The president of my company travels frequently all across the world and his Cingular phone does not work in some countries. He would like to keep one phone and be able to make/receive calls and check voice mails anywhere in the world, but does not want a different number.

He would also like to access emails/have data coverage on his phone, but this is not as high of a priority as voice is.

What would you do in this situation?

Can you be more specific on the countries that he is not covered by cingular so that we can check for an alternative;

T-Mobile USA has better international roaming agreements than Cingular. Buy a Nokia E61. It has sect-band coverage. It will work in Japan unlike most phones. It has all major GSM frequencies and great data connectivity. The phone also has built in wi-fi which means he is able to use it on many hotel networks as well. Lastly, the phone has great data connectivity. It handles Blackberry, Microsoft Exchange Server, Good, Intellisync, etc.

Can you try to let us know what countries are an issue. If you can eliminate Japan and Korea, you have more options. Does your company have a presence in England. If so, a Vodafone or 02 SIM might have better roaming options, but you'll pay dearly for this.

Can you give us a list of the recent countries your president has visited and the ones he has had problems in. We are going to approach the situation differently if he had problems in the Carribean than in Asia.

Is your president going to freak about having to occasionally change a SIM card or having more than one mobile phone?

Lastly, I presume that costs is irrelevant. From what I'm gathering, he would rather have a $3 a minute connection in the UK without thinking about it, than having to figit for 10 minutes to get a ten second a minute connection.

Stu

I am actually comparing T-Mobile and Cingular for a company wide move, and I was very intererested in who had better international agreements. Unfortunatley, it is almost impossible to get a list of which countries either provider has agreements with. How do you know T-Mobile has better agreements?

The Nokia E61 does look interesting, but what OS does it run on? He likes Windows Mobile on the phone he has now.

Countries he visits (* indicates voice/data was not working)

Canada
India
China
Dubai*
England
Austria
Thailand
Singapore
Shanghai
Mumbai
Denmark
Luxembourg
Israel
South Korea*
Tibet*
Nepal*
Kuwait

Although we do have some locations in England, he is not there for very long or often.

His requirment is to carry one phone only. He currently has an I-Mate Jam/HTC Magician which is unlocked.

And finally, yes you are right about costs. As long as it works, he is happy.

I have been looking at different options like obtaining a Dual SIM holder for the phone. One with his Cingular SIM and the other with world SIM, like TravelSIM. Then when gets to a country where he has no service he would enable call fowarding oh his Cingular SIM and foward the calls to the TravelSIM. Then we would activate the TravelSIM. But then he would not have voicemails or data...

Mobal covers 160 countries and is essentially postpaid (they charge time to your registered credit card, then send you a confirming invoice so expense-account reimbursement is easy). The card is also very easy to use (no ring-back or special codes to use). The phone number is UK. There is no monthly fee, billing is in dollars and it's readily available (with a reasonably-priced phone or SIM-only) in the US from its website (there's a link from PPGSM).

T-Mobile UK prepaid also has an extensive roaming list, though it is traditional prepaid that has to be "recharged" or "topped up" with funds prior to use. Obviously it also has a UK phone number. They've also recently reduced their roaming prices within the EU. Easiest to obtain in the UK, though ebay UK is a possible source for Americans.

I have found both of the above to be highly reliable, though definitely on the pricey side compared to some of the other offerings popular on this site. Both allow text messaging and have voicemail.

This is the best response I can offer:

Cingular v. T-Mobile

My opinion Cingular v. T-Mobile is based on many factors. First, I have both SIM cards at my disposal. I have a Cingular on its International Blackberry Plan. My wife has a T-Mobile SIM. We are Americans, but she is based in Dubai and I go back and forth. In the last year, we have collectively been in the US, Canada, Guatamala, Belize, Mexico, England, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Kuwait, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Oman, Hong Kong, the UAE, Macau, and Mainland China. I have also had Cingular?s international division concede the point to me, but I?m sure that it wasn?t official.

Here is a link to Cingular?s global roaming page.

http://www.cingular.com/media/roaming_gen#country


Here is a link to T-Mobiles:

http://www.t-mobile.com/International/Roam...b_RoamWorldwide

You might be able to get printed brochures at company stores with the full list.

