May we review?
 

If UM is basically defunct, what options, if any, remain, to use our old UM cards?

Travelsim (Estonia) was sending out free SIM cards with a 5 euro balance; I did one of those.

Who else, if anyone, is offering to REPLACE the card, and under what conditions?

I have one more card to either hold or exchange. Holding is looking more dubious every day. I am glad I converted the one UM SIM already.

Stan

An offer I like
 

I like: FREE International OneSimCardTM SIM with $10 of talk time

10 plus year old US based company with Estonian phone number SIM.

The problem of course remains that Estonian based numbers have almost the same high termination fees that led to the unraveling of what had been a very successful well run United Mobile with its Liechtenstein number.

You just can't win.

Why? Neither Jersey Telecom or any other Jersey network offers similar products at the moment, and porting across territories is impossible

Less of a problem within EU
 

The rate of calling a Estonian phone number from within the EU is not higher then calling any other EU based number. So it is more a problem for calling from outside the EU to Estonia.

Sim4Travel does offer a similar product and is using the same Jersey Telecom platform. Jersey Telecom itself offers mobile phone services.

Phone numbers are resources that, IMHO, should not fall victim to providers. Porting was partly introduced as a means to make the end user able to keep their numbers alive, even if they want/need to change providers.

I actually expect porting across territories and countries become a reality a few years, at least within areas such as the EU.

Well, calling a number in Estonia from Hungary is definitely far more expensive than calling a local, Hungarian mobile. Depending on our plan, it can easily be 15 times that expensive. This is a prohibitive factor for many. Should I hand out my UK or Estonia-based number here, sure nobody would call me. That is great on a holiday, but not that fantastic if I expect business calls.

Then it is either normal roaming or forwarding to my roaming SIM using a local DID. I am a geek and I can arrange for a local DID, but most people can not.

I really don't believe that the difference in price in termination is whether you are in the EU or not. Half of us now use VOIP to terminate our calls. I'm in the US, but buy foreign route from voicetrading (a German company). I know that many other people here use other Betamax resellers. I have a hard time believing that any EU resident is getting better rates.

The only better route I would know would be mobile to mobile on the same network.

Same overhere, but i was talking about the Eurotariff which sets limits on the prices mobile operators can charge for mobile calls made or received while roaming within the EU. Same rate now to call a Estonian mobile number while roaming in Spain as calling a French mobile number.

Understand your clairification; but then again and we've been beating around this for a while. I believe, and will always believe, that a big reason for the demise of UM, O9 and many of the other international cards are the eurotariffs (while we can argue about degree we surely can't argue this is a big factor).....in the past (pre Eurotariffs) a large segment of clientelle would come from Europe as Europeans cross international frontiers a great deal more than say Americans and the roaming rates when say a Brit went on a short holiday to Spain were large, weren't they. With the advent of very reasonable (and getting more reasonable each year) roaming European rates, the need for the international cards would dramatically decrease.

That of course leads to the people who would want international cards are people perhaps travelling to several different countries such as UAE from North America say or from Australia but then again those people tend not to do a six or seven country trip and for them local sims in the country visited might do the trick. The beauty of the international cards for me as an American who might visit three or four European countries on a trip was one number, no need to acquire three or four local sims (although pre riiing, that's the way I used to do it and still have the French, German and Dutch sims to prove it).....

Now as noted, in its glory days, UM was great and I was fortunate to have found an ld carrier to call forward from my home number at most reasonable rates. But then termination fees, as we know, on +423 skyrocketed. Estonia has the same problem for me at least if I want to call forward although enlinea rates are pretty reasonable but they are a bit unreliable. The +44 rates are okay, nothing great. So at least for most North Americans, Estonia is not really a good option. Yes you could receive for free but when your friends or business associates receive their phone bills, you will probably have one less friend.

Given my pattern of travel (mostly Europe from North America), given the way I like to handle things (call forwarding off my home landline), it is beginning to look like there is really no need for international sim cards any longer...as I said elsewhere this summer during my visits to Germany, France and the UK, I relied on a new vodafone uk sim card because of their roaming free summer rates....how that holds up will go a long way to determine whether I need further international sim cards (although the dual US/UK ekit card looks very viable).