Because you can't change your CID.

CID doesn't explain why all other providers are 2-3x more expensive. Everyone knows that swiss operators are overcharging. But togglemobile is proof that they could be cheaper.

Swisscom have the highest prices in Europe, yet they have more than 60% market share. Competitors control each something less than 20%, with way lower prices than Swisscom (still above european average). Swiss carriers simply don't have any interest to compete (except for roaming traffic, due to the European regulation): it's a still market.

Toggle probably won't make much money from domestic calls within Switzerland or perhaps even make a loss from these that is being absorbed by cross-subsidisation as a look into Swiss mobile termination rates reveals:

http://abload.de/img/mtr-chg6ikk.png
data from January 2014, source: http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_...shot-as-_0.pdf

I don't know what Toggle pays to Swisscom for termination of inbound calls but it will probably be more than what they earn from the termination rates in most Toggle countries. So when being called e.g. on your French (€ 0.008/min), Danish (€ 0.00896) or British (€ 0.01009) number every minute must be a loss for them. The tariffs in Switzerland are only viable as long as the majority of outbound calls goes to destinations with lower termination rates, so they cannot be interested in attracting Swiss customers that would only use the SIM for domestic calls.

I think Lycamoble intentionally do not market Toggle too actively as they would not only cannibalize their MNO partners' customer bases but also their own. They are targeting very cost-aware and tech-savvy customers that will find Toggle by themselves.

The possibility to change callerIDs was promised a year and a half ago but as so many promises this feature never became reality.

So you think they pay when you recieve calls? I think it is free for them. They surely found a way to bypass fees for incoming calls

As far as I understand, full MVNOs buy airtime from the MNOs at a very discounted price. However they have to make a huge investment in the equipment in order to interconnect directly to the mobile network, bypassing the termination of the MNO. The termination is done on their own by the full MVNO or by their technical subcontractor.

So Toggle (Lyca UK) would terminate its calls on the Lyca Swiss Network at the price they agree on, and Lyca Swiss would forward the call to Swisscom Network at airtime price, not at the high Swisscom termination rate. Even if Lyca Swiss would charge the official termination rate to Toggle, that money stays in the "family".

The rates at which MVNOs buy airtime from MNOs cannot be that much discounted for the following simple reason: Regulatory authorities set mobile termination rates based on an assessment of Capex and Opex involved in the deployment and operation of mobile networks. The principle is that termination rates should cover the costs of building and maintaining mobile networks plus financing costs and a small profit. The highest costs of a mobile network lie in the radio access network (basicly the towers and all the fibre and microwave links to the core network), so the core network components which a full MVNO has to build by himself make up a relatively small part of the total costs.
Now if an MNO sold airtime at rates too much below the MTR they would prompt the regulator to step in and lower the MTR as this would imply the costs of the RAN are lower than assessed by the regulator before. So MNOs must be very careful when selling airtime to MVNOs as they risk their own MTR to be cut.

Upon arrival in Moscow yesterday toggle send me this confusing text:
I haven't tested if they also confuse Russia with Abkhazia when it comes to billing. Tariffs in Russia should be slightly cheaper for outgoing calls if the tariffs given on their website are indeed valid:

If Putin knew, Toggle would be prohibited by this afternoon! :D

I think he might overlook this system error and be pleased that Toggle recognises Abkhazia as an independent country. It is in fact part of Georgia, at least in the eyes of the United Nations and of most other countries.

Hello

I´ve been lately in France for a few days and got a sms saying that calls would be charged at 12cent/min. :eek:

It worked pretty well, both to receive calls in my Spanish number (on some occasions first receiving call was useless and voice was not heard at all :() and make a few calls within France (to lebara btw to try to make the lebara sim work again*). Didn´t try data.

*My lebara.fr sim card stop working before my trip to France. I contacted customer service and they were very supportive sending me a new sim card.
Unfortunately the new card was useless and customer service couldn´t help me. Finally they wrote me an e-mail informing that my sim card had been cancelled due to non-compliance (couldn´t make/receive phone calls).

