I agree with you about the Vodafone rates (and for the record I own an Etisilat SIM for the UAE. I actually own two and one free one that was given to me for the competitor Du). I'm going on a Baltic cruise in August and am using Vodafone instead of my roaming SIM for the Netherlands (transit only), Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, and Finland. I'm still debating what I am doing with Russia. Let's see what Vodafone does in September. Last week, we could have made the same argument about Three.

Let's not forget that the Vodafone UK offer is only a promotion. I am sure there are many more special roaming promotions offered by operators. Not as good that of Vodafone UK, but still, some kind of special roaming deals. But they will all come to an end after the holiday season.

You probably meant Dual IMSI SIMs, not phones. Unless you meant DUAL SIM phones.....

You're right. Sometimes, my fingers are just too fast for my own good.

Matha531,

Your contribution brings it up to the point.

Absolutely exact.

I can imagine this. My career started with "Montel" (VIAG Europlatform) which was a Liechtenstein based SIM with +423-7 Prefix at "normal" mobile rates which had incoming free in VIAG and affiliated networks in .de, .ch, .li and .at
Outgoing tariff was allways the same. Montel was officially closed, the customers-contracts were regularly canceled, as the buyer did not understand the business modell

Then I received a Riiing Card and used it occasionally. Travelling to the US the SIM was not useful for me, due to tremendous incoming fees, there my german T-Mobile (contract) or Simyo (Prepaid) were much more lower in the price for incoming calls.

Riiing converted to UM and seemed to be ok, but in the search for new marketing ideas they loosed base contact. Some Dealers who want to buy and to sell theses SIM-cards asked me for support, they suffered in poor service. UM changed their tariffs, their communication was not quite good, the rest of the story is known.

Seems to be a good deal, as Vodafone is one of the biggest mobile phone companies world wide and will sustain for a while. Vodafone UK speaks native english and you can reload it by any Vodafone voucher from the visited country - no matter, if Germany, UK, Netherlands, etc. even Vodafone Egypt should work.

Queen of roaming agreements be Swisscom NATEL, but you have to go there to buy it personally (the want to see yourself and your ID-Card/Passport before you get one) in the local Swisscom-Store, no viable solution for most of us here :-)

I had/have one dual-SIM from UM but I never could check out the US part in the US :-(

United Mobile files bankruptcy
 

Dear all,

as it looks like, United Mobile as a company came to an end. If you follow the enclosed link, there is a letter published that tells, United Mobile will file bankruptcy. The article further claims, anyone should keep the SIM card as it is still possible, that the +423 number range will be activated somewhen soon. :(

BK

Amtlich: United Mobile Konkurs / United Mobile bankruptcy 2lounge

Hello Prepaid World,

just an update:

United-Mobile AG filed for Bankruptcy, if you understand german language United Mobile beantragt Konkurs - teltarif.de News or United Mobile muss Konkurs beantragen could be interesting for you.

In short words: The President of the Advisory Board ("Verwaltungsrat") made a forensic account check and found out, that there is a big number in the books, but with negative sign before it, they have much more debts than cash at this moment. So they had to file for bankruptcy at the Liechtenstein Court. The Lichtenstein Authorities now have to find a man ("Masseverwalter") who looks in the books again and sees what's going on and what can converted to money.

It depends how fast this procedure will happen and if anybody buys the customer base and the Authentification Servers, he can continue.

Irish Cubic Telecom seems to be out of the game. The deal never was finished, as mentioned before, some People wanted much more money than the 10% which were offered to them.

UK-Jersey SIM-Cards and the area code +44 7937 is still dead, the UM423 SIM Cards are partially still alive you can call me at +423 663 005690 for example.

Lets see what happens next.

In deed... Let's see... please keep us posted!

I really liked the 423 number...:(

Even if 423 comes back online it's not a good platform anymore. Call rates to the number are high and it looked if the one of the reason was that on the same number block sex and other simular service are active. This is at least what was written in some information.

As long as the call rates to +423 are high it's not an good alternative.

Hi Bbob,

the high interconnect rates to +423-663 was the business model of UM. They got more money for each incoming call so You (as an UM customer) had to pay less to nothing for incoming.

The UM+ modell seems more attractive to customers: Low interconnect tariffs for callers, but remains enough money to switch to the desired country?

The Liechtenstein Telekom received a significant increase of Telecom Traffic since the existence of UM. (Can be found on the pages of Liechteneiner Amt für Kommunikation)

I agree with you: The sharing of the +423-663 with "red-light" and or premium-services is a problem indeed, as national telcos intend to block +423-663

a) to protect their local (0)900 "premium" services.
b) to protect customers from surprising expensive calls

One viable solution could the shift from +423-663 to +423-7 which is the "normal" mobilephone numbering range of Liechtenstein.

