Would the $0.35 connect fee apply to incoming calls in 'FREE' countries (eg EU) when the call is routed via the US DID?

From my understanding, I think there's a footnote, the answer is no...if there is free roaming, no surcharge.

Incoming calls in 'FREE' countries are free only when the call comes through the UK DID. The cost is $0.19/minute when it comes through the US DID.

I asked that question and was told you pay only the 19¢ in FREE countries to receive calls on the +1 number.

I have had my Passport SIM from EKIT (Telestial) for nearly 2 years now and have made almost 100 calls. When I first decided to buy an International SIM there were many choices. Naturally, I wanted one with good calling rates back to the U.S. However, experience has shown me it’s often unwise to just buy the cheapest of anything.

Other factors had to be considered. Will the company be around in two years? Will I have to pay an annual fee just to keep the SIM active? Do they have good 24/7 customer support? Are their rates competitive? Can I recharge the SIM with the cell phone? So in the end I settled on EKIT, even with the connection fee. And they are still here after lots of other SIM companies are just a memory.

For me, most of my travels are to Europe, The Mediterranean, and North Africa. If you compare EKIT’s rates on a 10 minute call from one of these areas, even with the 35 cent connection fee, it’s still almost always less expensive than most other SIM’s. And you get a U.K. number rather than one from Estonia, Lichtenstein, or Iceland.

And as for those countries with the extra 75 cent + connection surcharge, it’s for outgoing calls only. And for me, other than Egypt, I will probably never get to any of them. And even if I do, an extra 75 cents per call isn’t enough to offset the other features I like for the Passport SIM.

I am sure if you look hard enough you may find a company with cheaper rates, but as a package, I find my Passport SIM hard to beat.

How can you tell what companies are financially sound? Some have shown problems, but United Mobile had the superficial trappings of being in good shape. They had had a recent cash infusion from investors, they had a sophisticated infrastructure, they were rolling out new services, and clearly had more than one employee (unlike some of the others). I didn't like it when they started charging the 19 euro cent connection charge, but it made sense to me (looking at the issue from their side).

I have to presume that the most of the members of this forum are their worst customers. While we make a ton of calls, we use every trick in the book to squeeze the price of the call downward (third party callback services, our own international forwarding services, etc). Their financial model has to allow them to be able to tread water if all of their phones receive only inbound calls and the calls are being terminated to their lines by Betamax providers. How much do you think they received in call terminations from these carriers?

Stu:

You are right. It's very hard to check the financial status of any company. Just because a company has a great web site, you never really know. But it seems to me that if a company sells a SIM with extra low rates, has no connection fees, no annual fees, a SIM that lasts forever, and limited customer service; their business model is suspect.

Obviously no company is guaranteed to last forever. I lost about $25 recently to a company with a pre-paid calling card system with cheap international calls from the U.S. So I guess it's best to just limit your exposure in case of a failure.

The demise of UM certainly came like a bolt out of the blue, but clearly the signs were there i.e. the 0,19€ set up fee for receiving free calls but when all is said and done, unless I really miss my guess, there were 2 factors that really led to their death....

1. The worldwide economic crisis (which obviously also led to the demise of O9) dried up lines of credit and also cut down on discretionary spending for things such as travel throughout the world (perhaps the last thing not so muchy) and...

2. I truly believe another large, very large factor, was the success of the eu in capping roaming rates within the eu. While certainly the international cards were meant to appeal to an internatinal clientele, the fact that as long as roaming rates within Europe were very high, it made sense for Europeans who are constantly crossing national frontiers to see the need for an international card. Now that it is obvious that roaming rates within Europe will be all but disappearing in the near future, why would a European particularly need an international card. For travel to North America? They, until the advent of the dual cards, never were able to successfully do business with the US telcoms and bring US roaming rates down...you paid the same to roam in the USA with the international cards as you did with your home carrier so why do you need it. Also, many North Americans simply do not see th eneed for having mobile phones when travelling throughout the world. They are happy to deal with the asininely high roaming rates of the North American carriers as they were able to use cheap calling cards and also began to understand the use of VOPI methods of communicating internationally. Frankly if AT&T and T Mobile USA had half a brain and brought down their international roaming rates to say a reasonable 30 to 35 cents a minute, that would probably be the end of any need for international cards.

And just thinking back on UM....they were actively testing their dual sim card so one would have to suppose that either events overwhelmed them more quickly than they assumed or they just didn't see that the dual sim card could save their bacon.

RIP UM

Just received mine and have also done some preliminary testing. Things basically work but there are inconsistencies in the way some things are handled (for instance the pre-stored short codes - e.g. *126*187# works on the GLOBAL side but only 187 seems to work on the US side).

