Yesterday TelnaMobile seems to have suffered a roughly 12-hour crash. During most of the day the phone would not register and I could not access their website. Then it just started working again. So far, there's been no explanation.

Message #60 has a perhaps answer. Start reading from message #55 until the end of the thread. This is about Piranha Mobile which uses Telna NA as its USA MVNO [including its roaming relationship with T-Mobile, I suspect.] I don't have Telna, but I do have Piranha and both the descriptions sound like what happened to me. [I did not have trouble with Piranha's web site. ]

Piranha Mobile 420 DAYS expiration - Page 4

A recent change in the way that the Telna SIM connects means that, in direct-dial countries (e.g. US, Canada, Australia, etc.), the cellular data feature works, regardless of the phone's APN settings. You need to turn your phone's data off and not rely on a bogus APN to prevent data charges. Fortunately, this lesson only cost me about 50c to learn.

TelnaMobile charges
 

I just want to mention that TelnaMobile charged my credit card twice for the annual $19 fee. I called them, but they cannot credit my credit card. , they can only issue an account credit. So, I asked the CSR to go ahead an do that. I will try to use that up when I am in Nigeria next week. Even though I have a couple of local Nigerian sim cards. I have not even used the sim in years. So, the $38 annual fees + taxes came to $51. Insane taxes in Illinois. Time to deactivate TelnaMobile. LOL!

I also noticed that the USA rates are not viewable. Here is the message when one checks for USA rates "Please contact our customer service to check the rates for USA."

I gotta say that not being able to credit your account is bogus. I'd call my credit card company and tell them the story. I bet you'll get your refund.... I have to admit that I'm a bit down on the international sim game. Becoming too much work to experiment on each trip to see if the sim will even work...

I will contact my credit card folks tomorrow. I agree. It makes no sense. I really no longer have a use for the sim card. I'll deactivate it once I resolve t this issue.

If you wrote them, citing the Fair Credit Billing Act, explaining the double billing, they would have to figure out a way to credit your account.

Update - I called them back and ask that they credit my credit card. They did go ahead and put a request in for that, and I received an email confirmation.

Telna customers being switched to G3 Telecom of Canada
 

There's a pop-up note on the Telna Mobile home page that customers (not sure if all or just long distance customers) will be switched to G3 Telecom of Canada effective January 1, 2016.

I had Telna Mobile for a while and liked their rates, customer service and postpaid credit card billing (in the past I have occasionally gotten burned on some prepaid roaming sims that bit the dust). But a few months ago Telna rates went up for US, Canada, Bermuda and some other destinations. Cancelled my sim card as result since their new rates were higher for these destinations, and I have other alternatives such as prepaid country specific sims, InMarSat prepaid and SIP/VOIP.

G3 Telecom apparently has good reviews (at least the Better Business Bureau gives them an A+ rating). Know someone else who still has Telna Mobile and wanted to know other people's thoughts on this change in service. Thoughts anyone?

Have not been back to their website since I cancelled my SIM a few months ago. I just did not have a need for it, since I also have Piranha. You are correct - I did notice an increase in their rates the last time I checked.

We've also used Telna for the 1+ long distance service on our landline (which amounts to about $1/year). I've received an e-mail concerning the change from Telna to G3. Nothing about TelnaMobile.

Piranha's website is down. Coincidence?

no its not i just logged into my account?

More likely bad timing.
Anything to keep a thread alive and showing when I get to PrePaidGSM.
Piranha was there for me also.

Telna Mobile - status
 

Just FYI.

I've been a satisfied Telna customer for a few years - the only postpaid competitor to the international roaming SIM game. Plus they offered SIP calling with much lower rates. Have had great service in Europe and Canada.

Late last year I stated getting notices (with corresponding banners on their web site) that Telna was being acquired by G3 Telecom; all existing services would be retained, and users would be transitioned to a new web site. In January I was invited to register on the G3 web site, which I did.

Problem is, the G3 web site, which now also bears the Telna logo, makes no references to the former Telna cellular services and does not list the details of my existing account (only home long distance, travle card, etc).

Emails to them produced assurances that it would happen; meanwhile, my SIM and SIP credentials continued to work but I had no way of checking usage or updating my billing information.

Finally the email support person started making it up as he went along - telling me their "Travel Card" is what they called a SIM card, and other such ridiculous nonsense. So I called them. The call went to an offshore call center whose rep, despite being pleasant and willing to help, could offer nothing but platitudes. After about 20 minutes of pushing, she finally gave in and transferred me to the REAL support person for the Telna transition. Reading between the lines, one concludes that Telna was not being cooperative enough in facilitating the transition and that it remained a work in progress despite assurances, platitudes, and best-laid plans. To this day, the G3 web site says nothing about the real former Telnamobile services.

