Think an Iridium phone rental may make sense for your internal client when visiting Nepal or Tibet because of roaming agreement issues. Because they work differently from traditional phones, suggest he tries test calls and text messaging from your office parking lot before he flies off somewhere.
Iridium voice quality can be very good under if you are outdoors with no structures interfering with line of sight to the satellites (got compliments on the voice quality on an Iridium voice call from a tropical island a couple of weeks ago). Text messaging will often work indoors if you are near a window, and voice will work indoors in the upper story of a wood frame structure (ideally near a window). There are also small magnetic patch antennas and adapters available that enable use of an Iridium phone inside a vehicle or a building.

Bruce -
I am somewhat technically challenged - especially when in comes to terminology. What is a "bridge"? From your description, do you dial into your system and get a line "dial tone" by which to place a call? If so, how does that differ from "calling card" services like onesuite or Tel3?

I first saw your Voicestick product mentioned on this site and have been using it for a month or two to forward calls to a Costa Rican number. Call quality is quite good. Lately, tho, seem to be dropping connection at random times. Some of the time the problem could be the C.R. system, but mostly i think it is on your end. Great service.

Thanks for making an appearance here.


...mike

The problem with VoiceStick is their reliability, particularly to some foreign mobile networks. In my case, only about 1 in 10 calls connected to Greece.

on the other hand their connection to iceland mobile is very good (09 mobile..). Our german carriers always have trouble with that.

Chris

Their connection to UK mobiles always works too.

I think it's effectively the same as a calling card with a registered caller ID

I signed up with them for the call forwarding and checked it out with my O2 mobile...much to my horror the 2 calls I made were billed for 5 minute each even though all I waited for was the voice mail message...one was billed at 1103 and the other was billed at 1105 but they were each billed for 5 minutes each...I thought I had missed something that the minimum charge was 5 minutes...I dashed off a nasty e mail to them and they apologized (as did I) and claimed something about the end of call signal did not go through properly.

I suppose I can give them the benefit of the doubt but it a bit discouraging.

All calls will be at least one minute. Charging starts as soon as the phone rings. My calls that hit VM will are usually at least 2 minutes. At least these are my observations.

Well it looks like the thread went a little off-topic, but I think I have put together a solution.

I am going to get him a HTC TyTn which is a 3G Windows Mobile Phone. Ill set that up with the Cingular sim and Cingular data connection properties.

I am also going to get an o2 pre-paid card (This seems to have the most agreements worldwide) and this up in his current phone with o2 data connection properties.

If he goes into a country where his Cingular phone does not work, he pull out the backup phone and it should work there along with data. He would then call us and we would foward his number using Voicestick? to the 02 sim number.

And voila! He should now have coverage anywhere he travels.

Is voicestick the best solution to foward his cell number to an international number?
I need to be able to activate call fowarding online 24/7.

Thanks for everyones help!

A couple weeks ago I was having a few calls (that lasted 1 to 15 min) billed for 120 min. each! These are calls sent to a Costa Rica mobile. I guess all calls are cut off automatically after 2 hrs.
They did, when pointed out, give immediate credit for the whole call - even tho I told them the approx. length of each call.

This hasn't happen now for a week or two. What seems to be happening, on occasion, the call is just cut off. All in all, tho, good service and the voice quality is always good. That v.q. is definitely an issue when calling CR on Tel 3 or onesuite.

...mike