Telna significantly lowered their rates for Canada to $0.15 for incoming calls and a bit under $0.20 for calls to the US and Canada. This sure beats most of the other Canadian prepaid cards.

There's one caveat... Their roaming partners are Bell and Telus, thus requiring the use of a UMTS/3G 850/1900 phone...

Telna, Android and callback
 

Anyone have any experience with Telna SIM and Android? Can't find a whole lot on google if the Android phones support callback.... Have an older HTC mytouch that I'd like to use on an upcoming trip...

The new sim is not callback based.

Interesting, the Telna website states that callback is used in the countries that I plan on visiting... If callback is no longer a factor, all the better!!!

I should mention that I have only used the new sim in the US and it does not use callback. If the website says callback is used in those countries you are visiting, then it's probably correct. You may want to shoot Telna Representatives a email/PM to verify.

No specific experience but it would seem a good choice for its VOIP calling option, if the phone has WiFi. But it would be bad to ever turn on the cellular data as that would be pretty expensive.

I live in Greece, if i order a telna sim how much taxes i will have to pay above the advertised rates? need to calculate the exact cost per call.

I don't have the exact number but it's supposed to be about +10% for taxes, etc. Since the card is postpaid to your credit card, you can also expect and international exchange fee to a non-US account.

you mean international exchange fee from telna or my creditcard?

Your credit card.

my credit card hasn't any premium or international exchange fees on foreign currency transcactions.

That's cool.

As I posted in this thread or may be another one, tax is over 20%. More like 22 - 23%. Here is my last month's bill and below that is the one from 2010.
----------------------------------------------------
Usage for telna Mobile (xxx) xxx - xxxx
Total call usage $3.48
Il state excise tax $0.273
Federal universal service fund $0.504
Federal trs fund $0.020
Simplified muni telecomm tax $0.234
Il state imf $0.020
Total taxes and surcharges $1.05
$4.53


Usage for telna Mobile (xxx) xxx - xxxx
Total call usage $8.94
Il state excise tax $0.670
Federal universal service fund $1.261
Federal trs fund $0.102
Simplified muni telecomm tax $0.574
Il state imf $0.048
Total taxes and surcharges $2.65
$11.60

Oh Guss.. with 20+% taxes call rates get very expensive.

Looks like half the tax is city & state. I wonder what it would be for someone with an address in a low-tax state like Nevada.

A little additional information. In the US, wireless consumers pay not only Federal taxes and fees, but also State and local taxes. These taxes are normally based on the location where the customer tells the wireless company that he lives, billing address, etc. rather than the location where the number is based or where it is most frequently used. Many State and local governments look on wireless phones as a luxury and a "cash cow" to be heavily taxed. Some of the worst locations for taxing wireless are Nebraska and Bossman's home State of Illinois, where the combined taxes and fees can run over 20%. By contrast the total taxes and fees in Nevada or Oregon are about 7%. Since most plans are now nation-wide, many people in high-tax States are now giving other addresses when signing up for service. Here's a report on the subject.

Very true, DrNewcomb. The taxes are going to vary depending on home state. yes, our telecommunication taxes here in Illinois are quite high. My vonage taxes are about 33%. LOL!

Hi

Thanks DRNewcomb for inquiring about the question directly to us. We're not always keeping an eye on the forum but we're always happy to answer questions and clarify possible issues.

So regarding taxes, our US customers have to be charged the taxes that apply to their city, county, state and federal taxes. Unfortunately the tax system in the US is extremely complicated in regards to telecommunications. So it is better indeed to live in a state like Nevada that doesn't tax services, so you only pay the federal government for USF, and one of the most expensive states is Florida if you are a business.

Customers who live outside of the USA are not subject to any of those taxes since we are actually exporting a service to wherever they live. So our customers outside of the USA receive invoices that do not list any taxes.

We hope this answers the tax question.

Thanks.

hi, thanks to telnamobile for keeping up with this thread.

I have a nonandroid phone and siphon sip client. and am trying to set up VOIP (over wifi) with telna. How do I go about getting my username and password from telna. I'm new to VOIP and would appreciate help from anyone . thanks

You log onto your account on telnamobile.com and it's under a little black & white icon labeled "Credentials Info".

I suggest that you give one of the other Android SIP clients a try. Some clients are much more flexible than the one Telna packages for their customers.

thank you Dr. Newcomb. it appears to be working. awesome job from telna as well.

hello,

2 issues, wondering what you guys think:

1) i texted a sprint phone using my telna phone, and now that sprint phone keeps recieving my text every 2 hours for the last day.

2) after working well for the first five days i had telna, now the network keeps searching and not finding carrier. This just started on 03/01/12.

My son uses this sim. I could not reach him yesterday. As he always turns it own when he gets on the school bus. When he finally called me from the home phone, he said the phone would not connect. I just checked it now after I saw your post. Incoming calls and texts are not coming through. Outgoing calls work. But txts just sit in the outbox.

Bottom line - they are having issues.

thanks bossman, I can second everything you said. I was able to make an outgoing but no incoming calls, and no texts at all.

looks like I'll have to get a second sim card. Maybe just use telna as a backup??? any alternatives for similar price?? I was looking at spotmobile.

I am not familiar with spotmobile. If your primary use is for the USA, have you considered others such as TMobile, etc? My primary use of telna is for international travel. So that I can forward my AT&T number to it, and be reachable at good rates. Telna has served me well in that regards. I have use it in Jamaica, UK, Nigeria, etc. without issues. So, whatever the issues are they are having, it's probably just temporary. At least I hope so...as I plan on using it for incoming calls from the US when I travel to Nigeria at the end of the month.

