danielaziz

I have come to the conclusion that many of these services could work and some do it for serverla year (United Mobile) and some for some month's and than they shut down.

I am now using my UM+ number for incoming calls.

To have your own reliable solution setup your own system. Buy a voip DID number and forward this to your roaming free number.
Whenever your roaming free number goes offline you just use another roaming free card and forward the number to that card.
You only give your customers the voip DID number.

At houme you just pickup the voip did number on a voip line and when not at home it's switched to your mobile.
The only cost you have is the extra cost to forward the voip did number to your roamingfree cellphone. These forwarding cost should not be more than 0.10 euro per minute.

To be safe always have a second roaming free sim card from another provider/network. So when like now manx roam free is offline you just use jersey roamfree (or anather solution)

I would NEVER use a cell number as my primary business number, even from a regular licensed carrier like Voda, T-M, etc. Using a number provided by an unlicensed 3rd party is asking for trouble.
My main number is a landline number provided by the local carrier. I can easily forward that number to any other phone, cell or otherwise even if I am thousands of miles away from the landline by making use of the "remote access to call forwarding" feature that has been in the U.S. for 10 or 15 years and, I am sure, is available elsewhere.
Eg. If I am in a country where I am using a prepaid, I forward calls to a Kall8 or Voicestick number which then forwards calls overseas to my prepaid. When at home, I usually just forward calls to my main cell number. IOW, for 20+ years I have only given out my one landline number and simply forward it to the phone I want to use.

...mike

GeoSIM update
 

A new update has been posted on the GeoSIM site.

http://www.globalsimcard.co.uk/Service_alert.php

Callkey Latest
 

31/10/2007

At around 7pm. Callkey servers went offline for both end users "customers" and for distributors.:(
No information has been released by callkey about resumption of service or who if any has or will take over the network (callkey)



www.easyroam.co.uk

I think you mean 31/10 since there's no such a date as 31/11.
Anyway, it was a nice disaster :-P - I suppose that much more customers were affected than in case of the Buytel collapse....

Yep! A nice disaster indeed. Some of the resellers such as freeglobalsim are totally offline. And, they refuse to respond to customers questions.

Let's call it like it is....

Callkiey is dead....the sim cards issued by the resellers with the Isle of Man numbers provided by callkey are dead and there is no chance of resusitation. The only question left is how many will get their credit back in some form or another.

One large disaster all around.

The current status of the Manx international SIM stuff makes me think that Callkey didn't pay what they should to Manx Telecom. Otherwise, if the whole business had been profitable to Manx Telecom, they would probably have offered some replacement service - the loss of a few thousands customers who bring profits would be noticeable for a company operating on the market so tiny as IoM.

BTW, I wonder why CallBlue and Yackie abandoned Manx sims before they stopped working - they knew something before or just "more luck than reason" :-D

I've already written my money off. I've lost about US$75 in credit. Whle I don't like losing money, I consider it one of the risks I assume in playing in what is a fringe market.

Could even be the other way round - I assume MT collected the termination fees, then passed part of them on to Callkey (maybe there were delays/disputes/fraud allegations there). AFAIK Callkey just subcontracted a number range, didn't use MT switching etc, so there's really nothing for MT to replace it with.

And since MT is part of O2 who are part of Telefonica Spain they're not the sort of comany that would want to get involved with callback, or even miss the revenue (which they may have had very little of). Looks like the Manx sims are permanently dead.