My US area code is 631, for what it's worth.
Also for what it's worth I was able to change the SIM PIN without incident on a Motorola phone, and the change "sticks" after restart.

I got my dual eKit card as well. The US number is in the 718 area code.

Outgoing calls work fine, however incoming calls don't work at all on either SIM profile on the Rogers network in Canada. According to eKit support it's a know problem and it should be fixed in the next week or so.

A real turnoff, at least for me, is that when the phone is unavailable or turned off, even with the voicemail disabled, the caller doesn't get the standard 'customer not available' message but is rather given an option to send a numeric SMS and is in turn charged for the failed call.

It looks like they have reduced the number of countries free incoming on UK number, now mainy EU and US only.

VladS:

How do you know that the caller is charged for their call when the EKIT cell phone is turned off and callers are given a choice to send a text or cancel?

Two ways. CDRs on my IP PBX and CDRs on my providers' end.

Calls to offline first generation, single IMSI eKit cards are passed a supervision level intercept message (no connection).

Calls to offline second generation, dual IMSI eKit cards connect the moment the intercept message is heard. This applies to calls routed via both UK and US numbers.

Is this happening only on Canada networks or also on other networks. If it affects all networks and is not fixed is a big problem.

Thanks VladS,

ekit has since diagnosed the problem and it appeared to be the way in which the voice mail settings were configured. I understand this has been changed and VladS can now receive calls in Canada. This should only have affected VladS and no other ekit users. All ekit users can receive calls in the 130 countries where the service operates.

John

I confirm everything works well... Now if I could only figure out how I managed to configure my profile to do what it did. I guess we'll never know.

John, thanks a lot for all the help. Brilliant service.

Last but not least, could you comment on the 'send SMS' intercept a caller hears when a customer is unavailable and the voicemail is deactivated? Your original cards used the original operator's intercept and the caller was not billed for the call. The new ones connect as soon as the 'send SMS' intercept is heard.

VladS.

For me, I don't see a problem in giving my callers the option to send me a text message informing me they called. Since you can turn off voice mail, some people might like to be notified with a free e-mail that a call came in while their phone was off.

Most of us in the U.S. have cell phone plans with free long distance service to domestic U.S. numbers. In fact many of us have a home phone with free domestic long distance. I like the fact that these people can essentially call me for free on the EKIT U.S. number rather than having to call a U.K. number to reach me.

And even if they have to pay to call my U.S. number, it's a very cheap call.

I am not sure that if a call to the U.S. number is unanswered, and they send a text message, if it goes to the +44 number or the U.S. number. I forgot that a text message costs 10 cents if it's received on my U.S. Number. But it's still a cheap way to know if someone is trying to reach me.

FBlack_111:

I don't think you understand where my problem is...

The problem is since the inception of the 'send SMS' intercept, the caller is billed for the call even when the phone is off and the voicemail disabled. If I wanted to know who called while the phone was off I could have kept the voicemail active...

VladS:

Maybe I am missing something. Are you unhappy that someone has to actually "pay" for the call that goes to a message? Is it a cost factor? If it's just the actual cost of the call, it's pretty small and not much to worry about?

Or is it something else?

FBlack_111:

Network level intercept messages are free as they're streamed through the signalling path (just like ringing). Once the MVNO replaces the default intercept and routes the call to an application such as the missed call SMS, the call becomes chargeable and the caller get billed.

My point is that the new dual IMSI package could have been setup just like the single IMSI packages and routed to network default intercepts.

In my case I route all my incoming calls via an IP PBX and never give out the actual DIDs associate with a SIM. Having to pay for each and every call I miss can add up pretty quick. On top of all this I also can't take advantage of the calling number detection in the SMS intercept as the current PBX firmware doesn't properly handle RPID (remote party ID) for my outbound trunk(s).

Hi VladS,

From what I understand there should have been no change in the behaviour from single number service to the dual number service. We could look at stopping the SMS intercept. I'll have to speak to our tech guys about whether this is possible and what's involved. Let me know if you think making this change would be of value.

John

Receiving SMS on US number
 

Is it possible to receive SMS messages on the US phone number?

If so, most US cellular providers use an e-mail address for this, is there such an e-mail for this service?

For example my US bank would offer text alerts send to my US cell phone if I have an e-mail address for it.

Thanks for your help.

John,

I would say to do what's best for eKit. Apparently most customers would rather have the SMS intercept than a generic one. This being said, I'm all for flexibility. I say that giving your customers three options: voicemail, SMS intercept and generic intercept, with the first two being chargeable to the caller would satisfy everyone.

