Hi Kupe,

To make it clear: Um423 allows only incoming calls, no outgoing, no Textmeassages (SMS) no Data at this time.

OT: Henning is a nordic form of Henry

As I said on another thread, some of the speculation is unsafe or even incorrect in some details, and I'll express that reservation here too.

When another range of SIMs went offline, even after considerable pessimism here they came back. And in the meantime other offers emerged. Yes, these things have been volatile, but what seems for a while to be fatal needn't be.

Other phone companies have had outages or account access problems without always indicating the same thing, some even this week.

And as Henning points out, the +423663 SIMs aren't dead yet, despite predictions. And as well as that, reaching them from some cheap calls providers has been more reliable recently than the previous 4 years.

I believe that MAXRoam does actually work, and it's rates are not too bad. You get a Belgium number, and the promise, for what its worth, that numbers from other countries will be available soon.

Not registering in USA either
 

fyi, cannot roam here now with UM 44

(not that I did so other than to send the validating sms every nine months...)

Seems a sign of collapse (?) as it would have been very easy to say "we're switching networks, Jersey is down, etc" rather than these non-specific messages on the web and elsewhere.

Cheers.

It's not just the SIMs, which went offline, but our accounts, too. UM is switched off, with both ranges. That the 423 lines are still connected, while pretty useless, is beyond UMs control.

Even if the speculations are "unsafe", such unannounced total closures of service are typical of bankruptcies. In any other case they could have informed the customers in timely manner. They do have our email addresses, after all.

I was so close to buy from UM SIM cards as back up. After the Callkey disaster in 2007 I was looking for a reliable solution and first I switched to YackieMobile but the issue with Yackie was the reachability. Then I switched to S4T and I have no problems since I have it.

It looks like a lottery game since 2007, which provider will be the next going down.

Theoretically we can try to find financial statement of each provider.

I found in google:

About travelsim:
Translated version of http://www.arileht.ee/artikkel/454872
So travelsim had turnover
21 mln eur in year 2007
42 mln eur in year 2008

About Sim4Travel
http://www.plusmarketsgroup.com/cgi-...travel2008.pdf
So Sim4travel had turnover
1,3 mln eur in year 2007
1,9 mln eur in year 2008

About MaxRoam
Mobile | PDA: The Digital Content Blog | guardian.co.uk
they plan to be profitable in 2009 with 25000 customers
unfortinately no any financial statement found
but it can be around 1 mln eur turnover in 2008
(if calculate with average ARPU)

About United mobile
United Mobile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
unfortinately no any financial statement found

So, you can choose your favorite provider...

Revenue doesn't indicate the stability of an enterprise at all. Earnings/losses and leverage level are the relevant key figures. But even the financially most sound company may be forced to stop service, if contracts with the MVNE are cancelled or not prolonged.

most probably it can happens with bancrupt MVNO,

so if somebody can get actiual balances of these companies then possible to make more accurate prediction.

Is Sim4Travel working right now? Curious since they also use Jersey Telecom.

Kupe