Strangely my lebara account is still active but following information appears now (I left France on the 04th October and it seems it was "somehow reactivated" on the 09th October??)

Bundles
Bundles Remaining Expires
Main Account 0 2014-11-08
FR Data 50 Mo 2014-11-09
All-In-One – L2L Mins Unlimited 2014-11-09
All-In-One – L2L SMS Unlimited 2014-11-09

Usage History
Dialled Number Cost Duration Type Date & Time
XXXXX 1c 00:10 VOICE XX Jul 2014 XX:XX

Top Up History
Date & Time TopUp Type Amount Free Credit Free Minutes Balace Before Balance After
09 Oct 2014 09:00 CS Admin debit 5€ — 0€ 7.354€ 2.354€
09 Oct 2014 09:00 330006 5€ 0 0€ 0€ 5€

Regards

You seem to have confused threads as this is the toggle mobile thread not Lebara!

Hello Inquisitor,

the first part refers to toogle mobile.

I´ve been lately in France for a few days and got a sms saying that calls would be charged at 12cent/min.

It worked pretty well, both to receive calls in my Spanish number (on some occasions first receiving call was useless and voice was not heard at all ) and make a few calls within France. Didn´t try data.

Regards,

Can anybody confirm if Toggle is down everywhere. I have 2 accounts, and they don;t work. Login doesn't work, service doesn't work. NOTHING works.

Lebara off topic
 

Lebara is valid for 80 days from activation or last usage
Plus 10 days grace period when you can Topup and than it will be disconnected

Hello,


Are you living in Germany?

Toggle uses there Lycamobile which is a MVNO using the Vodafone D2 Network. Mobile prefix is +49-1521-xxxxxxx

Lycamobile had some problems in the Last days...



73 & 55 Henning
Gesendet von meinem iPhone 4 mit Tapatalk

for me toggle worked fine the last days, used it extensively for calls and data in spain and also now in germany as some stupid guy accidentally cancelled my office vodafone sim.
this was the first time i used the data packages from toggle, 1 GB for 20 GBP is not the cheapest but they charge by kb, data rate is very good and i am able to use it in several countries in a row.

Also no issues at my end. Worked propper in Switzerland and also roaming in Austria...

Hello,

can anyone confirm that receiving calls in Portugal is free of charge?
According to the website only the 12 Toogle countries are mentioned to have free incoming calls.

BTW, I´ve got a togglemobile NL number.

Thank you.

Regards

Yes, it's free.

Merci MBK :-D

BTW, the Toggle pricelist now shows 19p/MB for EU/EEA countries. They were ignoring the EU caps for long time charging 67 p/MB, however now finally they seem to comply.

In Switzerland (not covered by the EU regulation) without using a local number they still charge 67 p/MB.

For the records: toggle through its Dutch Vodafone IMSI ("Roaming") roams on AeroMobie (901-14) and outbound SMS are charged with 63p. Given that Lufthansa bars voice calls I couldn't test such. Despite the onboard cell's limitation to GPRS and the resulting modest throughput the fear of instantly burning my remaining credit prevented me from testing data.

posted from FL390

Seems like Lycamobile is now offering better roaming packs with Lycamobile than on Toggle. At least in Germany and Spain they seem to offer bundles that can be used in own country as well as in 16 other countries where Lycamobile is active (incl. US and Australia). In Spain a pack with 400 minutes, 400 SMS and 2 GB data apparently usable in all 17 countries and valid 30 days is 40 or 20 euros. Toggle offers for about the same price (the higher one of the two) only 1 GB with no minutes and no texts. However from the description on their web page I was not able to understand, what exactly these bundles include.

While Toggle bundles only work in 13 Toggle countries (I assume the identity for that country has to be present on the SIM), Lycamobile offers 17 countries.