The Nokia E61

It is Symbian, not Windows. I suggested the phone because of its multiple bands and connectivity. Also, it has built in VOIP which can prove helpful as well.

Countries Discussed


Problem Countries Listed.

South Korea. South Korea doesn?t use GSM. You need a 3g phone like the Nokia E61. According to GSM World, neither South Korean provider has declared any roaming agreements. Donald Newcomb who is a regular to this forum has managed to use his phone in Korea and will probably be able to explain whether the the statements on GSM World are correct. By the way, I?m reading from:

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_kr.shtml

GSM World is the GSM umbrella organization.

Dubai. I?m surprised about his comments on the UAE. I am there so much that I signed up for their E-Pass so that I don?t? have to go through customs. My E61 works there easily on data and voice. Sometimes, Cingular takes a couple of hours to register on Etisilat.

Nepal. A year and a half ago when I researched Nepal, they had almost no roaming agreements. I?d be shocked if they had any data services.. According to their filing with gsmworld.com.

http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/ser_npnt.shtml
Neither Nepalese carrier lists roaming agreements with the US, but they do list roaming agreements with O2 and Vodafone in the UK.,

Tibet

China Mobile has a tiny amount of coverage in Tibet:

http://www.gsmworld.com/cgi-bin/ni_map.pl?cc=cn&net=ct

02 out of the UK is the only listed roaming partner of China Mobile. I can?t believe that, but that is what I read on the GSMWorld website I couldn?t turn up a China Unicom map.


Why I Mentioned England

02 out of the UK has the most extensive roaming agreements in the world. At least that is my opinion. I was suggesting that you might want to have your UK office obtain a UK SIM for your president as a backup. It is the gold standard. If need be, you can get a US number which will call forward to the UK number.

As a matter of fact, a call forwarding number might be perfect for this guy. That way, if he has any problems, someone back in the states can reset the number to ring on the backup SIM. Call forwarding his Cingular SIM will only work if he is able to get it active on the network.

You can get an 02 SIM with international roaming active from mobal.com, but they mark up the prices significantly. If you have a presence in the UK, get a UK SIM through your UK office. A good call forwarding number to a UK mobile is from voicestick.com. Not only are the rates reasonable, but the service connects quickly. It also places a recording saying "please wait while I connect your call." Since there is sometimes a small delay before connecting to a roaming mobile, this lets the caller know to be patient a second or two longer.

- and O2 have cut roaming rates in Europe to 35 pence a minute - not yet wonderful, but cheaper than any of the others for outgoing calls, and only slightly above the global SIMs own tariffs

Or get Vodafone, but their Passport option only has cheap rates on its affiliated networks

Cosmote in my country(Greece) does declare roaming agreement with both networks in Corea, and vodafone has albeit with one. So I think the info on Gsmworld is probably due to the 3g nature of the networks there. Interestingly enough travelsim also claims coverage in Korea

The only phone that will do this is an Iridium satellite phone. This is probably not the solution he wants.

IF you can wait a month or so - maybe Yackie (www.yackiemobile.com) will have their system running smoothly. They are a startup discussed in other threads here. They have roaming in 160 countries.
The system (making/recvg. calls and SMS) works fine now. (I have a Yackie SIM.) The support system, which is web based, (call history, recharging etc.) is not yet working. One advantage is you can choose a number that is local to much of where you are in the U.S. (Or get a UK or French number etc.<G>)

...mike

Does he really care how much it costs? Most of the folks here have the life mission of being able to use thier phones all over the world for free but will settle cheap as second best. The idea of blythly paying $2/min to make a phone call gives most of us the shivers, but your boss may not care and is more concerned that it works everywhere and that he doesn't have to understand any details than what it costs.

....and while it may not be true in this particular case with whatever the product is of the company this president is president of, that attitude is why we pay so much for most everything today because all the companies do, of course, is pass these expenses onto their customers.

And just because something is pricey, doesn't mean it is necessarily best or easiest or hassle free.

