What's probably happening here is that it's changed from using one network to the other. Some time ago Cingular (PacBell) sold part of their network in California to T-Mobile. I beleive this network has been running with the old PacBell MNN which may show up on most phones as Cingular. ITMT, Cingular is also running a different network in California with their regular MNN. It's all very confusing because the name comes out of a lookup table in the phone and if the company changes its name (e.g. ATT => Cingular => ATT) the phone does not know about it. OTOH, the name shown for a SIM's home network can be changed by an OTA update.

New York City....Friday 10 August 2007 0026...

My phone still gets "your international call cannot be completed as dialed. Please check the number and dial again or ask the operator for assistance." when dialing a UM+ number with the phone off. No response yet.

Interesting.....here in New York the phone roams on both T Mobile US and also sometimes AT&T which is what I see on the screen...(it also says United Mobile below something the +423 card did not...something for example o9 does but others don't)...but interestingly enough in my apartment, my cingular phone still says cingular and not AT&T...doesn't really make sense eh.

Finally got thru to CS. The guy said the were having (have had?) problems with the web activations where it didn't always go thru properly and it leaves the SIM somehow blocked. So he cleared the block and called me back to test (which cost me a couple bucks :( ) and now it works.

I asked him about the voice mail problem and he said they knew about it and it won't be fixed for "a month or two". Ouch!

I didn't know they had that sort of accent on the Isle of Jersey :)

Their phone support is not based there probably but in Switzerland or Liechtenstein

Yes. The voicemail problem will not be fixed for about 1 - 2 months. Here is the response I received below. So, with the very inconsistent caller ID and no VM, it makes it not a very good option even if one leaves the phone on 24/7. Callers from the US expect to hit voicemail when you do not answer, out of coverage, etc.

At least some kind of system message that the person is not answering or so would have been better. It's obvious that UM rushed it to the market. I guess they figured, as already mentioned, that their profits were eroding quickly with that +423 number and they had to act quickly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you very much for your inquiry.

We are sorry to must tell you that the voicemail for the United Mobile+ UK SimCard will be available first in one or two month.

If you have further questions, do not hesitate to contact us again.

Yours sincerely

Ferdinand Creutz
United Mobile Customer Service

You can now contact United Mobile around the clock. Our Customer Service Team is now available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

In Southern France UM+ subscribors were again unavaliable yesterday and I heard the bitone all the time, when trying to call them.

They should call it "free betatest" instead of "free upgrade" on their website.

As a postscript I finally got through to customer services this morning (!)

SIM re-activated and all is well for outbound calls. Inbound are NU here in France, but should clear when the HLRs update...

Steve :)

I've called to CS, 5 minute to reactivate the 2 sim card, they have a lot of work (maybe a lot of not well activated sim), so they not answer the mails, but works a lot on call center.
So who want to be reactivated the sim, must call, at this moment.

can you receive sms?i've some problems with my new um+, 'cause it can't receive sms

UM+ works in Turkey. Just called friend of mine, who has my SIM card.

BTW I just called twice over. Once from O2 mobile, once JUSTVOIP. And even my man in Turkey said JUSTVOIP quality of sound was far better. So it looks like Betamax have made some changes in carriers again.

Yup...as has become obvious now, the product was rushed out the door before it was completely tested and really ready as a response to their loss of business on thd +423 card, a loss of business no doubt greatly influenced by the astronomically high termination rates for calls to Liechtenstein making the fact that the recipient of the calls was not being charged insignificant as the caller was being charged astronomically high rates thus leading to the loss of reliance on the card (as a side note, of course, with this rise using some call back services such as cbw and much earlier enlinea became next to worthless and while I'm sure that didn't break UM's heart, it meant fewer people would see a need or use for the card)...

Now having said that, we come full circle to something I asked much earlier. Who is responsible for these astronomically high termination fees (very high termination fees also on O9 and Estonian cards but at least with cbw and enlinea holding on to fairly low rates, you can use such things as enlinea US toll free service and cbw pin2dest despite the poor quality of the calls)...one would think UM +423 wouldn't want termination fees to be so high as to preclude usage of the card so what gives on that.

On a positive note, I just got an AT&T ld bill for a call I made into an Isle of Man sim card in July to check it out and indeed the rate was the same as a UK mobile so one would suppose termination fees on UM+, at least for now, would be the same as UK mobiles but distressingly we've seen what happend with Liechtenstein, Iceland and Estonia....will this hold?

