Hi bbob,

Thanks for your time in reviewing Yackie's product, I just wanted to clarify some issues here.

1) It's not necessarily fair to compare GSM and VOIP (look at the price difference between fixed line and mobile) To begin with, the $0.29 incoming fee does not provide Yackie with any revenue. It was a special case where it was more important to provide you with good service than make money. If Yackie was to only charge you $0.29 + a voip call then it wouldn't make commercial sense (look at what's happening around us in this market, i.e. some of the IOM products being shutdown).

2) Mexico incoming DID costs $1.54 due to the surcharge imposed on roaming customers there.

"Example Germany
Incoming =free or 0.29 through DID number
Calling France from Germany is $ 0.59 to fixed and mobile
Making a yacki voip call to france is $ 0.024 for fixed line and 0.271 to mobile.
So I would think the rate would be $0.29 + $0.024 / 0.271 = $0.314 / $ 0.561"

3) The Germany example is $0.56 for mobile, (sounds like a lot in USD) which is €0.39, lower than the new EU maximum rates.

Calling UK from austraila is $ 0.49 to fixed and mobile
4) €0.34 to the UK from australia roaming is a bargain in my opinion.

"Because of the many free incoming countries I will probably use the sim in combination with pbxes and voicetrading and setup my own did forward and callback.
Using this solution forwarded DID calls will only cost me euro 0.114 / $ 0.16 per minute."

I would like to explain here. The cost of running a GSM worldwide roaming network is very high. All we need for VOIP is a PC with some software and an internet connection. This is not the case for GSM. The infrastructure and switching equipment required is very expensive (€100.000 is pocket change in this world) Apart from that, you need interconnect and roaming agreements and quality SS7 termination worldwide. By using your international prepaid GSM phone for your own callback, you make it impossible for your operator to make any money, which is not sustainable long term.

I can only ask that anyone reading this who uses international prepaid roaming SIMs for their own callback solutions remember that if everyone were to do so, their operator would not survive.

We strive to provide high-quality worldwide roaming in 190 countries at low cost. We welcome any suggestions as to how we could improve our service.

Many thanks,

Yackie Tech

I can vouch for Enlinea's reliability and excellent call quality. For my purposes they are cheaper than CBW by 2 or 3 cents/min.
(I use them w. my U.S. T-Mobile phone when in many countries where I pay only 29 cents for incoming calls but would have to pay $1 to almost $2 to call back to the U.S. and almost as much to make local calls where I am roaming. W. Enlinea I pay 29 +5 cents for outgoing. This plan was discontinued 3 or 4 years ago for new users.)

...mike

Hi Yackie Tech:

Thanks for your response...how can you improve the service...well one thing that has to be done is to add Switzerland as a roaming partner which has always been a big negative of O9 with whom you have some sort of a relationship......

Just to clarify Mike's post....he is grandfathered on T Mobile USA's original international roaming plan which they discontinued when they started their world class roaming program although from what I've read, it is becoming somewhat more difficult to get info from T Mobile US about just which operators charges what to roam internationally as rates on this plan vary even by roaming partner.

But in this case, it would be a good deal.

That's a fair point. We all want the advantage of our international roaming sims but we have to allow the providers to make a living, or we'll have Callkey and the Isle of Man situation all over again (-:

I'm not sure this was the issue with the Isle of Man fiasco....when I was checking out rates on cbw and enlinea, I noted that rates to use their services from UK mobiles were extremely high and it simply wasn't economical to use them (that is CBW and Enlinea) to call out on an Isle of Man sim card. Likewise, it is not economical to call out on a UM+ card using cbw and/or enlinea as rates are in the vicinity of $0.50/minute for UK mobiles as opposed to $0.29 to German and French mobiles.

Well, perhaps their tariffs for UK mobiles are a little too opportunistic. There are others that have UK within a cent or two of French and German mobiles.

To Yackie
 

Hi Yackie

You mentioned "We will release one new Option for the US market and the South americain market ( specialy Mexico, Argentina, USS and Canada )"

It would be great if you could bring roaming charges lower than what they are now - can you give us a glimpse on what the new charges will be for inbound/outbound calls in US/Canada/Mexico and when do you anticipate to roll out this service?

I'm not sure if people here realise that if you get any rate for free prepaid international mobile incoming below around $0.50 that there is some operator in the chain losing money, this is the reason why there is bad access to prepaid number ranges from many voip operators and also why the numbers get blocked.

International prepaid callback roaming isn't really a free lunch, most of the operators providing these services are struggling due to the sheer cost of maintaining the mobile network, then people like us come along and say hey, it's expensive to call the numbers, but still want free incoming when the operators are making hardly any money.

Let me elaborate, the SMS charges are very high in a roaming scenario, let's suppose $0.30 per message, you make a call and it's busy, so you call back in 5 minutes, operator has fees of $0.60 to cover along with the callback charge from the first call, say $0.20. .. so operator has fees of $0.80 to cover when you pick up, you talk for 2 minutes and pay $1.00, operator makes 20c.

Then people think, hey, I paid $1 for a 2 minute call, how expensive, let's use callback, and so the operator doesn't even get his 20c.

More power to Yackie for providing a professional and value packed service with local DID ranges in scores of countries with good quality voice and good support

We are in test process since few weeks for releasing the US SIM card, as we are also MVNO in USA

The goal is 0.10 $ in USA Nationwide call, on peack and off peack
DATA roaming availlable

Call to canada, mexico, argentina etc etc around 0.12/0.15 $

Call to most international countries around 0.15 to 0.25 $

and call from the Canada to the US and world around 0.20/0.25 $

And call from the South american countries to the USA an the world from 0.20 to 0.69$

Off course same fonctions than the World Card ( who will be delivered bundleled for the world travelers to the US( noth and South and canada ), this mean, DID can be attached and forwarded both on SIP / World SIm / US Sim etc etc

and few others features who will be released in few days

Sound Good?