Stu:

It works great in Canada.

Hi Kupe,

You can't currently access mobile voice mail remotely unfortunately. This is something we have in the development pipeline. It will be provided as part of the ekit travel journal functionality. The travel journal is currently provided free to all ekit SIM users. Essentially the service automatically maps your travels on a google map using cell tower locations used by your SIM. The travel journal has strong privacy settings (private, family & friends, public), and can be switched off. For those wishing to use it, you can provide a password to family and friends, they can see where you are, the local time and weather, if your mobile is on or off, send you a text or call you, you can do text updates to the journal, upload photos, etc and family and freinds can share in your travel experience.

One of the feature we'll integrate into the travel journal is the ability to pick up your voice mail via the travel journal website. You will login with your password, will see a record of your trip, and in addition to seeing comments and messages to the journal from family and friends, you will also be able to play voice mail messages through the PC for free.

If you haven't had an opportunity to review the travel journal, I'd recommend it - there is a demo on the website.

Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Regards,

John

Hi Stu,

The service uses normal calling (straight through dialling) in the USA and in Canada.

John

I'm glad you're happy with the service. An early batch of SIMs had the pre-programmed shortcodes incorrectly stored in the US profile. This has since been rectified, and will work as expected with newer SIMs. Apologies for the inconvenience. Thanks for the feedback.

John

I just ordered one this morning and will report back.

Will we be able to set up auto recharge in the near future from a preverified credit card?

Stu

I have checked again this morning telestial website for ekit US Passport rates and found out that again they have a bunch of countries with free incoming in addition to EU and US, like Brazil Algeria Chile Australia Bahrain. Can JD confirm a firm list of free incoming calls countries?


Passport US SIM Card by Telestial

As far as I can see you can do it right now. The auto-recharge amounts are $30/50/100 and the trigger level is $5/10/20/50.

John-

It sounds like the eKit I just got from Telestial is one of the older ones- i.e. the pre-programmed shortcodes don't work in US mode. Is this something we can manually reprogram, or will we need to workaround by manually dialing?

Thanks!

Kupe

Kupe:

Set your phone to U.S. mode and just dial 187. You will get a text message soon with the balance. If that works you really don't need the prefix dialing *126* .

On my EKIT SIM, the Easy Dial number contacts on the SIM work in Global mode. I have a contact that says: Account Baance *126*187# .This is how to check your account balance in global mode when you are in Europe. For the U.S. just use, 187, 191, 154, etc.

Does anyone else get strange text messages if they leave their phone on global mode while in the US? The texts consist of some random characters ($, », and @) interspersed between a bunch of big black boxes. It's obviously not a big deal because it doesn't affect the function in any way, but I'm just curious if I'm the only one getting this.

curious
 

Uh, why would you leave it on global mode if you are in the USA?

Haha no real reason. I just had turned it on like that to test some things, forgot about it, and left it on overnight.

Makaval:

I also have had my phone on Ekit's "global" mode in the U.S. while I checked some features. I never had odd text messages. Did you try checking your account balance by dialing 187 or *126*187# . You generate a text message. In my test the messages were fine with no odd characters.

I have checked my balance with *126*187# while in "global" mode in the US and this works fine! My phone actually shows the balance in a pop-up thing immediately and then receives a text a few minutes later saying the same thing. I'm not sure what the random text messages were, but they were from "eKit", so it seems like they have something to do with the service. I left it on again over last night to see and didn't get any of those messages so maybe it was just a weird day hehe. Either way, I don't mind because it doesn't impact the service at all.

Just to clarify, I assume the phone must be in "global" mode to work in Canada? Or does "US" mode work?

US mode works very well in Canada.

Incoming calls received via the UK DID are free, those received via the US DID are $0.19/minute with no connect fee.

Just got back from first Europe trip (Switzerland) with my Telestial eKit sim. Very very pleased. Received calls via my US number with 100% reliability. Sending and receiving texts worked perfectly also, including receiving texts sent to my US number. (Texts never worked with my Sim4Travel sim.)

So far so good...will test in France next week.

Kupe

Is there a deal here for UM losers? I like the idea of this card, with the two numbers and would proabaly jump. I cannot seem to find the dual IMSI cards on their website though?

The Canada part is what made me buy it. The strange thing is that it is cheaper to use this phone in Canada than Canadian prepaid SIMs if you are out of the local area in which it was issued (and that is a very small area). My Rogers SIM is for the Windsor area. I'm "roaming" by the time I'm hitting London, ON. Ugh.