So shifting to +423-7 is an option but this would mean that new sims have to be issued and this will cost a lot to offer replacements. Don't know if this is an option unless someone want to start all over again.

Buying the +423-663 platform or reactivating it will not be a succes in my opinion. As we all know it's blocked by many providers, rates are high meaming not everyone can call you or at a high rate only.

But future will tell.

Good morning,

for those who understand german justice language, the following could be interesting for you:

http://www.gerichte.li/lg/edikte/KO%202009%20449.pdf

In short terms: This is an official document of the court of justice at the country of Liechtenstein, telling you, that the bankruptcy process ("Konkursverfahren") has been officially opened.

If you want to get your money back from UM or if you have any open bills (i.e. you are a supplier), you are requested to contact the lawyer and explain your claim. (Reading lawyers, sorry, if I didn't explain it juristically totally correct, IANAL)

But be aware of the complete amount of debts seems to be round about 8 Mio EUR (12 Mio CHF) so if you - lets say - would have 400 EUR in talktime/surftime amount on your UM account, the bigger players would be served first.

The starting of the bankruptcy process does not say, that UM will be gone for ever. It depends now, who (which individual or company) "buys" the necessary assets from the Company to restart the service.

Stay tuned :-)

The problem is, of course, that UM's customers have now moved on to other services. It's unlikely they'd be interested in coming back to a relaunched UM. Even if the new owners reinstated our airtime credits, would you spend more money to add new airtime at UM? I wouldn't.

The um site is again out of order :(

Excusi,

the United-Mobile - Low Cost Roaming is up and running.
The text "resuming shortly" - what means "shortly" ? :-)

the united-mobile.de is parked at a domain-parking company and registered to a LTD at Munich (Germany) or Houston (TX, USA) (see Home: www.denic.de for details.)

running? are you sure?:eek:

Hello,

running in sense of you see the picture and are asked for your e-mail.

Reading the official bulletin of the Liechtenstein Court before December 2009 I don't think to report any useful news in this case. Maybe I'm wrong.

News from royal court of Liechtenstein
 

This morning the postman delivered rather bad news:

By order of Liechtenstein's royal court from 15.09.2009, all creditors are invited to make a total advance payment of CHF 70.000,- to cover costs as there are no assets left. Should CHF 70.000,- not be togehter within 14 days the court will close the case and dissolve the company due to lack of assets.

Unfortunately I cannot upload the court order because its 158 kb exceed the size limit for pdf files.

I am sure that by now, everybody has given up any hope, if indeed there had been any, that United Mobile will ever rise again.

It appears to me that even the Liechtenstein court does not believe in raising CHF 70.000,- because while they are asking for money, they did not include a single hint as to where anyone should make a payment to.

Is there any point in retaining the SIMs? Or is it time to discard them?

Good question: if discarding is better, we may take advantage of one of many offers for substituting UM sims... :confused:

Hello Racketeer,

your official letter contains a decision from September 15th, 2009 ?
Is the decision as described in http://www.gerichte.li/lg/edikte/KO%202009%20449.pdf no longer valid?

Thank you for posting the bankruptcy court link. Did a rough translation of the document that was linked. Basically asks creditors to bring their claims to the Vaduz bankruptcy court. Usually former customers are the last in line in any bankruptcy court judgment, so I'm not sure if they will ever receive restitution. Trading in the dead sim to a competitor would be a more realistic solution for most former United Mobile customers.

In my case, my Riiing/UM card balance was moved to UM+ and most of that was used on a trip to the UK a couple of years ago (think only had US$6 or so left on the card; not worth pursuing in my instance). Using other sim card solutions in its' place.

The letter I received contains a court order from Sept 15th, 2009. It supersedes the previous one you linked.

I have ocr'd the original scanned file. It looks rather horrible but its contents are untouched and it now matches the PDF upload limit.

looks like their is no money even not enough money for the lawyer handling the bankrupty. If I read it correct he want to stop the process as going more into details will cost even more money and since there seems no money for him hell will not continue.

Even selling the servers will cost to much and will make to little money to even sell them.

Looks like it end here, company with no assest other than the customerbase but no mentioning of selling those. So I wonder what will happend with computers and software and customerbase. Anyone can make a small offer and hence maybe you will get the servers, software and customerbase.

Are the computers listed as an asset? Chances are they simply leased server time. Anyway, we all know how worthless old computer technology is worth.
I am sure the top officers made a deal w. someone (surupticiously) to sell the customer list. At his point - any viable customers would have moved on long ago.

Good morning,

swiss news portal 2lounge.ch shows a comment, telling, that Mobilkom of Liechtenstein has taken over the technical platform of UM 423 (United-Mobile) and wants to continue the service by themselves. The "insider" advises to keep the UM423 in a safe place or to insert it in a mobile phone.