Lyca Germany (in German):
http://www.lycamobile.de/de/keine-roaming-gebuhren

Lyca Spain (in Spanish):
http://www.lycamobile.es/es/viaja-sin-roaming

Lyca commented in a forum that their roaming offers 4G access in the US, UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland even though the SIM is not enabled for 4G in it's home country. I have not yet seen any user confirmation whether this is true.

Interesting, though except for the "Sparspaket XS" for all the other packets it says "Deutschland" in brackets behind the data volume which suggests the data volume is only valid within Germany. On the other hand it wouldn't make much sense to offer roaming packets with domestic data allowance.

Why not? On the assumption that Lycamobile pays a similar wholesale price for data to each of its suppliers, the retail price should be the same for usage across all countries in which Lycamobile offers a retail service. There is no reason why the wholesale price should be affected by the country in which the user's SIM card is issued.

You missed my point. My understanding of these roaming packs is that they include voice minutes and SMS for usage abroad and data only for use within Germany - at least that is how I understand "Deutschland" (= Germany) in brackets behind the listed data volumes.

Regardless of this misunderstanding you should not assume that Lycamobile gets the same wholesale pricing for their customers' usage in their home countries like for a foreign customer roaming in any other country because in the latter case Lycamobile - in he absence of own biliteral roaming agreements - would buy the roaming service through their MNO partner who probably won't sell roaming airtime at the same price like the domestic MVNO agreement provides. It would be different if Lycamobile would use multi-IMSI SIM cards just as toggle does, but afaik Lycamobile does not do so.

As the FAQ on their page mentions that one has to wait a SMS confirmation after arriving to roaming country, maybe they really send new identity of the local Lyca to the SIM.

These are regular national packages of Lycamobile which give voice and text in the roaming countries for the domestic package rate of Lycamobile. This is obviously only a sponsored limited offer connected to the movie release of the DreamWorks production HOME.

It clearly does not apply for data as said in the Q&A of Lyca UK:
Can I use my data allowance in the 17 countries? If not how will I be charged?
You unfortunately will not be able to use your existing data allowance, instead you will need to buy a relevant data add-on in order to use your mobile data. Otherwise any data usage will be charged from your Pay As You Go balance at a rate of 9p/MB in EU ‘HOME’ destinations or 9p/MB in Australia.

Customers are allowed to use their existing minutes & SMS plan allowance in any of the 17 Lycamobile countries without any additional charge. Any data usage when travelling to any of these 17 countries would require the purchase of a data add-on, otherwise you will be charged from your Pay As You Go balance at a rate of 9p/MB in EU ‘HOME’ destinations or 9p/MB in Australia.
http://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/roaming-sim-card

This Q&A clearly states that the package data volume is not applicable to roaming destinations. The same Q&A states however, that package volume can be used without surcharge for voice and text in the roaming countries, so it can still be a good deal for voice and text similar to Three UK's offer "Feel like home".

Two questions remain for me:
- what about incoming roaming fees for voice?
- is the roaming rate (= domestic package rate) only applicable for calls/texts to your home country (like Three's "feel at home") or does it apply for domestic calls/texts within the roaming country too and even for all calls/texts within the 17 country zone (like Ortel Germany's "Cross" option)???
The statement of Lycamobile gives a lot of room for interpretation.....

When I was first looking at the mentioned pages the brackets with the country name were not present. They seem to have added those just recently. Now it is like that at least on Lyca's UK, German, Spanish and Austrian pages. The remark is present for data as well as for voice and texts. They seem to be modifying roaming pages quite often. Yesterday on the German one there were some prices in Indian Rupee currency :)

Now I am really confused. Is anything at all of those usable in roaming? Or what is "UK minutes" and "UK texts" supposed to tell us? Maybe they want to tell us that calls/texts in the bundles are to home country only. If data and/or incoming calls is not included, I think they should not be using the wording "No Roaming charges". This would clearly be a misleading ad.