I am travelling internationally this summer. While things work now, I can't really depend on this after knowing what the issues really are. Looking for alternatives once again ....

You may want to try Piranha mobile. I cancelled my Telna account last year.

Likewise I cancelled my Telna account last year. Just signed up for Piranha over the weekend. Spent GBP50 for a sim card with £50 on it and they are also sending a complimentary second sim card with £5 on it.

Piranha apparently is using Telna/G3 for at least some of their back end services (both of the sim cards that are en route to me from the UK have phone numbers assigned from the Telna number pool according to whitepages.com). But Piranha rates, their website and their customer service appear to be very good.

Planning on using both prepaid InMarSat and prepaid Piranha (roaming on Digicel) in Bermuda for a couple of weeks in May/June.

I suspect that the reason the Telna Mobile product is languishing a bit is because G3 bought Telna mostly for the Telna infrastructure. G3 already has the iroam roaming sim card.

Yes, I noticed that on the bottom banner G3 web site. Silly me, thought "hey, THAT'S where Telna's cellular service went!". Wrong....

Well, my Telna SIM still registers on T-Mobile. Not in any big rush to sort out the issues. Having lost plenty of $ on prepaid SIMs that went TU (e.g. 09, Riiing, etc.), I've been reasonably pleased with Telna's postpaid system. Not that I've been doing a lot of international travel recently.

My Telna SIM still registers on T-Mobile and I am able to make calls.
SIP calling still works as well.

However, as I am planning international travel and need some confidence in the arrangements I have made. While Telna seems to work from the US, the general situation in which it seems to be running on auto-pilot, does not inspire confidence. There is no way to get help, check/update billing, perform simple account maintenance like turning voice mail on and off. If this is the status of the front-end, one can only imagine how the back-end is faring. What if I'm out of the country and one of their local roaming agreements expires?

I do have an original Mobal SIM that is still active; however, it is expensive and I do not like the changes they are making to their service model in general. It remains for emergencies only (I did just that in Switzerland last September in areas where the Telna SIM couldn't connect).

As suggested I am looking at Truphone and Piranha from the standpoint of reliability, ease of use, long expiration period for prepaid credit and SIM, ability to top-up automatically, and perform account maintenance on a trip without data access.

Schuster, Piranha is a good option. I have been quite satisfied with their service. I recently used it for 3 weeks when I was in Nigeria last month. Now, I only use it for the call forwarding service. By forwarding my AT&T line to Piranha, and then forwarding piranha to my local Nigeria mobile. The rates were pretty good as well.

I see that Piranha is a UK company, although they have a USA support number.
I am in the USA - do you know where US customers have their billing charges originating? (i.e. will an automatic top-up appear to be an international transaction to the bank's fraud monitoring detectors).

On that note, I also see USA-based patriot-sim which seems to be using Piranha's infrastructure and the essence of their web design. I see no reviews on them anywhere, and their web site does not indicate that they offer automatic top-up.

As I recollect, topups are recorded as an international charge. Also, my call charges/balance show up in UK Pounds

I have both Truphone and Piranha for a few years now.
I have not used them outside of the USA.
They seem to be pretty stable:
unlike the apparent flakiness of your two current options.

I would strongly encourage both if 'confidence' is highly valued.
Also, no doubt if you go to a number of countries one will have a better rate than the other.


====================

I believe if you set your currency on Piranha's website that you will be charged in dollars for your purchase I just checked and it is possible to choose a top up in US dollars [though the drop down box shows pounds with US equivalent--$14.31] In the past only Capital One credit cards did NOT charge a currency conversion fee though it is better now. Check with your issuer. Also you should warn your credit card company if you are traveling out of the country anyway. The ones I have allow you to do it online at their websites. If not call and tell them.


I am going to guess that 'patriot-sim' is a white-label of Piranha.
[I guess that I will be coming back here to update after looking at the site.]
I am back. Not even a white label. And this is at the bottom of the website:

Additional information:
Piranha's rates for USA to USA calling are cheaper.
I was able to send an SMS to my Piranha phone number from P-SIM's website.
Address is a UPS store.

Thanks for the considered comments ... all quite helpful.

I ordered a Piranha SIM. My initial experience with the payment processor was not encouraging.

I first tried my American Express card and kept getting a "no route found" error until I realized that they didn't accept AMEX. Piranha customer service confirmed this.

So I tried MasterCard with the currency set to USD. Same error.

Blecch. Based upon a tip I saw in a FlyerTalk forum discussion on Piranha, I did the transaction with the currency set to GBP and it went through on the same card that failed with USD. Naturally that shows up as an international charge.

With things all that flaky and unpredictable as all that, I wonder if I could ever rely upon auto top-up with this arrangement. Maybe I'll just load a big amount onto the account before I travel, and have alternates.

