UM works in South Africa but the only card that appears to work in Namimbia is 09. Neither the Isle of Mann one nor the Estonian one seems to work

Try here:

http://www.orate.co.uk/acatalog/glob...-sim-card.html

Also Hop (http://www.hopmobile.com/) works both in Namibia and S.Africa but incoming calls cost $0.35/min and outgoing $0.95/min + $0.20 setup fee.

You may want to consider the MTC Tango Prepaid GSM Sim card (offered by MTC of Namibia): MTN Tango Prepaid Offer Their gsm network is on 900 Mhz according to gsmworld.com.

They do offer roaming in South Africa if they manually switch their phone to Vodacom (they can also recharge their MTN SIM card in South Africa by SMS but best to buy vouchers in Namibia).

You could ask their customer service dept if they would sell you a SIM card in advance:

HEAD OFFICE
Tel: +264 61 280 2000
Fax: +264 61 280 2124
Cnr. of Malcolm Spence & Reginald Walker Str.

Any Questions, queries or comments can be directed to feedback@mtc.com.na

Hello to you all,
thanks for all the useful information. I'll read trough it and see how i can get a card for my parents :-)

have a nice weekend!

Chris

EDIT: Got the 09-card yesterday from orate and tried it yesterday.
Voice works fine, for inbound calls i found a provider which charges 16c a minute with good quality. Just SMS do not seem to work (in- and outbound). But i tried only on T-Mobile network yet. By the way: the SMSC stored on the SIM-card is a swiss number not one from iceland.

I can confirm that both the UM and 09 cards work in South Africa. The UM cards picks up all three networks while the 09 card only picks up CellC.

By far the best prepaid service in SA is Vodacom. Once you are here the cards cost less that $1 and then you pay for airtime. There are quiet a few packages available.

According to the Vodacom website the prepaid service roams in Namibia. I have never been to Namibia so I cannot confirm it.

I lived if South Africa for a quite some time. And last time I was there,is March of this year. 0044 numbers should roam on Vodacom and MTN. Cell C has some network in big cities, otherwise it roams on Vodacom. In countryland it looks like MTN has better coverage. The daytime calls are quite expensive by European standards around R2.50-3.00 a minute. International SMS R1.60-1.80. Good tip cheapest Prepaid packages were in CNA stores. R 2.00 each.

I've now tested 09 in the Isle of Man (Manx Telecom) - works OK, including making calls directly and the 092 balance line. No SMS yet. I'll be trying it in a few other European countries in a few weeks.

One point when making calls with 09 (or possibly most of the roaming sims) - use the full international code like +4416246nnnnn when calling a number, not a local shortform like 6nnnnn (since the call is not coming from locally).

Neither incoming, nor outgoing?

I've never got 09 SMS to work either in or out in any country so far (but I've only tried three). This includes SMSing to/from numbers on networks they have roaming agreements with (such as Cingular and Manx Telecom).

... and also for sending sms from it - I forgot and made the mistake of trying to send from CallKey to a UK mobile with just 07786, not +447786

Hmm, shouldn't Callkey SMSC support the "national format" "within" +44 zone?
Anyway, is sending SMS to numbers beginning with leading zero (like 07786) inside UK possible? E.g. in Poland using leading zero is not valid when sending an SMS even if it's valid when dialing a voice call. 501x, +48501x or 0048501x are OK for all purposes but 0501x is invalid for SMS., good for voice calls only (and Era doesn't support leading zeros at all).

Didn't see anyone else mention this, but a GSM phone will not work in Japan. A GSM SIM may work in Japan if you have a WCDMA 3G phone. If your phone did not have WCDMA then it was the problem. The SIM might have worked fine.

Has anyone used 09 in Japan? What did it cost?

I just ordered an 09 SIM from SIMPhoneE.com because they claimed 2-3 day shipping. This SIM interested me because of their long list of free-incoming countries (including Mexico). I also plan to test it on my next trip to Japan.

Does anyone know the minimum activity needed to keep the phone alive. Will a 39cts call to customer service do it?

How is SMS working these days?

SMS does not work at all.
One call per 9 months seems to be enough. I just called my german homephone for 39ct to keep the SIM alive the last time.

Chris

Remember two big problems with O9...

1. No voice mail

2. Believe it or not, no coverage in Switzerland a major hole in its coverage and perhaps the only international card without a roaming partner in Switzerland that I know of.

That was even a big pro when i searched for my card.
Germans hate answering machines cause you burn money without actually speaking to the real person and the person burns money to call the answering machine and hear the recording "Damn answering machine arrgghh this cost 25 ct a minute arrghhh". ;-)

Chris

I received my 09 SIM yesterday. I had ordered it from SIMphoneE.com because they could get it to me within 3 days and I'm leaving on a cruise this morning.

So far I'm pretty disappointed. While the SIM registers on both Cingular and T-Mobile,

1. I tried sending a SMS to the number using both T-Mobile & smsBug. Neither arrived.

2. I tried ringing the number using 4 different international carriers (including AT&T and MCI) all failed. The phone never rang.

3. I tried calling the 092 short code to get the balance. I got the ringback but only silence where the balance report should have been.

I contacted SIMphoneE about these issues but have not seen a response yet. I hope the problem is related to the fact that the SIM I received has a different phone number than what was stated on the invoice. Maybe this SIM has not been properly activated yet. I don't know. I sure hope it gets fixed quickly or I'll feel like a fool for paying $20 extra for 2nd day air shipment.

Suggestions?

The sim does not yes accept sms. In regard to ringing the number, I have also problems with it from time to time. Mine is also experiencing problems at present in receiving calls, but I can make outgoing calls. I will report after trying various providers.


Edit: After trying a few routes I discovered that none was able to connect to the phone!