>Who is responsible for these astronomically high termination fees
The money goes to Mobilkom Liechenstein, which operates those "663" service numbers. The high termination fees should only aply to those 663 nubers, but since most phone companies don't differentiate into expensive and cheap Liechtenstein mobile numbers, all callers to Liechtensten have to pay for this. At least the phone companies don't lose any more money when someone calls Mobilkom numbers.

Yes, sms works also before the complete activation of the sim, i've tryed also today.

Some tests in Poland (6-7.08) - from Poland to my UM+ SIM roaming in Poland.

The SIM logs in to any of the "big three" networks Orange, Plus and Era w/o problems.


SMS

OK from Orange, Plus and Era - arrives after less than 10 seconds, delivery report is available.
I didn't tested Play (as I didn't want to activate a Play SIM which I have) but I suppose it wouldn't work (no roaming agreement with Jersey Telecom).


Voice calls when the UM+ phone was on

Orange, Era, Plus, Polish Telecom landline, Telebonus calling card - the phone rings, no caller ID.
Netia landline - the phone rings, caller ID visible (in Orange and Plus without +48 on the front but it's a stupid feature of those operators and it happens with any foreign SIM roaming in those networks).
HaloKomórka dialthrough service - the voice message (in Polish, generated by the local service provider) "the number is busy, please try again later".


Voice calls when the UM+ phone was off

Orange, Era, Plus, Polish Telecom landline, Netia landline, HaloKomórka dialthrough - voice messages in Polish "the number does not exist" or "invalid number" (operator-dependent).
Telebonus calling card - voice message in Polish "please dial the number followed by #".



Yesterday (on 10.08 ) I tried again to call from Orange and Netia landline.
When the UM+ phone was off I heard a strange busy-like signal. When it was on, it rang when called from Orange. I heard the same signal when calling from Netia, however (the route broke?;-))

yes, it's right, now there is a strange busy-like signal, is an irregular tone, short and long , instead of "number does not exist"...
there is a good provider from uk to send free sms to +44?

I 've just tested to call (w/o answering) from UM+ to Orange. 2 attempts were OK but caller ID appeared at the first attempt only...

PS. The phone with UM+ was an oldie Siemens C35 - "direct dial" works OK just like for +423 UM.

I'm puzzled. Using the same phone (Nokia 6230i) with the +423 Liechtenstein simcard I have to dial numbers using the Services menu, but with the +44 Jersey simcard I can dial out using the normnal phone book !?

yes, right, same appens to me with 6230 (not i) ... a big difference is the ringing, when call ends, caller continue to ear calling sounds, also if UM+ reject calls, caller will ear ringing.

Had a similar problem when I tried a test voice call yesterday. Callback didn't occur and got a "Your SIM card has not been activated yet. You will be connected to our Customer Services. Please wait." text message and no connection to customer service. Wierd thing is I could send text messages fine and recieve account value updates OK but no phone calls.

Tried an email on Friday but no response by Saturday, so called customer service and they unblocked my sim card. Tried a test call while they waited, and it works OK now.

Probably a good idea for anybody ordering a UM+ card (or upgrading to one) to try a test text message and an outgoing call to make sure their account is set up correctly before traveling. Good thing I checked this before I went on a trip to the UK in early September....

Chances are that they will hold. The +44 mobile is used but many other carries and +44 is a major international destination.

Lichtenstein, Iceland and some of the other small countries are just verlittle traffice but when termination is huge it is easy just to charge everyting to lichtenstein mobile at a very high rate.
For +44 I asume that most international operators will use a fixed price for +44 mobile as lost of traffice going tom+44 mobile will not be the roaming free cards.
If you take lichtenstein I asume most of the trafic is to roaming free cards.

I agree with you and have said it before the high cost to call +423 mobile is killing the card and +44 is a good alternative now. I does indeed seem that they rushed it onto the market as some things are not working perfect, the reason for me not to use my um+ card untill it has been solved.

Has anyone used the new UM card to call a US cell phone? The quoted rates on the UM page for calling the US do not distinguish between fixed and mobile phones, and I wanted to make sure that they meant that there is one rate for both, not that it only works to landlines.

I have tried the new Jersey based card.

When I check the balance I get the message that the credit is only valid 17 days more!!!
Yesterday it was 18 days a.s.o.

I've been searching their home page to find out why and what are the rules for the credit expiry. Not a single word!

I had no such problems with my Liechtenstein based old card, before I updated. Now I'll use TravelSIM instead. No problems here.

So I had to call 094, customers service. After two unsuccesfull tries, euro 2.86 were gone!!!

When I finally came through the girl didn't know anything about credit expiry.

So I have to warn you all. Something is very wrong with the United-Mobile.