All that said, my Telna SIM still works. I can't access the online account management anymore, but oddly the STK menu lets me check my balance, and the account seems to be frozen in time. It shows the last amount I paid in September on my last European trip.

Has anyone currently using a Telna SIM, gotten billed for usage since December?

Tonight I decided to re-check the status of the new "telna mobile" (in name only) web site to see if they had finally added my SIM account. I couldn't log in, and attempts to reset my password using my registered email address or cell phone number failed as not found. Dum, de dum dum.

Just for fun, I clicked on the link for iroam, which is G3's prepaid cellular roaming service, and astonishingly was able to log in. When I checked my account profile, I found my SIM card listed as active and associated with my old telna phone number! There is no usage or billing information, so I picked up the phone and called iroam customer service (866-454-7626).

A sheepish but helpful rep told me that they were in the process of migrating telna mobile accounts but had no billing information transferred over, so that customers need to add a credit card again. While access is through the iroam website, the telna cards are not part of the iroam prepaid service; they assured me that it would remain a separate postpaid product line as before.

I asked about the future status of the telna wifi calling ... sorry, that's not iroam, that's G3 proper and we have no information on that. Funny, I don't see anything about that on the G3 web site.

I got as far as the screen to enter the credit card number (VISA and MC allowed, AMEX listed but cannot be selected) and logged off to think about it.

All FYI. What a mess.

My Telna SIM still registers on T-Mobile (US), so that at least is hopeful.

Just returned from a trip to Canada (I'm in the US) with my telna and Piranha SIMs running side by side in a dual-sim phone.
Some quick observations.

Both SIMs functioned for voice calls. I did not use any data services. Piranha roamed on Rogers, and telna on Telus. Voice quality on Piranha was definitely poorer, to the point where I had to use telna to access an automated credit card voice response system because Piranha did not transmit the touch tones I used to enter my credit card number reliably.

Both had issues with SMS to recipients on Verizon USA. Texts took hours or days to be transmitted, and often were repeated many times - to the point where the recipient decided to simply turn off the phone for the night; such was the annoyance. Never received a single text in response from either SIM.

The iroam web site now contains call records for all the test calls I was making on the telna SIM since January. If I use the SIM toolkit function to check balance, I see that there is a NEGATIVE balance corresponding to the last payment I made when telna was still operating. This number got smaller as I used the account, so it seems that my last telna payment is now on the account as a credit balance.

The Piranha web site also has my call records but there are so many extraneous things going on there (callback SMS - no charge) that it is really difficult to figure out what is going on with their billing. On the plus side, after a week of use I was probably charged a total of 1 - 1.50 GBP, so why complain.

Travelling again soon to Europe. Since telna works, and I appear to have a credit balance, it's going along.

Just received two telna-related emails.
One was a welcome note from G3 Telecom congratulating me on selecting them as my long-distance carrier (!) and requesting that I post a favorable review.
The second is an "order confirmation" from iroam in which they tried to bill me 17.99 for "airtime credit" - I had entered a VAN as my credit card and it was rejected by their billing system.

Last I checked (see above) I had a CREDIT BALANCE on this account. Both in email and on the phone, telna had assured me that the account would remain postpay as before. Well duh ... what's this charge for "airtime credit"?? iroam web site is as non-functional as before.

I'm about to call and cancel.

I sent them an e-mail about a month ago asking about TelnaMobile. The response I got back said they needed my phone number(s) to provide information. When I replied with the numbers, I got no response. I e-mailed them again this morning, asking the same question and providing my phone number(s). As of right now, I've only received the standard canned reply. If they go prepaid, I'll also cancel. My whole reason for going with TelnaMobile was that it was PAYG. I've lost too much on prepaid international cards.

So far all I've gotten from G3 is evasion. They refuse to answer any questions about TelnaMobile.

Earlier I had posted that I registered a "burner" virtual credit card with G3/iRoam as a test for their payment system.

I used the Telna SIM on a Canadian and a European trip this year.

A couple of weeks ago or so, I got a message from G3 billing department that the credit card payment for my purchase of "airtime credit" had been declined.

The "declined" part is not surprising to me as several credit card payment processors cannot, or will not, process VAN's.

I responded to the email saying that I was told my account would still be postpaid; I had not received a bill for usage, and that the "airtime credit" name suggests that I am being treated as a prepaid customer. If so ... cancel my account.

They responded with a full itemized bill of my usage since January. It looked pretty accurate and consistent with my usage, so I paid it.

Well, I checked out the iRoam site and I was all set up with my G3 password, even though I don't recall ever visiting iroam.com before. I tested receiving and placing a call which seemed to work. However, I can't receive texts. However, it seems like Telna's WiFi calling and landline callback still work.