My point is, I'm tired of falling victim of every self-ordained investor with a little bit of capital starting a phone service. It's gotten a bit out of hand. Wouldn't you agree?

Sounds like a good idea. That is what I'm considering.

Not for most of the places I go (Angola, Russia, and Chad most often, which is 2.49, 4.99 and 4.99/min. USD respectively)

Most of my calls come from the local in-country staff I'm supporting. Cost is not a problem for them usually. My costs however are a concern, that is one of the attractions for prepaid SIMs.

Have you thought about scouting for the best offer from a reliable phone company?

Just as an example, BASE (a belgian operator) has the following rates for Angola, Russia and Chad:

€2.25 / €1.25 / €2.25, which is approx. $3.4 / $1.87 / $3.4
local calls are less than $ 1 / min in Angola and Russia and $ 1.95 in Chad

I am sure there are other operators that have similar or even better fees for these countries but provide the sort of reliability you need...


If costs are not really of a concern for those who are calling you, you might even try to get an international premium rate number (eg a satellite number) and have it diverted to yuor belgian number: the part of the fee collected by the IPRN operator and passed on to you would subsidize your roaming fees! :)

Sure, I agree. But Hop has had a long history - its first functional version of the website was archived on 27th Sep 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/200209270...hopmobile.com/
so one may have assume it was a reliable product....



Ouch!


OK, so your needs are different that those of many US people here. Since you receive calls mainly from the country you are in, it doesn't matter much to callers whether they call USA, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Estonia, Iceland, "UK-like" islands or whatever - these are just international calls to them :-)

But in fact, you don't need a prepaid SIM :-). Prepaid is just a form of payment (but of course, most "international SIMs" are preaids). You need a SIM with low-cost calls - both incoming and outgoing and coverage in many countries, also those "exotic" from North American or European point of view. And, you cannot find an tariff plan matching your need among offers of US mobile operators, right?

New HOP message
 

Got this text on HOP phone today:

"Effective May 1 2008, the hop INCOMING service will be stopped. The hop OUTGOING calls service will be available until further notice. We regret the inconvenience caused. For any additional information, please contact our customer service by dialling *126"

I find the "until further notice" quite interesting. Also will OUTGOING work without INCOMING - remember HOP is a callback service...