As in so many things, the US operates differently than most of the rest of the world....in most gsm countries, caller pays a termination fee to call a mobile number while the recipient pays nothing.....in the USA mobile numbers are fully integrated into the numbering system and because of number porting and things like that you cannot differentiate between a mobile phone and a landline....the recipient pays air time (although in most contract situations you have so manhy minutes it is rare you go through them but you do pay to make and receive calls); hence calls to the USA are the same whether it is a landline or a mobile...some gsm operators do distinguish between calling US regular numbers and US "toll free" numbers and charge premium rates to US 800, 866, 877 numbers....also often there are additional charges to Alaska and Hawaii!

This also must have something to due with the fact that using making and receiving calls in the USA are asininely expensive on most any non North American carrier although I don't really understand why...if Australia rates to and from are in line with what other gsm carriers charge, why not the USA?

It would be virtually impossible for them to distinguish US cellular phones from landlines.

My UM+ SIM arrived yesterday. I used smsBug to send it a SMS which was received, even though smsBug reported that it didn't know if it would work or not. I rang the phone using my home phone, which defaults to a reseller of MCI. Didn't do any tests that would cost anything.

I think they could have made what I needed to do to activate the card a little clearer but once I found it, everything worked.

There's no need to distinguish in the case of the US, as mobile and landline calls are terminated at the same rate.
United Mobile don't charge higher rates for mobile calls in other countries because they think it's funny, but because termination rates (the price the receiving operator demands) of those networks are higher.
Whereas in the US the called mobile subscribers pay the extra cost for the transfer to their mobile phone, in the rest of the world callers pay the price for the whole connection.
The high costs for American mobile subscribers, who also pay for incoming calls, are a main reason why mobile phone penetration is relatively low in the US.
The low penetration again is the reason, why prices for mobile telephony are higher - American operators must finance their large networks by a relatively small number of subscibers and further there are quite few players in the GSM market, so competition is limited. Beyond that the geographical expanse of the US requires more basestations and so results in more costs then in other places, where population density is higher. Also in European countries the investment in GSM networks has already amortized years ago, while US operators, of whom some migrated to GSM recently, still wait for the return.
All this makes mobile telephony more expensive in the US than in other places.

Pretty much every thing you said is correct except the ones relating to the cost of mobile telephony in the US. We pay a whole lot less for mobile services than almost any other country. As already mentioned, even though we pay for incoming calls, its virtually a no issue because we get so much minutes and unlimited nights/weekends than we know what to do with it. A typical plan in the US considering all the minutes included will probably cost at least double in any other country.

Also, the reason why the US does not have heavy mobile penetration is definitely not because of cost. It's because the land line system is so efficient and cheap it's almost unbelievable! Obviously because of it's size/population, there are whole lot more mobile users in the US than a lot of other countries combined.

I honestly haven't compared the mobile penetration rates in the US versus Western Europe, but what I would note is that in countries like the UK, there are a huge number of extra SIMs that people have in their dressers because the buy in for the SIM is so cheap.

Prepaid in the US is getting better, but it is still not like most places. I don't know of anyone (personallY) in the US over the age of 13 who doesn't own a mobile and I know of many preteens who do own mobiles.

My wife and I have fought about the landline argument outlined above. She pointed out in many countries it can be several months for a working landline to get installed. She pointed to France. I question that assumption with companies like Free, but there might be some legitimacy in her position.

If the US has "low" mobile penetration, I'd hate to see "high" penetration. I only know one or two people over the age of 15 who don't have cell phones. Everyone you see has a cell phone glued to his ear. I think that high "penetration" in many countries must be due to people keeping 6 or 7 prepaid SIMs for travel, etc because they are cheap to keep active. In the US most prepaids do "clock out" after a few months because the carriers have to pay a monthly government fee for each active line.

Sounds like the thing to do is keep using the old card until they get this thing fixed! Or better yet, I think I'll try my TravelSim card until this gets fixed!

The landline systems in most European countries are way better than in the US. As a result of intensive investments after reunification especially Germany has one of the most advanced telecommunication systems in the world. 100% of German switches are digital and as you can see below we have the highest ISDN penetration in the world and also ADSL is available to 92% of German households (most of the remaining 8% can't get ADSL as they are conencted through optic fibres):
http://www.ecin.de/imperia/md/images...mehr-dsl/1.gif
Switzerland, Austria, the Benelux countries and Northern Europe have comparable developed landline networks.
In the US only the highly populated areas have modern landline infrastructure - in other areas the system is ramshackle. That's why cable internet is so wide spread in the US.
So maybe in Southern and Eastern Europe people use mobile phones because of the lacking landline availabilty, but certainly not in the Northern countries.
However we should get back to topic. ;-)

Another test in Poland. As of today UM+ (outgoing calls) doesn't work with Era - the callback connection is broken after one second ringing or no ringing occurs at all. After the failed callback, the first the message "Calling" followed by number dialed dispalys for a few second and the whole thing ends with "Service unavailable" message and a single "OK" option to close that message.