Hi Guys

there was indeed a small technical issue that was resolved around 9AM PST. Everything should be fine now.
If not please contact our customer service team with some examples and they'll have someone look at the issue.
@biophysics: Please let the customer service team what message repeated itself so they investigate and make sure this issue does not keep occurring and hopefully does not happen again in the future.

Thanks!

My primary purpose on these SIMs is use abroad, but I give weight to a SIM that works easily at home as well. (Meaning the US, not the UAE anymore -- I still am a frequent visitor, but have moved back to the States a few years back).

My best friend and his son visit us a couple of times a year from Oz. When they come, I loan them US SIMs and Telna would be great. When I'm traveling, I'll sometimes take a second phone with me if I think it will come in handy and I'll often head off to the airport with the forwarding on and the roaming SIM engaged if the rate of using it at the airport isn't very much.

My wife and I live on the Canadian border. She is working twenty weeks over the next year in Canada. This year I'm just giving ATT the $200 bucks and extending my family plan into Canada. That way she doesn't have to think about it and can call Canada without worrying about calling cards. When that gig is over, I'll probably use Telna for Canada. When I leave my house, I'll just use Telna for the twenty minute trip to the border and not worry about pulling over and SIM swapping near the border.

At 8 cents a minute, it is a great second phone. It is also a good deal for a senior citizen. I'm carrying my inlaws on my family plan. They go through half an hour a month. I had them on prepaid, but my father-in-law couldn't stay on the prepaid cycle. TMobile Gold with manual recharges might make sense, but this would be no hassle.

I'm also recommending the phone to a close friend who lives in Dubai but is from Florida. She is TMobile Gold, but I thought that the roaming part of the phone was a good deal.

Now as a TMobile MVNO, if they could figure out how to make Hotspot (UMA) work in a TMobile handset, that would be great. As many people know, there are several countries where UMA works and SIP doesn't.

My only real issue with TelnaMobile is that, from time to time, even with a good T-Mobile signal it just gets stuck and won't register ("No Access"). Turning the phone off and on, manually selecting T-Mobile, changing phones, etc. does not fix it. Then it suddenly starts working again. I don't know if this is a problem with the multi-IMSI SIM or with Telna's switch but it tends to be a PITA.

setting up voicemail
 

Hi,

looking for help in setting up voicemail. Using iphone 2g.

activated voicemail on telna website, turned phone off and on again. still nothing. I tried dialing my own number, but the call hangs up. any help is appreciated. thanks

Voicemail is not functional on their sim card. Somewhere in this thread, the telna representative that posts here mentioned they are working on it.

Incoming calls have not been possible on my sim since Friday. Caller just gets a tone than the message that the call cannot be completed as dialed. I am seriously beginning to question the reliability of Telna. One day last week I received an email that detailed some kind of major outage that they suffered, that took down their entire system. I am not sure if this is related to that.

I travel out of the country for 2 weeks on Wednesday. My plan was to forward my US number to my Ekit and/or Telna, since it's important that I am reachable. Telna just made that decision easy.

If I had to pick one issue that I thought was the most serious for Telna, I'd have to say it's reliability. There have been times when it was difficult to get the SIM even to register on T-Mobile. I doubt I would travel with TelnaMobile without also having a backup plan. Of course, that's true of any roaming solution. Spare phone, spare unactivated SIM, backup service, etc.

I am currently in Nigeria. Using a local MTN sim and Ekit. I am not surprised any bit that my telna did not register on any network and is now showing unregistered sim. Even though it was working find before I left the US.

Sometimes it takes several power-cycles and a wait before it will register. I think it has something to do with the multi-IMSI SIM they use.

Absolutely! Thanks for mentioning this. I power cycled and a few minutes after powering up, it registered, and calls were possible.

Do you know to which networks the IMSIs are tied to? How do you control on the SIM which IMSI to send to the VPLMN and how can each IMSIs be used by the same MSISDN. Wouldn't the HLR return an error? I thought 1 MSISDN=1 IMSI. Unless each MVNO agreement is tied to a different HLR but CDRs are consolidated per MSISDN for billing.

Once long ago I read the details of how multi-IMSI SIMs work. I've forgotten the details. However, I know that at some point the phone tells the SIM the MNN of the network it is attempting to register on. The multi-IMSI SIM can change its personality based on this information. There is really no way for the user to get the SIM to change its behavior. It all has to do with the networks the phone sees when trying to register.

I don't know much about this, but perhaps things vary in the way they've been implemented by different providers

Some multi SIMs come with instructions which mention prefixing the PIN, so one would use 2xxxx or 3xxxx to select the alternate identities, and the 4 digit version will either select the first or the relevant default action.

I don't know whether this applies to all such SIMs. For some types of older phone this is actually necessary whereas for most it's optional.

I have an ekit SIM which recently arrived. Tried out in the UK only so far, by default it selects its Jersey ID, which seems to register only on Orange here. If I prefix the PIN with 2, it selects the Manx ID which roams all UK networks. I haven't tried the 3 prefix for the US ID., but I assume no roaming here.

Interesting. Since it's in the PIN, it sounds like a STK is running in the USIM software enabling what IMSI to use. Otherwise, automatic selection based on the available PLMNs and in order of the PRL (cheaper first of course!) in the unlikely case where 2 roaming networks are available but from 2 MVNO agreements. But being able to force one particular identity vs the others could be useful if the primary one is unreliable for instance.

Who offers the most IMSIs?

Sorry to say - This sim has proved to be too unreliable for my liking. Have not been able to reach the phone in the last hour. Message sometimes says the number is not reachable and sometimes it says the local number is unassigned. I was talking to my son on the phone earlier today. I can't depend on this thing. Have to get my son another sim.