Let me guess: T-Mobile finally realized you weren't being billed? ;)

Thanks for the info on Voiptalk. I haven't tried using my account yet, as I'd already noticed the tariffs are higher than Voipfone and Mywebcalls

I always find some of the places on the roaming lists for these cards kind of interesting. For instance, they list Iridium, INMARSAT and Guantanamo Bay. The price calculator returns an empty page if you select the first two and the third is only shown on the roaming list, not on the calculator. Last time I checked, the GSM-900 system in Gitmo was still a private local intercom that isn't even listed in GSMWorld.com . Most people don't even know it exists. Then there's the Marshall Islands. AFAIK, there is only an old AMPS system there with a few hundred phones. Yet ManxSIM lists a price of US$ 2.7424 to place a call from there.

No, that ended in like 2001 or 2002. I had "other" help :D . But, sadly all good things end.

Was a nice thing, considering I travel internationally 150k-200k miles a year.

Luckily, at this stage, we're embarking on a new era of much cheaper roaming.

I like the Manx SIMs. I have an IOM SIM from geodessa, but the one that stays in my phone the most is still the United Mobile. YOu can still find several routes to those number for US$10 a minute.

The cheapest route I have thus far found for IOM numbers is from the Finnera/Betamax companies, but the connections are just not that good. The calls used to be 5 eurocents a minute. The price just went up to 9 euro cents a minute.

Of course the roaming agreements (i.e. incoming calls surely working) are the ones of Manx Telecom, but we don't know where callback actually works. So coverage is surely smaller than the one of Manx, while on the sites of these rebrands it's most of the times bigger...

I don't think all these rebrands are really useful, I see a lot of confusion, not an official site and many, many problems. I can say UnitedMobile and Travelsim seem to be much more reliable.

I've gone around in a circle on this and based on several factors now believe that the best bet, and I emphasize as it stands today, is United Mobile although it is far from perfect.

As long as Callbackworld can hold onto its 14?/minute charge to the USA and in that vicinity for calls to other landlines I really found there was no need for local sims on my most recent trip through several countries in Europe. I had usually wanted local sims in any country I plopped down for a while but for example I had such trouble with my TIM card....when I arrived in Italy and wanted to recharge it I got some sort of idiotic message that my details were not on record (it worked the last time I was in Italy) and I would have to find a TIM shop which I couldn't do so I fell back on United Mobile and had no problems whatsoever even for some local calls in Italy and the price I pad was around 14.9 ? /minute or something like that.

Of course the two big advantages I have is that my local landline provider, Verizon in the USA, allows remote call forwarding on my landline and my ld carrier in the USA, AT&T has a plan whereby calls that are forwarded to me on my United Mobile mobile cost me 10?/minute, don't think you can beat that.

In the UK I've been using O2 but call forwarding via AT&T cost 30?/minute or thereabouts and I tried voicestick and although Bruce was very helpful there is a big problem that I get charged for a 5 minute call everytime a call goes into my voicemail. I've brought this to their attention and am very disappointed they haven't been able to resolve the issue.

What next year will bring, of course, is another story.

Why would you want to find a route for $10.00/min?

I'm quite sure he means $.10 ;-)

Chris

For my part, I'm looking for more free or low-cost countries for incoming calls. In particular Mexico, Japan and Singapore. While UM works in Japan, every time I've tried it the price has been different. Last time it was something like 1 Euro/min for an incoming call, which is more than I like.

Unfortunately, right now I don't have much confidence in these products. The Manx SIMS are raising their prices and Yackie has gone back to the drawing board.