Yes... that's a lot of the oil/natural gas countries where it doesn't work!

Yes. A lot of money and a lot of business. For some folks it can be a deal killer. For me, except for Tunesia and maybe Morocco, been there, done that; don't really need to go back any time soon.

BTW, Jordan and Egypt are not on my "don't need to go back" list and it looks like telna mobile does work there. I went ahead and took Herve up on his offer and sent them my old (Israeli) Celtrek SIM. Why turn down a no-risk, one-year trial? I'll let you all know how it works.

Update: I received my telnamobile SIM yesterday. This morning I tested it and it does register on T-Mobile. When I attempted to call the number, the call went right to generic voicemail. (I then received a SMS saying I had voicemail.) Calls to the SIP address were picked up but the phone did not ring. An attempt to send a SMS failed with a reply SMS saying that SMS was not yet supported. I could not log onto the account management at mytelna.com. I called their very friendly and courteous customer service and they are working on getting the issues resolved. Bottom line, it's still a Beta product. Don't expect out-of-the-box perfection. ;)

Sorry about that DRNewcomb. The activation glitch on the website has been fixed during the day. So far most customers for the service are already telna customers, so they had not encountered this issue.

By default you can't receive/place calls with the SIM card as long as it has not been activated.

Outbound SMS is not yet active as mentionned on our website, but we work on it :)

For info, by default we block incoming and outgoing calls in the USA because of the high rate of the card. We wouldn't want someone to put the card in their phone without paying attention to the rates. If you want to receive/place calls from the USA, you need to change your country blockings option from within your mytelna once you activated your card.

Since this morning the website problem has been solved and the card activated.

They have a country-by-country activate/deactivate list which seems pretty handy. If your kid tells you he's going to UK you can make sure it won't work when he makes a side trip to Amsterdam. :whistling:

There are a number of configuration options, including voicemail delivery by e-mail and ring-time before voicemail. You can also configure what shows for your caller ID when you make outgoing calls. When you call the number you get a recording which says, "Wait while we locate..." There's a configuration to turn this off and on, but I don't understand why one setting is better than the other.

Once you get the account, you also get access to their dial-through long-distance/international calling service. I've configured all our phones in case I decide to use it.

Still no SMS. It does not send and does not receive on the the US number. I have no idea about the Israeli number (which I was not provided). I have also not been able to get the inbound SIP address to work. I'm calling 1786363XXXX@voip.telnamobile.com. I'll talk with them about that another day.

Maybe I am missing something about this SIM. Except for a free year if you send them a dead SIM from a competitor, they charge $49 a year. Is the first annual fee charged from day one or day 365? So if you send in a dead SIM, do you get 12 months or 24 months free?

Their incoming rates to Europe are higher than most other SIM providers. IE: NO free incoming calls at all. (The outgoing rates are very good though).

You do get a U.S. number which makes calls from associates cheaper for them, but you must pay about 29 cents a minute.

Their Post Paid service is nice if you don't mind them having a credit card and you with the potential for unlimited charges. With Pre Paid service , your liability for a lost phone is limited.

I like a company with 24/7 customer service. Telna has customer service located in the U.S. from Monday through Friday from 6AM to 5PM Pacific Time. Just don't have problems making calls or lose the phone in their off hours.

Turns out that it does not work exactly according to the instructions:
I was using the 11-digit international number, as shown above. When I tried the 10-digit format, the phone rang. No intermediate, "Wait while we locate.." message.

They seems to have all advertised features working now. I can call the phone via SIP using the 11-digit format. Voicemail picks up. The message gets forwarded back to me via e-mail. One little hitch has to do with Gizmo hanging up at 30 seconds just before the default voicemail delay. I had to shorten the telna VM delay to get it to work. This however, is a Gizmo problem, not a telna problem.

I may have missed it, but what is the cost to receive a SIP call? Is it the same as a PSTN call while roaming in a particular country?