It would be nice if it worked that way in theory. It doesn't. The old saying about rank has its privileges applies here. I graduate from a public urban University with good grad school programs. When I went to school, the original president was a tight wad saving money for a rainy day. When he left, they replaced him with a new president who spent money like a drunken sailor and is still there. He flies first class everywhere. He stays in five stars everywhere. I know because I knew one of his tech guys, that he uses his mobile exactly the same way when touring Russia as he does back home. The notion that he would have to swap a SIM card or use some sort of callback service to save $3 a minute -- who do you think he is! He has better things to do with his time than worry about this nonsense.

I answered the person's question the way he seemed to want it answered. That didn't mean I necessarily agreed with the person's president. The guy who was requesting our input is some poor schmuck looking for a seemless solution from his president so that he isn't called from Dubai at 3 in the morning from the president on a hotel phone phone wondering why his mobile e-mail wasn't in the hotel limo between the airport and the hotel.

If you ask the president, he'll justify it by saying that if one of their plants in China gets shut down for a day, they could loose hundreds of thousands of dollars. A $12,000 a year mobile phone bill is a small insurance policy to make sure that doesn't happen. Cough, cough, cough.

Stu

PS: When I retire, I'm going to move to "Theory." It is the only place where things work the way they should.

Stu....

I was half kidding.....

Yes, Iridium works everywhere (except for Cuba and N.Korea, AFAIK) but it lacks indoor coverage (as well as any other satphone). Not a good deal for the person under consideration :D.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I am learning a great deal about international calling.

Stu, thanks for your detailed responses.

The UK location, is merely an attraction and we do not have the abilty to send those employees to obtain a sim card. I would need to order it and send it to me.

I like this idea. I looked on mobal.com and found this product, is this the O2 sim you were talking about?

Call fowarding is a huge part of this puzzle. I called Cingular and they cannot foward calls to international numbers. I checked out voicestick but this seems to be catered to people who use their laptops as VOIP devices. Also we would like to keep his current number.

Is there a service that fowards your current number to an international number?

Although the two sim card approach sounds like the best bet, I still have some questions:

Is it better to get a pre-paid sim from Orange or o2, or from a world sim company like yackiemobile?

Do any pre-paids exist where data is also included?

Do pre-paids have thier own voicemail box?

Also would a monthly plan without contract from Orange or o2 that had international roaming on it be more beneficial than pre-paid?


To a certain extent, yes he does care, but as long as it is reasonably and it works, he is ok with costs.

He has already dismissed sat phones because of the call quality. He is not too interested in satellite phones because of the loss or reception indoors.

Voicestick (VS)will give you a UK or US number of your choice(free). You will forward his mobile number to voicestick, and forward voicestick to any number in the world. Voicestick's rates are even lower than the rates charged by most phonecard companies.

For example, MyVS# is currently pointed to my sister's tmobile UK number. When I need to talk to her, I just call my voicestick#, and get connected at 14c/min. The calling card I currently use charges 24c/min to call UK mobiles. I can change the VS# to point to any number. When I am heading to UK I just point the VS# to my Virgin UK sim so that the family can call me on a local# and reach me. My mobile provider (sprintPCS) charges $0.20c/min for call forwarding, so it's not feasible to forward my mobile to the VS#. I think they are the only US mobile carrier that pull that nonsense! I can also forward my landline to the VS# if I want.

Voicestick's free number:

http://www.voicestick.com/Rates/Plan....aspx?plan=206

I'm no shill for Mobal--it's expensive and since I pay for my own calls I use Mobal strictly as a backup. But in this case it's pretty close to ideal because of its wide coverage, proven reliability, ease of both purchase and use, and businesslike billing. Except for the known troublespots around the world--like Korea, Japan and some of Central America, where standard GSM isn't in general use--it covers about everywhere.

Yes, it does use the O2 network and you'll get an O2 SIM card.

As others have said, if the UK number is an issue there are cheap forwarding services available so your boss could give out a US number that will automatically forward to the Mobal phone.

BTW, you have to look around the Mobal site some to find it but they do offer the SIM card only (i.e., without a phone) for only $10 shipping, which can't be beat if you have a good tri- or quad-band phone.