Go to www.telestial.com

Normally not a big fan of telestial as they rip you off big time for local sim cards tripling or quadrupling the price but they seem to be the only people selling the dual ekit card in North America at the present time.

Uh, have you tried ekit or ekit on eBay?
 

Ekit has their own web site and on eBay they have very good prices.
And if you can find an ekit partner the prices are even lower than ekit themselves.
For instance railpass.com has rates that are far less than ekit itself!?

Added info: The telestial rates beat the railpass rates. Telestial has the 'lite' with $5 credit railpass'/ekits' nonlite has $10 credit. eBay has the best prices and shipping by far. Shipping is a killer.

so, there is currently nobody offering an ekit card to UM orphans?

I don't believe so. I've written off my UM card to the "school of hard knocks" account. ;(

Kupe

I watch numerous forums on prepaid SIM cards. Overwhelmingly, it seems like people are more concerned about the incoming rates rather than the outgoing rates. I'm not sure if this means that everyone is using callback services or informal call back
services ("Mom ring me back at..."), but I am a little surprised. I expect that this group (on this forum) would route the call around the world twice rather than pay 1p more per minute, but more importantly this seems to be the prevailing trend. I would presume that most people would be delighted to pay a fraction of what their home provider charges for roaming, but the numbers don't seem to match my theory.

The folks who hang out on this forum (myself included) pinch every penny they can, but what is your opinion about friends and colleagues.

Since I'm still waiting for Yackie's next step, I was contemplating grabbing an ekit SIM for my upcoming trip. However, needed some clarification on the rates (Passport US SIM): Are you guys using callbacks for your outbound where you have free incoming? (although calling to the U.S. is almost the same as say Callbackworld)

For example, calling a local mobile number in Czech Rep. while roaming there is shown as $0.84 + $0.35* = $1.19/min which seems quite high...

* the $0.35/min surcharge is shown on the Passport US SIM, whereas the + version has $0.40/min...Are these typos and actually one time surcharges, in lieu of per min rates?

glhs509:

The connection fee is a one time charge per call. If you look at the Ekit rate sheets, the 35 cents per minute surcharge to call a cell phone is already shown on the rate sheet.

So in the Czech Republic it's 49 cents a minute to call a land line and 84 cents a minute to call a cell phone. Incoming calls are free.

So a 10 minute call to a cell phone is .84 x 10= 8.40 +35 = $8.75. Thus a 10 minute call is .875 cents per minute.

Thanks for the quick response...I thought the surcharge was a one-time fee, but per Telestial's website, one of the footnotes (the one below ** Service in Japan...) states the following:
"There is a $0.35 USD per minute surcharge when you make a call to a cell phone (does not apply when calling to a US or Canadian cell phone)."
Any thoughts?

-Ken

Those two 35 cent numbers are a bit confusing. The 35 cent (one time per call) connection fee is self explanatory. Then their notes say there is a 35 cent per minute surcharge to call a cell phone. Yet their chart showing rates has that extra 35 cent a minute fee built in to the rates.

One thing I never checked up on is the "Additional surcharges apply when calling certain countries.". As a example the web site says :

"Outgoing Call Surcharges
A $0.75 USD surcharge applies to all outgoing calls made to the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, etc. "

I always assumed it's a one time surcharge per call, not per minute. But I never confirmed this. I need to find out because I will be in Egypt in September.

Chatting w/ Customer support at the moment, and they've confirmed (as you stated) the $0.35 is included in the rate table...They also stated the 'other country' outgoing surcharge is actually per minute, so be forewarned...

I guess I may just grab one for tooting around eastern Europe...the outgoing calls are unfortunately on the high side (considering callback and a UK mobile number), but being able to roam with enough free incoming countries makes up for it...

-Ken

Well...just spent 3 days in Paris with my new eKit sim and have to say it did NOT go well...

Inbound calls were a complete bust. Callers to my US number all reported that calls went straight to voicemail. And in no case did my phone ever ring for those calls, nor did it show any missed calls. At all times I had a full 4-bar signal.

Callers to my UK number reported that the phone would ring continuously, NEVER go to voicemail, and these calls also never rang through to me, nor showed any missed calls.

Outbound calls succeeded sporadically. Frequently I never got the eKit callback, or I would get a message that "call failed" and nothing would happen.

