About incoming calls I have a question for RTuesday and the new german friend.

Did you try to call your number? And if you tried it, did you note that you pay for the call while you're waiting for the answer? :ranting2:

It's incredibile but calling a GT number you don't have a normal tone, but you have a voice "We're connecting to..." that you pay before the answer :thumbdown:

So you have to pay for every outgoing call to a GT customer :sad:

That's nice. But who the hell pays for this? :D

I don't think if you should worry with missing SMSes. Thanks to the delayed billing you may pay for them a month (or even more) later :).

the not answered calls :devil:

This is true, too... also I have problems with H3G Italy: I can send/receive with Tim, vodafone and Wind, but not with 3 ITA.

Arrrgh, so we know who pays for these free incoming calls... :P

Yes, I agree, just tried it, if the caller gets to the "please wait while we try to connect your call" it gets charged (from Skype Out at least). Does seem like a way to make extra revenue, but since in most cases when I don't answer it's going to go to voicemail anyway, the caller would still get charged.

Note it's just the caller who gets charged, even when roaming in a pay country I don't get charged for not answering a call.

BTW, what type of ringing tone do you hear when you call a gt-sim? I get a UK-style ring, which is my normal ring and the normal ring for a +44 7. I was wondering if it was different for other "home" countries, i.e. an Italian ring for an gt-sim with a "free incoming Italy" account?

My account doesn't have any charges on it for SMS or GPRS yet either.

Hello,

yes, incoming calls are free for me in Germany. I think it works like this: when subscribing to GT-SIM, you give your address, which is your home-country. In this country, incoming calls are free.

Question is, which countries can be chosen? For example, my girl-friend is in the Philippines. If she also subscribes to GT-SIM, I will call an English number, and she answers the call, and wont be charged? This would be quite cheap for me, as calling an English (mobile) number, for me is cheaper than calling a philippine mobile number (and the quality should be better).

I never tried to call myself, but regarding the question, what happens if you call a GT-SIM number: you are charged from the moment you call, even when the person does not answer. I don't know, what the story behind this could be. But a guess is, that they do this, to avoid the subscriber working with callback-services like Enlinea.

Or it has real technical reason. As I heard from customer care, GT-SIM has (belong others?) two switches: one at MCI in London, one at MCI in Hamburg. The german customers are routed via the Switch in Hamburg, the British customers are routed via the switch in London. The switch in Hamburg is not ready for CLI yet, means, a German subscriber will never see the number of a caller. An SS7-upgrade is planned for February of next year.

I don't know yet, which switches are used for other customers, outside UK and Germany. Do you see number of an incoming caller? (As here are subscriber from Poland, Italy and other countries).

Concerning the number-range, GT-SIM has agreements with Manx Telecom, O2 UK and Orange UK. They have number ranges from these operators. Seems that currently, they only use Manx. As far as I understood, the issue with GT is, that they are terminating the calls themselves (therefore "Global Termination") and they can offer reasonable prices therefore. In my eyes, this means that calls to English subscribers are terminated in MCI London and calls to German subscribers in MCI Hamburg (and not in Manx Telecom). But I am not 100% sure, if I understood this correctly.

Bye for now and regards,
Klaus

Yes, I hear this "UK-style" ringing-tone, while a female voice announces, that I will be connected. I am charged meanwhile. By the way, you hear the same ringing tone and announcement, if you call customer care using the callback-functionality on their homepage.

By the way: has somebody tested voicemailbox? When I call 121 to listen to my messages, I get the callback, I answer, but I don't hear anything. Well, I am not charged either, but I wonder, if listening to voicemail works. Changing voicemail-settings (ON/OFF) and asking for the status, is free of charge. Does listening to voice-mail cost?

Has someone tested call-forward, which should be possible due to instructions on the SIM package?

Regards,
Klaus

I tried the voicemail (see earlier in this thread) - worked at that time, but just tried it again. Dead air when trying to pick it up, so looks like something broke. Got an SMS to notify me of a message (in fact got three). Still no way to hear the message online, which is an advertised feature that's not working yet. Even from the US a call to 121 seems to be not charged (which would be nice, if it worked).

The last time I tried it (last week) call forwarding was still not working. It's also a "coming soon" feature - might be worth mentioning it again to them though so they know there are people that need it.

Looks like gt-sim is still very much in beta-test if voicemail breaks and they don't notice. I'll be using it very little in the next few months as I'm now in the US (too expensive) and Mexico (no roaming partner).

If you mean me, I'm not a GT-sim subscriber from Poland, I'm just curious about it :).

BTW, this unusual charging of the calling party makes me think that whereas GT seems to be a good SIM for outgoing calls (except USA, Canada and India of course), for incoming calls UM, 09 or 0044 are better for both parties of a call.

Yes, exact.

No, I have the usual Uk-style ring in Italy too.

Me neither.