I just tried out as well and got a connection within 5-10 seconds using T-Com or BT.
Cheap routes are tricky as usual...


Chris

One route works now also here (OTE).

Just returned from a cruise to Mexico where I used my new 09 SIM. I was able to get it to work both by making calls through the 09 callback system and also using CBW and the two-phone URL-trigger method. I left the "dest=1234567890" part out of the URL. When the callback came it told me that I entered a bad number and to re-enter the number followed by #. I have not been able to see the CBW charges because their online accounting seems to be down. SMS did not work at all. I tried setting my VoiceStick forwarding to the 09 SIM. The people who tried calling my VoiceStick number all received a "Cannot connect" message.

This is something I have also mentioned. Some voip routes do not work to 09 mobiles.

I've had an 09 card since July of this year, which I purchased directly from 09 and had sent to the US (where I am originally from), to test the SIM out before going abroad and then used throughout Europe. . . The 09 global roaming chip does technically work, but there are a few annoying hitches. . .

While 09 technically has roaming privileges with a long list of providers around the worls, I found that this applies to receiving phone calls, not necessaily making them. For some annoying reason, local providers they have agreement with will not always allow dialing out on the 09 chip, but will allow incoming.

Such was the case with Cingular in the US, which would only accept incoming calls, while T-Mobile allowed both incoming and outgoing calls and 09 support services through its network.

I also found a similar circumstance in Hungary, where Pannon and T-Mobile worked for incoming and outgoing, but Vodafone did not. . . This situation resulted in me manually seardching for networks and determining which ones allowed me to dial out. . .

I conferred with 09 Technical Support to determine why this was happening, even though they had roaming agreements with their listed providers, and I was left with the reply that they were investigating. . . I sent a follow-up mail a few weeks later and have never received a reply. . .

The 09 system does work, but it takes a bit of fiddling that can be annoying. . .

This is due to the type of signaling most of the international roaming SIMs use to initiate the call. Another good reason to have an alternate roaming SIM (e.g. Mobal) that you can use to trigger a callback service to ring your 09 phone. I use my T-Mobile account's GPRS to touch the URL that triggers a CBW call to the 09 SIM. It's a bit of a pain but it does work and calls back to the US from "free incoming" countries are only about 15c/min. This also avoids 09's "setup fee".

Unfortunately 09's support is pathetic. They should have a list of carriers showing which support outbound calling and which don't.

BTW, I don't recall seeing this mentioned before, the Icelandic Post & Telecom Admin's website shows the 354-380-XXX-XXX range as being assigned to a GSM carrier called "N?ll n?u". I have no idea what "N?ll n?u" means in Icelandic.

I can understand that SMS doesn't work in Hop where it costs only 10 US cents but the case of 09 with the rate 49 eurocents and not working either is pretty amazing :P Don't they want to make money from SMSing???

It means zero nine (09)

Well, that makes perfect sense. :blink:

And numberingplans.com also says the same:

Information on phone number range +354 380XXXXXX

Number billable as mobile number
Country or destination Iceland
City or exchange location
Original network provider* N?ll n?u ehf.

It seems that 09 is a kind of an Icelandic MVNO with a separate number range...

BTW (and OT), info for UM says:

Information on phone number range +423 66XXXXXXX

Number billable as personal number
Country or destination Liechtenstein
City or exchange location
Original network provider*

Has anyone used 09 recently with CBW or VoiceStick? I've tried to ring my 09 SIM with both CBW accounts (Dialthru [PIN2DEST] & Ezcore) without success. I've also tried to call it via VoiceStick. That does not work either. I can pick up my home phone and ring it using TTI-National (MCI) with no problems. This is frustrating.

I can't call my o9 number through any carrier (Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Skype). I also can't make an outbound call from the US to anywhere. o9 sent me a new SIM but it doesn't work either. It's frustrating to me as well, because we're supposed to use it every once in a while in order not to lose the credit.

Can you make a outbound call using o9 in the US?

Have not tried due to the expense.

You can try an outbound call, just don't answer. You will only use up airtime if the number you call answers. (Not tested with O9 but this is true of a lot of providers. I just tested it with my PagePlus CDMA prepaid phone roaming on Canadian coverage.)

anyone have any recent problems with Orate? I ordered a 09 sim card from them on Dec 2, 2006, and still have not received it or a reply to my emails. I just sent another email threatening to do a credit card chargeback

December 2 without any response? I would have done a CC chargeback a while back.

Have you called them? Here is some contact info I have from a previous invoice:

<i>If you need a printed invoice by post, please let us know.

Yours sincerely,
Richard Atkins
Orate Ltd

16 Borrowdale Avenue,
Ipswich, Suffolk, IP4 2TN



United Kingdom
(0) 870 44 67283
(0) 870 44 60329
team@orate.co.uk</i>

Thanks for the replies.

I'm in the process of doing a chargeback with my CC.

I have emailed them twice on the subject. No replies. I dont feel like I need to call them to get this rectified (its also costs $ to call to UK =) )

If this all falls through, any legit places to buy the 09 sim card?

I think you can order directly from 09 - not sure if this will redirect you to Orate or not, http://www.09.is

thanks :) Im going to try that.

When I ordered from 09 direct (see start of this thread) the order got passed on to Orate some weeks later. Don't know if it's still the same, but given the lack of changes on the 09 site I would expect so.

With their near complete lack of support, lack of SMS, and dropping of countries (e.g. Mexico) without notice (not even updating the country list afterwards), I wouldn't recommend 09 to anybody.

I tried that once.
Nothing happened.
Several calls with the hotline - nothing happened.
Then i ordered at orate - and got the card in the mailbox 3 days later.


So much for that.... ;-)

Chris