Caller ID is rather unstable both ways and more often it doesn't display.

Edit:
SMSes from Era to UM+ don't go through. I said before that they went OK but I realised that I had forgotten to test the Era->UM+
case. So the conclusion is that UM+ roaming on Era network works for incoming calls/SMSes only :(

My UM+ SIM, which is currently in France, is unreachable, too, allthough it's booked into a local network.

I called cs to register my sim properly. They did and said that everythink should be ok. But it is not. The sim registers fine (like before), But most routes to call do not connect (tried local phone companies, betamax etc). When I try to dial, I do not receive the call back but the destination number rings (tried on my home phone)!

Just back from 10 days in Paris - customer services eventually unravelled the SIM authentication issue. I'd suggest all users of UM+ call customer services to activate their new SIM and avoid using the Web interface - it clearly doesn't work reliably.

Outbound calls worked as with the standard SIM. Inbound calls were patchy, and seemed to work best after the phone had been switched on for 30 minutes or so - presumably the French switches were able to update the Jersey Telecom switches to the fact that the phone was switched on.

Unhappy with the way we've been used as guinea pigs with the new service. UM have lost a lot of brownie points in my book because of this. A very stupid act on their part IMHO...

The service works and is reasonably priced, but there are other better and more reliable services out there in the 2007 GSM world...

Pull your socks up United Mobile!

Steve :/

That's probably the reason why they allowed free upgrade to the new sim for current UM customers, an most importantly, they allowed us to keep the +423 number too...to fall back on I guess.

Just wanted to share my experience. I activated via website and my sim seems to be working okay. Did not transfer entire balance over - +423 is still active too.

Caller ID works outbound every time so far, but inbound calls only show caller ID about 50% of the time.

SMS works perfectly out and in - however, the SMS settings (message center number for example) was not picked up automatically off the sim - it has to be put in manually each time you put the sim in a phone. Most other cards have that information on the card, and the correct setup information is automatically applied.

Of course, I still get the "reorder" sound if I call to UM+ with the phone off ... doooo doo ... doooo doo...

True, but it would have been nice if UM had warned us about the shortcomings of the UM+ SIM - I took the UM+ SIM to Paris, but left the old UM SIM at home.

I've just done a rough analysis of my UM+ usage in Paris and compared it to my O2 contract roaming bill and found that, with inbound roaming calls costing 22 euro cents a mnute and outbound costing 50 euro cents a minute, it's clearly a lot cheaper (i.e. free) to use UM+ for inbound roaming, and 20 per cent cheaper for outbound roaming.

BUT - it's a lot more convenient to use my O2 mobile when roaming for calls, especially as my number is well known to all my friends and family.

And that's a big but, especially given UM+'s crappy inbound service when the phone is switched off or out of range.

The difference is around £50.00 for 10 days in Paris and (I calculate) £30.00 using UM+.

Is it really worth the hassle, I ask myself...

It doesn't sound like it for you. I'm going to Dubai and to Turkey in ten days. Using TMobile US's roaming roaming rates, I'd be paying $US1.99 a minute to use my phone in both countries.

In Dubai, with UM+ my rates are free inbound and 40 cents a minute outbound. With the state phone company and a prepaid SIM, I get free inbound and 60 cents a minute (prime) 36 cents a minute off prime (or to one favourite number). If I had to buy a new SIM, I'd be paying US$50 for the new SIM. In Turkey, I get the same offer and there is no way that I could get a prepaid SIM until roughly four to five days into my week trip.

I'm concerned about what I am hearing here about the reliability of the SIM, but even if I pick up the call forwarding from the US to the SIM I am significantly ahead. Given what is happening in the UK with roaming rates, I might make the same choice that you are, but it seems like if you take one step out of the EU, you are screwed.

Just curious what is 02 doing with roaming in Switzerland?

I'll be there September 10 with my O2 prepaid SIM, so if no one tells you by then, I'll let you know.

I ordered a UM+ SIM yesterday - hopefully it arrives in time (I was too cheap to pay for express shipping, and it isn't fatal if I don't get it) so I can test it there too.