Both of these services sound good, especially voicestick, but a major requirement is for him to keep his current number. He has hundreds of contacts that call him and it would be impossible to tell them all to call another number when he travels.

Japan is just an issue of having the SIM in the right type phone. Korea (South) is pretty much the same story, but today you have to rent the phone at the ariport. Tomorrow, your WCDMA-2100 phone will probably be fine. There are only a few places in S. & Cent. America where you would not be welcome to roam with an O2 SIM & quad-band phone. Not sure that I can think of even one.

Do they call him on his mobile phone or at the office? Does your office have a PBX? I'd suggest he use a number at the office as his "home base" and have the customers call there. Forward incoming calls to whatever phone he is using while traveling. Does he take calls at all hours of the night and day? Does anyone even conisder the time zone difference between the US and India?

Greatings to this group.

I happened upon this web site due to my always reading our companies Web Log files. I had never seen or heard of this site, so I took a look. The web site name says it all.

I would like to introduce myself. My name is Bruce Nicklin V. P. of Marketing for i2telecom the parent company of voicestick.comvoicestick.com

I have not come to sell or spam this group, but learn from you.

We have a voice over the internet service with a Pat. Pending Cellular Bridge.

It is sort of a dial around, without doing a bunch of dialing.

I noticed our company was being talked about, and I thought if I am going to learn, I might as well help out while I am here.

Feel free to ask any question that you might think I could help out in. I am more then just a Marketing guy, I am very technical as well.

Thanks to you all for your time.

Bruce

Can you please provide us with more info on the i2bridge function of your company;

Mobal, O2, Etc.

Q. I like this idea. I looked on mobal.com and found this product, is this the O2 sim you were talking about?

A. Yes. It is the card that I am talking about. The company is reselling services on the 02 network. Roadpost.com offers a competing service that is or was on the 02 network. I haven?t looked at them seriously in 2 years. Here is a link to their service.

http://www.roadpost.com/cell_phone/buy_a_w...phone/world.asp

Call Forwarding

Q. Call fowarding is a huge part of this puzzle. I called Cingular and they cannot foward calls to international numbers. I checked out voicestick but this seems to be catered to people who use their laptops as VOIP devices. Also we would like to keep his current number. Is there a service that fowards your current number to an international number?

A. There are numerous companies which will give you a US telephone number which will forward to a foreign mobile phone. Voicestick bills itself as a VOIP company, but they will happily take your money to give you a local phone number which is hard forwarded to a foreign mobile. I have a US number hard forwarded to a mobile here in Dubai. It works fine.

Hint: Call Cingular and add ?fast forward? to his account if he is on Cingular Orange (e.g. not a grandfathered ATT plan). For US$2.99 a minute, he will have unlimited call forwarding minutes to another US number (e.g. your 02 SIM).


Two SIMs or 1

Q. Although the two sim card approach sounds like the best bet, I still have some questions: Is it better to get a pre-paid sim from Orange or o2, or from a world sim company like yackiemobile? Do any pre-paids exist where data is also included? Do pre-paids have their own voicemail box? Also would a monthly plan without contract from Orange or o2 that had international roaming on it be more beneficial than pre-paid?

A. Here at Prepaidgsm, we love the prepaid SIMs such as Geodessa, Riing, or Yackie here. This forum exists for tight wads like ourselves who pay our own roaming bill (me), or where we are low enough on the corporate ladder that people still scrutinize your roaming bill (my wife).

In our house, we want to talk as much as we want to whom we want and always have a cheaper roaming bill than everyone else in the company so that we are never red flagged and so that our overall numbers are in line with everyone else?s even when you factor in a nice dinner here or not staying in the Cock Roach Inn there. Our theory has always been to shop prices as aggressively with the company?s money as our own. To me have my US mobile ring in Dubai at US$0.10 a minute (my way) versus US$2.99 a minute (Cingular?s way) is worth a SIM card swap or setting a call forward in the airport lounge prior to take off.

These SIMs work well and they work cheap and with a good degree of reliability, but they are not the ?gold standard.? The prepaid SIMs mostly use a variant of a callback service. You dial your destination number. The call does not complete and the server on the other end calls you back with a connection to your destination number. Many of these services offer free incoming calls in a number of countries, or discounted prices (e.g. Yackie Mobile and iHOP). Yackie mobile charges US$0.25 a minute to receive incoming calls in almost every country. Since they give you a US number (as opposed to a foreign mobile number), the quarter a minute is only somewhat higher than the best forward rates we can come up with to an Icelandic SIM.

Because of the two stage dialing, your call completion rate is not quite as high. It is over 80%, but it is not 100%. Say for example, you are standing in Shanghai China on Friday at 8pm trying to complete a call. The network will be over-congested. A two stage like I?m suggesting requires a connection to the local network, a connection to a foreign server to validate the call, an incoming call successfully terminating to the Chinese network, and then to your phone. You have doubled your chances of a call not going through.

It has been my experience that in network congestion situations, incoming calls get sent to voicemail far more often than outgoing calls have a problem. I think carriers know that people will not be as annoyed or certain when an incoming call gets missed as when they get a ?network failure? message on their mobile trying to call out. Unless you have the phone in your hand staring at the thing waiting for a call, you are rarely 100% positive that you didn?t miss the call. I suspect that network prioritization reflects this reality.

This prepaid carriers are often MVNO?s who negotiate their own roaming agreement. An MVNO is a company which functions as a carrier but doesn?t own their own towers. (Virgin Mobile, Boost, etc. are examples of MVNO?s in the US). If they are not relying on the negotiating prowess of a company like 02, they might decide that it is not worth their negotiating for roaming agreements in Equatorial Guyana. Even where they can negotiate an agreement, these companies might decide that the rates are simply too high. For example, I don?t believe any of these companies have bothered with Bahamas which charges crazy high rates and the local phone company is apparently not an easy company to work with.

Don?t get me wrong. These SIMs are a great value. That is what I use and recommend to most people. You have asked us to prioritize breadth of roaming agreements, reliability of service, and ability to data roam ahead of price. That is what we have done. If your president would care to carry a second mobile or engage in SIM swapping, etc., we can suggest alternatives that will greatly reduce the price of roaming, but that is not what you asked for.

Data Roaming

You have expressed a strong interest in data roaming. It is my belief that GPRS roaming is coming on many of the prepaid SIMs and there are limited implementations already (e.g. Yackie will data roam in Israel). Mobal will turn on data services on request. By default they are turned off.


Japan, and Korea

I've used a WCDMA phone in Japan in February with a foreign SIM and it works fine. I gave a Motorola 3g handset to a close friend who uses it in Japan once a month on T-Mobile DE. It works fine as well.

In the back of my head, I think that he had done the same in Korea. Rudolf (my friend) has also told me that a 3g handset works better in China than a standard GSM phone. I'm not sure if it is because they have UMTs riding on the China Unicom CDMA network as well or because there is less band congestion there.

Stu

PS: I wrote this response in Word and pasted it over. Some of the formatting didn't paste over and this might interfere a little between with the presentation. Sorry!

Bruce,
I'm one of the people who have been talkig about VoiceStick. I've been very happy with the service, but seldom actually use the USB device. My major suggestion is that you don't screw up a good thing. After that, it might be good if the I2Bridge dialthru would recognize more than just one incoming phone number.

I've used VoiceStick with my PC at WiFi hotspots and hotels. I've forwarded my US cell phone to my VoiceStick number and then forwarded that number in turn to phones overseas. I've used the voicemail-to-e-mail feature.

Two possibilities to consider would be to either allow configuration of the forwarding and other functions via WAP or a small, secure J2ME Java aplet. This would make it easier for the highly mobile bunch to make changes while on the move.

So the question is...can you use voicestick without having a broadband connection to the internet for its call forwarding possibilities?

YOu can use Voicestick as a virtual calling card, but as Don said only using a single caller-id. You can also set up as a forwarding number. It is very handy in a tool kit. They also have a USB key which autolaunches their program and

you are asking can you use non-broadand to connect to it over the net, the question is what codecs it supports. The most common low bandwith codec is 729. Perhaps someone else can chime in on this point.

I think I would like to see a gracefully adaptive codec. There are times I'd accept SSB quality in order to make a call. Is there a system that adapts well to changing data rates and latency?

Voice Stick has a bridge. With the bridge you don't need broadband.

As an example I have my cell phone set up in the bridge. When I call my VoiceStick number it looks at the incoming number and gives me a call out circut. The call out cost is based on your plan, either an unlimited or call per minute.

The web based bridge hold ONE number, but you can change it on the fly by going to our web site.


The optional $29 MG3 has a bridge and it will hold 3 numbers.

Bruce Nicklin VP Marketing I2telecom, home of the Voicestick

When at home. What about when traveling?

Think an Iridium phone rental may make sense for your internal client when visiting Nepal or Tibet because of roaming agreement issues. Because they work differently from traditional phones, suggest he tries test calls and text messaging from your office parking lot before he flies off somewhere.
Iridium voice quality can be very good under if you are outdoors with no structures interfering with line of sight to the satellites (got compliments on the voice quality on an Iridium voice call from a tropical island a couple of weeks ago). Text messaging will often work indoors if you are near a window, and voice will work indoors in the upper story of a wood frame structure (ideally near a window). There are also small magnetic patch antennas and adapters available that enable use of an Iridium phone inside a vehicle or a building.

Bruce -
I am somewhat technically challenged - especially when in comes to terminology. What is a "bridge"? From your description, do you dial into your system and get a line "dial tone" by which to place a call? If so, how does that differ from "calling card" services like onesuite or Tel3?

I first saw your Voicestick product mentioned on this site and have been using it for a month or two to forward calls to a Costa Rican number. Call quality is quite good. Lately, tho, seem to be dropping connection at random times. Some of the time the problem could be the C.R. system, but mostly i think it is on your end. Great service.

Thanks for making an appearance here.


...mike

The problem with VoiceStick is their reliability, particularly to some foreign mobile networks. In my case, only about 1 in 10 calls connected to Greece.

on the other hand their connection to iceland mobile is very good (09 mobile..). Our german carriers always have trouble with that.

Chris

Their connection to UK mobiles always works too.

I think it's effectively the same as a calling card with a registered caller ID

I signed up with them for the call forwarding and checked it out with my O2 mobile...much to my horror the 2 calls I made were billed for 5 minute each even though all I waited for was the voice mail message...one was billed at 1103 and the other was billed at 1105 but they were each billed for 5 minutes each...I thought I had missed something that the minimum charge was 5 minutes...I dashed off a nasty e mail to them and they apologized (as did I) and claimed something about the end of call signal did not go through properly.

I suppose I can give them the benefit of the doubt but it a bit discouraging.

All calls will be at least one minute. Charging starts as soon as the phone rings. My calls that hit VM will are usually at least 2 minutes. At least these are my observations.

Well it looks like the thread went a little off-topic, but I think I have put together a solution.

I am going to get him a HTC TyTn which is a 3G Windows Mobile Phone. Ill set that up with the Cingular sim and Cingular data connection properties.

I am also going to get an o2 pre-paid card (This seems to have the most agreements worldwide) and this up in his current phone with o2 data connection properties.

If he goes into a country where his Cingular phone does not work, he pull out the backup phone and it should work there along with data. He would then call us and we would foward his number using Voicestick? to the 02 sim number.

And voila! He should now have coverage anywhere he travels.

Is voicestick the best solution to foward his cell number to an international number?
I need to be able to activate call fowarding online 24/7.

Thanks for everyones help!

A couple weeks ago I was having a few calls (that lasted 1 to 15 min) billed for 120 min. each! These are calls sent to a Costa Rica mobile. I guess all calls are cut off automatically after 2 hrs.
They did, when pointed out, give immediate credit for the whole call - even tho I told them the approx. length of each call.

This hasn't happen now for a week or two. What seems to be happening, on occasion, the call is just cut off. All in all, tho, good service and the voice quality is always good. That v.q. is definitely an issue when calling CR on Tel 3 or onesuite.

...mike