Outbound text messages also were iffy- in most cases it reported "could not send message", though in several cases the message was in fact sent despite that message.

I tried all 3 Paris networks- FSFR, Orange, and Bytel. eKit seems to prefer registering with FSFR, on which I could receive no calls. On Orange, I received one call, but could not make any calls. Bytel seemed to work better, but still no consistency.

I called Customer Service and we went through the usual Tier 1 malarkey- i.e. turn off phone, remove batt and sim, try different networks, etc. Blah blah blah. All stuff I had tried already. The agent tried repeatedly to call my US and UK number and it never rang through to me. Finally on one try to my US number it did ring, and she then said "the US incoming problem is now resolved." I said "whoa- once out of 10 times isn't resolved." She never was able to reach my UK number and she opened a ticket for that.

And that's where it stands. Needless to say this was VERY disappointing, especially given my good experience with eKit in Zurich the week before. I'll be in Germany to try it next week, and I hope the results are very very different. I need a phone I can rely on, and currently my eKit is exhibiting late United-Mobile style reliability! ;(

Kupe

Perfect timing...just received my SIM today. :(

Guess I'll bring my local SIMs for backup next week...

Kupe,

Can you please email me your number so we can investigate.

JD

Hi JD-

Email on the way!

Unfortunately, I'm no longer in France, but back in the US. Just as in my initial testing, my eKit seems to work fine here in the US, so I'm afraid that won't provide any clues as to the failures in France. I won't be back in France until early July to test that service again. I will be in Germany though next week to test there.

Dave

Thanks for sending us the details Kupe.

We've looked at the logs, and during the time you were in France we were seeing 2-5% errors being passed from the French network operators infrastructure through the mobile network. Unfortunately it looks like you got a disproportionate number of these errors. Please accept our apologies. We're confident this issue has been resolved. Please let me know how you go in Germany, and I'd certainly appreciate you reporting back on your experience during your next France trip in July. All the best for your German travels. It's a great time of year to the in Europe.

JD

Thanks JD! eKit worked perfectly in Germany! Hopefully just a brief glitch back in France.

Regarding the weather though.... ;) I was in Munich, where after 5 days of non-stop HEAVY rain, the Isar River was nearly cresting its banks and sand-bagging was being discussed! Just across the border in Austria you may have seen news coverage of flooding in the streets! Just my luck though, almost anywhere else in Europe it was sunny and beautiful! The good news was that the weather had us holed up in a beer-hall where we watched the USA upset Spain in the Confederation Cup! Woohoo!!!! And of course then had to call everybody on my eKit to share the news! ;)

Kupe

That's great Kupe, I'm glad the service worked well for you.

You could certainly do plenty worse than being holed up in a German beer hall.

JD

I can confirm eKit works well in Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Czech Republic. I used to have problems in Hungary with other SIM cards, but eKit was fine there. Even voice quality was good to very good even when calling via Betamax.

Something odd happened with my new Ekit Dual SIM.

As per the User Guide, the U.S. SIM deactivated after 7 days of non use. The guide says you can reactivate it by going online, or over the phone, or with customer service.

But in addition to the U.S. number being deactivated, the U.K number was deactivated too. The phone would not take the UK. Pin code at all. It was as if the whole SIM was deactivated. I had to activate it via my computer at Recharge Minutes.

Has anyone else had their US number shut down after the 7 days? What about their global number? How did you get it all reactivated?

Hi FBalck,

If the US service isn't used for 7 days, it needs to be reactivated to make calls from the US. If the US service is de-activated you will still be able to receive calls to the US number, and they will be forwarded to the global (UK) number. If the US service is deactivated, and you're in the US, the SIM should force you to the global (UK) profile. From the UK profile, if you dial 870, the US profile will be activated. Wait 5 minutes, turn your phone off and on, and then start up in the US profile with the PIN 2**** and you should ready to make calls on the US profile.

The global number should not be impacted by the US number. Also, if rather than entering the PIN 1**** for the global profile, you just enter the four digit PIN, you should also go to the global profile. The global profile will only be deactivated if you haven't made a call or sent a text for 9 months.

Please let me know if you're experiencing different behaviour to what I've described, it sounds like you may be. Please try again for me, and see if the behaviour is repeated. If it is please let me know so we can investigate. Thanks for the feedback.

Regards,

JD

Why does this whole 7-day de-activation/re-activation even exist? It just makes things more complicated for the end-user. Would dialling 870 from the UK profile cost anything?