I don't know how Lyca treats incoming roaming. But I'm suspicious, when they'd skipped it and are not loosing one word about it :-) And here is a good hint hidden in the ongoing "no roaming costs when travelling to Poland" promotion of Lycamobile UK, see: http://www.lycamobile.co.uk/en/no-ro...avel-to-poland

Quote: No roaming costs when travelling to Poland..... Lycamobile customers now retain their existing tariffs when visiting Poland, eliminating roaming costs and saving you money. All calls back to UK will be charged at our standard local rates, whilst calls to a Polish SIM card will be fixed at our fantastic, standard international rates. Take the stress and the expense out of travelling, with Lycamobile. Here they clearly say, which roaming charges they mean and I can't help the feeling their other promotion is very similar....

Some telcos are clearly doing tricks with "roaming charges" right now and Lyca is probably one of them. They take a very narrow definition of roaming like this: Roaming charges are surcharges to the domestic rate when you are abroad. Well, one can subscribe to this.

And here is the trick: They make a distinction between international and roaming rates. According to this: Call rates for calling abroad are of course not domestic rates, but international ones, which are charged substantially higher. So the high rates calling e.g. from Germany to Spain or within Spain on roaming when you use a German SIM card are in fact no "roaming rates" but your regular international call rates. And these very rates are not inflated by roaming surcharges (they are high anyway).

According to this strange logic: All roaming surcharges apply only between the home and the roaming country, because all other rates are in the international category like IDD calls. The problem in this thinking is, that there are essentially no "domestic" or "international" countries anymore, when roaming charges are really going to be slashed one day.

Hello,

I've got a Dutch Toogle number and I tried to activate a local number. It shows Italy as a new country but when chosing Italy it doesn´t allow to get the local number (error: Country alias is invalid).

May be they will implement it for the future. :D

Regards,

Same with UK-Toggle cards: The menu for local numbers now lists Austria, Belgium and Romania. At least Belgium can't be chosen; the other ones I don´t want to try (I have only one number left to be assigned, and I'm hoping for that to be a Belgian one).

This is already good news. I've been waiting desperately for a Austrian number and tried to register one just a moment ago. It gives an error saying: Country alias is invalid

Will try in some days again...

During the last 7 days I used my toggle SIM in Chicago in my Samsung Galaxy S5 DuoS. As my German postpaid SIM includes 500MB of data for roaming including for the US, I used toggle for voice only which why I used it on GSM only.
Interestingly my phone sometimes indicated the T-Mobile network my toggle SIM was registered on as "roaming" network and sometimes not. Initially I though that might be owed to the fact that T-Mobile (like all the US networks) use multiple MCC/MNC tuples of which some correspond to the prefix of my toggle SIM's US IMSI and some not. However I realized that the US IMSI of my toggle SIM start with 311-960 which is Lycamobile's MCC/MNC tuple while T-Mobile uses only 310 as MCC and the last network my SIM was registered on was 310-260, so the IMSI prefix and the MCC/MNC tuple of the used radio access network always differed.
Now that I'm back in Germany I was able to read my toggle SIM's EHPLMN list. The "Equivalent Home Public Land Mobile Network" list allows to assign one or more MCC/MNC tuples to a SIM card which are then treated as home network which - if correctly implemented on your phone - are not considered roaming networks any longer. However the EHPLMN list of my toggle's US identity is empty, so basicly every single network should be considered a roaming network since 311-960 (Lycamobile's tuple) does not exist as physical radio access network - instead it will always use T-Mobile's network with some 310-x tuple.
Now I really wonder why my phone sometimes has not indicated roaming for my toggle SIM. Was that a bug of my phone or do Lycamobile or T-Mobile some magic here? E.g. broadcasting 311-960 as a virtual network from T-Mobile's towers? Afaik it is possible to broadcast multiple MNCs from the same physical RAN however not for GSM but only in UMTS.
Service in Chicago was not very reliable - I could not send SMS to a couple of countries (e.g. to Telekom Slovenia subscribers) and some calls were not connected - instead there was an announcement in American English saying that the call could not be completed and that I should contact customer care if I believe this was a mistake. However my tight schedule did not allow to further investigate this or contact toggle. Also I noticed that for outgoing calls there was a strange sequence of distorted dial tones in the first seconds which sounded like the call is transferred through a couple of systems. That's no serious issue but let me wonder what route my calls went through.

