Does this service support forwarding of the Telna number, and if so, at what cost? For example, I might like to forward the number to my land line or cell when I'm not traveling.

Okay, I tried to order your card. I entered all my info, chose a number, and at the end where it asks for initials and electronic signature, when I click on continue I kept getting an error that the number I chose has been taken. I went back and chose a different state/number. Tried at least 6 different numbers but the same thing. So, I did not complete my order. So, something is wrong with your system. See message below: Which is very unlikely.

"We're sorry but at least one of the numbers you picked was selected by another customer at the same time you did."

Ooops. It looks like someone forgot to properly test their PHP code. I got this fixed, so there shouldn't be this bug anymore. Sorry about that Bossman.

Here's a list of what would probably make an ideal offering:
1. Reasonable rates in many countries. We already have Mobal, which has great coverage but whose rates are not very reasonable. So, any offering needs to be reasonable.
2. Voicemail which does not involve multiple international diverts which run the cost up. This is a failing of many traditional carriers.
3. Flexible configuration. The customer should be able to forward incoming calls to other destinations: international numbers or VOIP numbers. (See #1) It should be possible to set up filters for incoming calls if you want. Some can ring through, some go right to VM and some can be told your not in service. Voicemail might allow for a secret PIN which will bypass the filters. So, if it's 2:00 AM in India and I have set the phone to "Do not disturb" (See #10) but my boss or wife has an emergency, he/she can use the PIN to make the phone ring anyway.
4. Can be called via a SIP address to allow forwarding from home PBXs and maybe even being called via SIPBroker access numbers.
5. Voicemail can be: 1) accessed by phone, SIP, or web or 2) forwarded as an e-mail attachment.
6. Can be set to either ring a SIP number and the mobile phone at the same time or if the VOIP is connected to just ring VOIP. Many customers really like to use their home cellular carrier's VOIP adjunct when traveling (e.g. T-Mobile H@H). This is a similar situation.
7. A good selection of DID numbers. At least one POP in each State would be nice. One in each area code would be ideal.
8. SMS forwarding to other cells or even to e-mail would be nice.
9. GPRS (See #1)
10. A cool little Java applet for your smartphone that allows you to do most of the configuration functions securely via GPRS or WiFi using a minimum of data traffic.

Any other suggestions?

We believe our rates are pretty reasonable wherever possible.

When people call your telna Mobile and hit your voicemail, you do not pay anything for that call. You can easily check your voicemail online for free, or receive it as an attachment via email.

Forward to US or international destinations of the telna Mobile number should be possible shortly at telna regular long distance rates. Forward to a SIP account would come later on, once we create a proper VOIP offering.

Interesting idea. We added it to the roadmap.

This is now possible (following request in this forum). Just send your incoming call via SIP protocol to 12345678900@voip.telnamobile.com where 12345678900 is your telna Mobile phone number in E164 format.

Voicemail is already available via phone: either from telna Mobile phone, but you are charged the cost of an incoming call in the country where you are, or from any other phone in the world (cost of an international call to the telna Mobile US number). Voicemail are also available for free on our website and you can setup an automatic email forward.

This will be for later once we have a real VOIP offering.

Currently we have 3 states, we extend to 6 states within 3 weeks. We will most likely grow to as many states as possible based on customers interest for the service.

Forwarding to email was already scheduled. Forwarding to other cells is a good idea and we add it to the roadmap.

As soon as we have proper control of data flow we'll offer the GPRS.

Sorry we won't offer a Java applet. However we'll have a light mobile web page for settings later on, as well as an API which would allow anyone who wants to make their own java applet.

Thank you very much for the suggestions!

Hmmm. Sounds like fun but I'd probably try getting it to work in S60 Python first.

Hi Herve. Sorry I joined this thread a bit late but this looks extremely promising, and I am interested. Just briefly do I need to send in my redundant SIM to get this? Or is it just a case of ordering a card as normal and then writing to/phoning customer services to get the 1st years fee waived? Sorry I am being lazy, but it saves me reading through 5 pages of this thread to find the answer (as I am sure is here somewhere).

My SIM is not Celtrek but it is one found on: PrePaidGSM.net: International GSM Operators

Question: When does your system start to charge for out going calls. When the other party picks up (like most other callback systems), or when I answer the callback? I ask this because when maxroam and celtrek were using an Israeli provider they charge you as soon as you answer the callback. So, you get charged for at least a minute even if you call a busy number, invalid number, etc.

Shame. Big problem for those of us needing something for any other country in the Middle East. Service not available in UAE, Saudi, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Syria.

But lebanon and Jordan yes!

(Sorry Bossman... completely unrelated to your question... but I just picked up on that!)

There's actually a big swath of counties running from Algeria to Malaysia where service can get pretty thin.

Yes... that's a lot of the oil/natural gas countries where it doesn't work!

Yes. A lot of money and a lot of business. For some folks it can be a deal killer. For me, except for Tunesia and maybe Morocco, been there, done that; don't really need to go back any time soon.

BTW, Jordan and Egypt are not on my "don't need to go back" list and it looks like telna mobile does work there. I went ahead and took Herve up on his offer and sent them my old (Israeli) Celtrek SIM. Why turn down a no-risk, one-year trial? I'll let you all know how it works.

Update: I received my telnamobile SIM yesterday. This morning I tested it and it does register on T-Mobile. When I attempted to call the number, the call went right to generic voicemail. (I then received a SMS saying I had voicemail.) Calls to the SIP address were picked up but the phone did not ring. An attempt to send a SMS failed with a reply SMS saying that SMS was not yet supported. I could not log onto the account management at mytelna.com. I called their very friendly and courteous customer service and they are working on getting the issues resolved. Bottom line, it's still a Beta product. Don't expect out-of-the-box perfection. ;)

Sorry about that DRNewcomb. The activation glitch on the website has been fixed during the day. So far most customers for the service are already telna customers, so they had not encountered this issue.

By default you can't receive/place calls with the SIM card as long as it has not been activated.

Outbound SMS is not yet active as mentionned on our website, but we work on it :)

For info, by default we block incoming and outgoing calls in the USA because of the high rate of the card. We wouldn't want someone to put the card in their phone without paying attention to the rates. If you want to receive/place calls from the USA, you need to change your country blockings option from within your mytelna once you activated your card.

Since this morning the website problem has been solved and the card activated.

They have a country-by-country activate/deactivate list which seems pretty handy. If your kid tells you he's going to UK you can make sure it won't work when he makes a side trip to Amsterdam. :whistling:

There are a number of configuration options, including voicemail delivery by e-mail and ring-time before voicemail. You can also configure what shows for your caller ID when you make outgoing calls. When you call the number you get a recording which says, "Wait while we locate..." There's a configuration to turn this off and on, but I don't understand why one setting is better than the other.

Once you get the account, you also get access to their dial-through long-distance/international calling service. I've configured all our phones in case I decide to use it.

Still no SMS. It does not send and does not receive on the the US number. I have no idea about the Israeli number (which I was not provided). I have also not been able to get the inbound SIP address to work. I'm calling 1786363XXXX@voip.telnamobile.com. I'll talk with them about that another day.

Maybe I am missing something about this SIM. Except for a free year if you send them a dead SIM from a competitor, they charge $49 a year. Is the first annual fee charged from day one or day 365? So if you send in a dead SIM, do you get 12 months or 24 months free?

Their incoming rates to Europe are higher than most other SIM providers. IE: NO free incoming calls at all. (The outgoing rates are very good though).

You do get a U.S. number which makes calls from associates cheaper for them, but you must pay about 29 cents a minute.

Their Post Paid service is nice if you don't mind them having a credit card and you with the potential for unlimited charges. With Pre Paid service , your liability for a lost phone is limited.

I like a company with 24/7 customer service. Telna has customer service located in the U.S. from Monday through Friday from 6AM to 5PM Pacific Time. Just don't have problems making calls or lose the phone in their off hours.

Turns out that it does not work exactly according to the instructions:
I was using the 11-digit international number, as shown above. When I tried the 10-digit format, the phone rang. No intermediate, "Wait while we locate.." message.

They seems to have all advertised features working now. I can call the phone via SIP using the 11-digit format. Voicemail picks up. The message gets forwarded back to me via e-mail. One little hitch has to do with Gizmo hanging up at 30 seconds just before the default voicemail delay. I had to shorten the telna VM delay to get it to work. This however, is a Gizmo problem, not a telna problem.

I may have missed it, but what is the cost to receive a SIP call? Is it the same as a PSTN call while roaming in a particular country?

I too am just getting into the SIP stuff. Maybe someone can write a SIP 101 guide as to the cost benefits and call quality benefits. I have been trying VOIP.ms and the service offering and feature set is very promising. So if you are not familiar with them take a look. You can setup an account without any funding to see all of the features. While this has nothing to do with a GSM card it has everything to do with SIP. I would like to learn more. I have an iPhone now which is not unlocked. With that said Skype on it works great and I have an app called sipPhone that lets me do VOIP/SIP stuff. When I travel abroad I will bring my Treo 750 which is unlocked and use Telna.

So to everyone who has contributed ideas to date. Thank you! To Telna for attempting to integrate them thank you as well. All of this looks very promising.

I would be happy to host anything folks would write on my blog.

Lastly I am a former Celtrek customer and look forward to trying Telna.

Just want to mention that I used Telna on a recent trip and I was quite satisfied. I used it in Nigeria and France. Mostly for incoming calls (My AT&T sim forwarded to it) and a couple outgoing calls. No problems at all.

An observation though. On the voicemail menu, pressing '0' gives one the option to record a personal gretting, however this does not get saved. It still plays the system greeting when the ne reaches VM regardless. Not a big deal though.

Is there anyway to hide the callback requirement? Some people just can't handle the simplicity of that. I have seen other sim providers offer "comfort callback" for Windows Mobile phones. Not sure about other OS's.

Keep up the innovations. I ordered the card but have not activated it yet.

Telna lowers yearly fee from $49 to $19
 

I do not think most folks use Telna, however I just received this email from telna. Makes them a little more attractive. I consider the yearly fee the cost of the DID. Not bad at all at a little less than $2/month.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello,

after reaching our first milestone of telna Mobile subscribers faster than expected, we are able to lower the annual fee for telna Mobile from $49 to $19, effective immediately.

In case you didn't know: telna Mobile is our service for international travelers. It allows you to be reachable on your cellphone in 174 countries on an American phone number, receive free SMS messages and place inexpensive calls back home or to anywhere in the world. Now for only $19 per year.
To learn more about telna Mobile, visit telna Mobile - Low cost cellular service for international travelers(international sim card for reduced roaming for inbound and outbound calls while abroad)

To be fair to existing subscribers who pioneered the service, we have decided to issue a $30 credit to every existing customer who paid the $49 annual fee, which can be used to place calls with any of our services.

Telecom North America

Receive SMS on Telna Mobile
 

I have been using the Telna Mobile SIM card for about 6 months and have generally been satisfied with the service. However, I have been fustrated by the inability to receive SMS text messages. I know that a sender can go to the Telna website and send from there but that is way to cumbersome. Besides, I would like to use the voicemail from Google Voice so I need to be able to receive SMS messages either directly or thru an email gateway. Can anyone offer a suggestion?

Any further feedback on Telna?
 

Am thinking about using Telna, but have a few questions... Have they gotten SMS to work? Also, they state that inbound SMS is free, but I have not seen on their site what outbound SMS costs are... Any idea? Can you SMS a Telna customer via the US DID or do you need to use the "global" number?


Thanks!

I have not tried to send sms from the card. However, I sent sms to the DID from several providers, including tmobile, google voice, and AT&T. All worked except for AT&T, whjich bounced back instantly with an invalid number mesage. I first tried this a few months ago. I tried again from AT&T today, and it still bounced back instantly. BTW, nowhere do they disclose your global number. I guess one can try to send an sms and see what shows on the receiving end if it goes through.


EDIT: I just tried to send an sms and it did not go through. I got an instant sms that sms capability is NOT supported yet.

Hi

Sorry I have not paid attention to the forum recently, but inbound text messages should work from all US mobile carriers on the telna Mobile numbers. If it doesn't work in a particular case that would be something we can open a trouble ticket for and fix.

Definitely does not work sending with AT&T. I have tried it several times. It bounces back instantly with the text message "Error Invalid Number. Please re-send using a valid 10 digit mobile number or valid short code. Looks like AT&T does not recognize it as a valid number.

Sending from tmobile US and google voice worked.