Vlad

VladS:

So maybe they can make it a feature that can be turned on or off. Like being able to turn off voice mail. As I said earlier, I prefer to keep the text message option on so I know who tried to reach me.

FBlack_111:

Again, I'm all for flexibility.

I for one wouldn't mind seeing the voicemail and the SMS intercept combined into one. Many Orange carriers have a service called NonStop that sends you an SMS every time a call gets diverted to your voicemail but no message is left. Fido in Canada also has it under the WhoCalled name.

In Hungary, both T-Mobile and Vodafone send you SMS on missed calls. There are no words to describe how much I hated this service until I managed to get it switch off :-)

Yes, in germany too. And the worst is that the caller has to pay to listen to the announcement that the receiver is not there and will be notified by SMS. Totally useless as all the voicemail crap :)

I'm glad I'm not the only one having a problem with caller-paid SMS intercepts...

Yes, you can receive both calls and SMS messages on either the UK or US phone number. Think of it as both numbers are active simultaneously to receive calls and SMSes at any time.

We don't currently have an email address for inbound SMS. This is something we may look at in future if there is demand for it.

We appreciate the feedback and really welcome new product and functionality ideas.

I just purchased a new Passport US SIM and would also love to see and email to SMS gateway for this service!

As for the new SIM, things have been fairly smooth! As was mentioned, the pre-programmed shortcodes don't work on the US side, so one must dial them manually. Also, GPRS only works on the UK side, but this isn't really a big deal! I do love the whole dual IMSI idea though. Keep up the good work!

Yes, Email, please!
 

I don't think anyone on this forum would object if ekit had a means of people sending email for inbound SMS. I know I would not object.

If we bring email in the loop, I for one would really appreciate pass-through Blackberry data capabilities (access to blackberry.net APN).

Makavel:

You are correct that the pre-programed Easy Dial numbers (like checking your balance) do not work when the phone is in U.S. mode. So you just dial 187 or 191 and send it and it works fine. You do not need the *126* prefix dialing code. In fact when the phone is in U.S.mode here in the U.S. the call back system is not needed. Calls just go straight through. So I assume the *126* with easy codes is used to trigger a call back when you are in Global mode.

Did you also notice the feature to warn you if you are in the wrong calling mode? If you are in the U.S. and turn on the phone in "Global" mode, and then make a call, you get a warning and the call is temporarily blocked. This prevents you from inadvertently making a more expensive call.

FBlack_111:

When I first noticed that the pre-programmed shortcodes didn't work and dialed manually, I did notice that it went directly through rather than waiting for a callback, but until you said something, that totally didn't register as something special. It really is interesting that the calls are directly connected when you dial the shortcodes in the US mode.

As for the blocking of calls in the wrong mode, I actually hadn't noticed that feature! I was very aware of which mode I was in so I hadn't tried to make those calls out of fear of being charged like $3 for the call hehe. That's a great feature to have though, specifically to avoid those situations! I did notice that if you try to call the phone on the US number when it's in global mode, it won't ring at all (presumably to save you from paying tons to receive the call). I'm not sure if the same thing happens when you're in the US in global mode and you try to call the UK number because I didn't test it, but it seems like this would also go straight to voicemail to avoid an expensive call.

Makavel:

One thing I like is that in the U.S. the phone tells you if you are in U.S. mode or global mode.

I learned the hard way that calls dialed from the U.S. when in U.S. mode don't use a call back. As a test of the SIM, I called a +44 contact number from my phone. It happened to be American Airlines in England. I figured I would have time to cancel as the call back system asks for "accept" or "reject". Much to my surprise, some one answered in the UK and I was charged 84 cents.

Wow! An employer that reimburses for business calls! Where do I sign up?

Kupe...who spends two weeks per month in Europe for his employer and gets zero reimbursement (which is why I'm always scoping here for the best deals! ;) )

Hey gang-

Got my eKit SIM from Telestial today. Trying it out here in the US and seems to work great!

Quick Voicemail question for eKit...Does anyone know if you can access Voicemail remotely? i.e. call your US or UK eKit number from another number and listen to Voicemail remotely?

Thanks!

Kupe

Haha yikes! Thanks for the heads-up. I've been wanting to try a test call, but now that I know it'll go through without callback, I won't be doing that! That's a pretty nice feature if you do plan on making a call while in the US though.

Does it work the same way in Canada? (e.g. straight through dialing?) The amazing thing with Canada is that the eKit is cheaper to receive a call out of your local region than it is with most Canadian plans. Nationwide plans are through the roof. I'm about sold. Are they still giving you any discount for an old United Mobile or 09 sim?