Unrelated to above observation of roaming indication I wonder why toggle don't make use of the EHPLMN feature. Today we have to enable data roaming to use toggle for data service within toggle countries since the toggle SIM IMSIs always differ from the underlying local partner MNO's MCC/MNC tuple. However enabling data roaming for our toggle SIMs involves the danger of forgetting to switch off data roaming once we leave toggle countries which can quickly vaporize our balance if our phones start transferring data in a non-toggle country. Even within Europe there are countries where toggle bills data at horrific rates of more than 10 £/MB.
With all the expertise in SIM card engineering Lycamobile has demonstrated with toggle I cannot understand why they don't use this simple and convenient feature.
Please guys, implement a EHPLMN list for all our IMSIs!

Trying to register a Belgian number now gives a new error:

"local imsi is not greater than max imsi index"

Does that mean it would work, had I not registered too many numbers before?

I have the UK-number and 8 others, of which only 2 others are currently active (UK, German and Swiss active + 6 inactive numbers).

I seem to remember reading here that it's only possible to reset the IMSIS by getting a new SIM? Did anyone suceed in doing this?

And biggest question: Did anyone successfully register a Belgian, Austrian or Romanian number?

Rgds, Christian

That error message, as many messages from toggle's system, obviously is linguistically flawed. But it obviously tries to say what has been stated here before - toggle SIMs support a maximum of 9 IMSIs including the original British or Dutch one. I hope toggle will soon come up with a more convenient solution than swapping SIM cards which will probably lead to the loss of all existing IMSIs and - what would hurt me most - the assigned local numbers.
As my IMSI count is at 7 right now, I refrain from testing whether one of these new countries are actually implemented already.

But unfortunatelly Italy and Portugal are not listed although the normal Lycamobile customers seem to get these identities automatically (without a local number) while roaming in these countries.

I visit at least 8 Toggle countries each year, so 9 identities is quite a limitation.

Not all, but most of today's phones allow data roaming on networks of the same country without indicating roaming and without respecting the setting for data roaming. There is normally no need for EHPLMN. On my Alditalk SIM EHPLMN is empty. There is no mention of 262 07 anywhere on the SIM. It happily roams on O2 including data without indicating roaming and without the need to enable data roaming (S4 mini phone).

You are wrong. The suppression of the roaming indication can only be achieved by the EHPLMN list (let's ignore the infeasible way of modifying handset operating systems as that usually is beyond the power of network operators).
Since I see your contributions in the relevant threads of the German telefon-treff.de board dealing with the eplus/o2 merger in Germany where a EHPLMN list has recently been implemented by OTA updates, I wonder how you come to such claims.
As you probably also know there is a thread listing phones that don't have EHPLMN support implemented correctly and hence still indicate the other network as a "roaming" network: http://www.telefon-treff.de/showthre...hreadid=571120

How do you read the EHPLMN field? Have you made sure that your method is actually working correctly?
My German O2 and Aldi SIM cards both received a EHPLMN list in the course of the merger of O2 and eplus and the associated national roaming. Both now carry 26203 (formerly eplus) or 26207 (O2) in the EHPLMN field as the following example of an O2 SIM proves:

http://fs2.directupload.net/images/150403/8kjabidy.png

I read the SIM with a card reader. Below you can see the results for Alditalk and Toggle SIM.

The Alditalk SIM does not seem to have received any update until now. It however roams in the German O2 network whenever necessary. Data connection works without the need to enable data roaming (on S4 mini original FW 4.4.2). There is also no roaming indicator displayed. I have posted screenshots on the German telefon-treff.de board few months ago when they started testing roaming in our area, where this can be seen.

Alditalk:
Toggle Mobile: