussions. Unfortunatelly the move towards a lower quality seems to be coming with the lower tariffs. I noticed it sometimes with Alditalk (4s delay).

And finally, all calls/SMS, it does not matter from which country, are delivered presenting the UK number to the destination. Many friends business partners hate me for that. Some of them returned me a call to that number instead of using my local Toggle number from their phone directory without thinking about it being an international call which does not enter into their monthly allowance. Extremelly high bills have been received on their end at the end of the month.

For somebody really only needing Toggle countries and taking precautions to avoid the possible problems mentioned, it still is a good offer. In my case of being in the Toggle countries mostly, but traveling also to non-Toggle countries (Austria, Italy,...) various days in a month, it simply makes more sense to use Alditalk DE, Orange ES or vodafone IT for data roaming.

@peterdoo, thank's for your very detailed report. All you are mentioning does make perfect sense and I can agree to most of it. Since I live in Austria, I have a contract with 3GB local data. What I am looking for is the convenience of not having to change the phone when going to a other country.

I've bought a Aldi-Talk Sim on Tuesday during my stay on the German shoreline of lake constance. During my trip to very remote places in Scotland this may I have encounterred, that O2 has a very bad coverage so I will try the german Aldi (Medion Mobile) Sim in September.

BK

@bourbonkiller
Expect O2 to become AldiTalk's/eplus preferred - or maybe even only - roaming partner for the UK as Telefónica O2 Germany is in the process of acquiring eplus which will very likely result in all eplus subscribers (including all the MVNOs) to roam on Telefónica's networks at some point. So with an AldiTalk SIM you will perhaps have the same coverage as with toggle.
Unfortunately I didn't take notice which network I roamed on with my AldiTalk SIM last month when I was in London and used it all the day.

Be aware that you can overcome so-called steering of roaming by trying to register on an certain alternative network four times consecutively. You find out if a network is indeed blocked (no roaming agreement in place) or if you are just steered onto another network by the time your registration attempt takes. If you immediately receive a message like "network blocked", then it is indeed blocked, if it just takes ages to register and times out in the end, your home operator tries to steer you onto another network.

I'm planning to replace my German number with "base.de all-in plus + 5GB option + EU-Reiseflat option" at €48/month" in the EPlus network.

As far as I understand this allows usage of the 5GB throughout the EU + CH + FL + N + IS, free incoming calls throughout the EU + free calls within Germany + free calls to Germany from within the EU (+ mentioned countries).

I would discontinue my current Swiss flatrate with sunrise24.ch and, depending on callvolume to Switzerland, buy a Swisscom iO VoiP-flatrate to Switzerland for CHF20/month.

Last remaining problem: I would have to port my current Swiss # to somewhere reasonable to receive calls when not in CH, which I currently do by diverting the #, free of charge because of the flatrate, to toggle. This is what I won´t be able to do in the future in this setup.

How much I would appreciate to be able to port my "usual" Swiss # to toggle is beyond description!

Better yet: Use toggle (or indeed any other SIM) with Swiss + German number (both ported), with an internet flatrate, flat to both countries AND proper callID submission per destination. I wouldn´t hesitate to pay €100/month for that, but it´s just not on offer.

PS - why do I not want to change numbers?

• for starters I haven´t changed my mobile number - ever (>15 years now)
• secondly, my German mobile# is +49-178-abcdefg, German fixed +49-228-abcdefg (Bonn, Germany) and my Swiss # is +41-76-abcdefg ; where abcdefg are identical in all cases :)

You can not keep what you have now for €100/month?

I can, and I´m paying less. However, it involves taking two phone at all times, and sticking SIM cards around each time I cross the border between Switzerland and Germany, i.e. twice daily.

I would love to just seamlessly cross the border, and be online and free to call everyone I want to without thinking before hitting the "dial" button.

So truphone.de would fit for you. See my Review in Teltarif.de

@chrisneedtoknow, I can understand you very much - I am in the exactly same situation!

You write you have a sunrise flat at the moment? Why not port the number over to yallo which have great new flat's and packages on offer (www.yallo.ch). For instance, they offer unlimited flat to CH + EU1 countries including 1 GB of domestic data for CHF 49, which is insanely low for Switzerland. They also have EU roaming packages, but they can't compete with international offers...

Second possibility could be Orange. I've ported my number from sunrise to Orange this January. They had a offer for CHF 20 per month including 1 GB of data and 60 Minutes within Switzerland. I've added the unlimited calls to 3 numbers for CHF 10 per month. One calls home on my Swiss VoIP, one is my LocalPhone Swiss DID to forward whereever I need it and the third number is my MobileVOIP call through number to use my freecall account for worldwide telephony.

Hope this helps!

BK

PS: I live close to Rheineck / St. Margrethen, why not go for a coffee when you are around that place?

Something I haven't thought about as a alternative may be mobilkom.li! They offer great roaming packages on top of their monthly subscriptions. Have a look here: http://fl1.li/de/tarife/telefonieren...1-talk-roaming

You will get a Liechtenstein Number, but as I am aware of it is also possible (since mobilkom.li is a spin off of Mobilkom Austria) to get a Austria 0664 Number (additional).

Mobilkom is a partner of Vodafone, so you will always roam on Vodafone networks where available...

BK