See 2lounge Blog Archive Amtlich: United Mobile Konkurs / United Mobile bankruptcy (newer comments on top of the page) in german language.

My SIM card and the Voice Mail are still alive.

Here's the problem with that.....nobody will find these +423 cards very useful given the absurdly high termination fees almost all carriers charge for calls to +423 mobiles which is what led to the introduction of the +44 cards and ultimately probably helped grease the skid that propelled UM into the abyss it wound up in.

Hello,

Do you know, if the Areacode +423-7 is also a problem for US-Long Distance Carriers or especially the +423-663 number range?

Nevertheless I agree with you. There is a problem and there are lot of competitors on the scene now, which were not be there, when UM started some years ago...

Most former UM423 Customers could have done their SIM-Cards to earth-friendly recycling in the maintime...

Time will tell :-)

The vast majority of US ld providers charge rates from 70¢/minute on up for calls to +423 66... Some are as high as $1 or more....I would wager that the vast majority of former +423 holders took advantage of UM's original free replacement sim card with +44 and moved their money out relegating the +423 card worthless and even assuming if +423 arises again, most of those cards are either gone or in a drawer with little or no credit and osmehow I don't think an option will be to transfer back the credit from +44 to +423.....face it United Mobile, RIP.

Most carriers I have seen, do not differentiate between the two prefixes. However there are some that charge lower rates to +4237 as compared to +4236.
Carriers do not bother generally to differentiate charges to those prefixes

Earlier this year I tried calling my +423 number using betamax. For year betamax would not connect but than all of a sudden it would connect. Betamax rates were not that high although compared to +44 mobile it's still double.

Other carriers still seem to charge high rates and the discussion has been here serveral time. These high termination rates kill the platform and make it unusable.

In this thread there is also a reason mentioned, something to do with sex lines and other simular thing in the 423 6 number range. As that will probably not change I don't see a future for the platfrom.

Yes those high priced lines are on the +423 6639 range and also +423662 range (not all but part of it).
These lines are also used by phone 2 pay companies.

Hello again,

On 2lounge.ch "Peter" reports that he made a phone call to the bankruptcy-administrator of United-Mobile. He told him, that Mobilkom of Liechtenstein bought the UM-Platform for themselves. So you can expect, the UM423 platform will return soon.

From the sudden switch off of +423 663 (for outgoing calls) to now its round about 6 months. Reminds me on the Globalsim-SIM-Card connected to Callkey @ isle of man... :-)

Stay tuned and store your SIM card in a safe place.

I have kept my SIM, and just logged in to check on news from the individuals here, as I do not speak german. Thanks in deed for your helpful info guys...

So, after I read everything, I tried to call my number, and it works! My phone rings when someone calls me, BUT when I try to call from my UM number I get a message "call not allowed - network busy"...

So, I guess they are in the process of putting the network up again...?

What company has bought it? What site do we have to get into in order to check on our accounts, etc? Does anyone know?:confused:

Hello,

the situation is a little more complex.
Mobilkom of Liechtenstein bought the necessary assets (special servers, know how) from the bankruptcy-administrator. But another Person is now in dispute because he wanted it (back) too...

Insiders are wondering, if Mobilkom will run the Platform itself or will give the platform to another company. Next question is, if old UM-customers will keep their numbers (I think so) and if they will get their old balance "restored" on a new account?

At the moment, some UM423-SIM Cards are reachable for voice-calls from most High-Quality-Networks (but less from low price or routing via Cheapistan-Carriers), but no Text-Messages (SMS) and no outgoing calls, Balance-enquiries etc.

Just tried my SIM again, and it still registers on Vodafone UK

O2 UK blocked the numbers (both +4236 and +4237) some months ago, for what it described as technical reasons (probably about the tariff really, as they were charging only 17p), and a Betamax brand didn't work the last couple of times I tried (says the number is engaged). My landline pre-select, which is bought via MCI I believe, reaches music which sounds vaguely reminiscent of some 70s US TV cop show. Using BT landline via its 1280 access code works and the phone rings within a few seconds.

Same for me here. Card registers on vodafone network. Cheap voip carriers do not connect. If I use a greek carrier that charges 0,45euros/min calls is connected (CLI) works also. Same If I use my vodafone mobile.

This is mainly for user Prion as I see he is in Greece...

My UM number registers with Vodafone too... I call from my Greek mobile which is a Vodafone one, and the call goes through without any problems...

When I call from my land line, which is a HOL one, again no problems at all...

When I call from a friend's mobile which is a Wind one, again no problems at all...

When I try to call from my Skype account (and I do have a rented number too with them), the call does not go through and I get a message "call can't currently be completed"...