Jersey, IOM & RSM
 

I'm wondering to what extent the legal positions of IOM & Jersey wrt Europe have to do with the decisions to base international SIMs on those islands? Also, I think (but others would know better) that RSM is similarly positioned. Should we be expecting an international SIM to come out of RSM before long?

Probably in those islands there are facilities about taxes and easier regulations for societies. The same happens in Liechtenstein (UM) and in Monaco (Hop). In S.Marino there is a similar situation as well. I wouldn't be surprised to see an international sim to come out of S.Marino. Probably, "Prima" itself may consider to offer an international sim: this could turn out to be interesting, but first of all we have to wait for it to start completely with their first services ;)

Just need the islands of Guernsey to join the list of +44 based numbers to provide international SIMs

...but where do Estonia and Iceland fit into this?

Might aswell add Gibraltar to this list even though it would have a +350 prefix, the calls to destination are cheap and some carriers (like www.mobileworld.co.uk) i use charge the same weather landline or mobile, like is usually the case with calling USA or Canada

The charge the same because there is little traffic to these destinations. KNP is Holland charged the same for UM lichtenstein till some time ago when they increased the rate from 0,10 euro to 0,90 euro.
Whenever a non popular destination becomes more popular they will look at the rates because you can bet 1 thing, they don't want to loose money.

For this reason I think a +44 number is perfect as in the end there will always be carriers that offer good rates because of volume to these destinations. Also for business use it looks better to have a +44 number thatn some etsonian, gibraltar or some small country number.

Do any French overseas holdings still use country code 33? (e.g. St Pierre, etc). Or better yet, what about a US based roaming SIM with an Iowa rural exchange number?

Stu -
Code for St. Pierre is 508. Don't know about French Polynesia - but it isn't 33.

...mike

+689, code for french polynesia

Another possibility would be Åland. They now have their own wireless network.

Well, they always had it... but with very high rates...

Is it a joke or have I missed something important about Iowa rural telephony :-)?

Iowa's the Liechtenstein, IoM and Jersey combined of the US telecom.

The standard interconnect rules don't apply there.

For some strange reason, a few local rural phone companies in Iowa are allowed to charge much higher termination fees that anyone else in the USA. This has brought about a number of services based in Iowa which take advantage of flat-rate long distance calling. You can call a number and get a free conference line, international dialing, etc. Your LD carrier eats the charge because they've sold a one-price-fits-all domestic LD plan based on the idea that no one ever called those Iowa farmers anyway.

I think we'll start seing a bunch of asterixes and footnotes on LD service plans regarding calls to Iowa.

Is http://www.yak4ever.com/ an example of that? I was hoping they would offer something similar in my country. Guess not...

Iowa system applies to calls originating in the US only. So this system benefits the company only if the calls are made from within the USA. All calls outside US do not attract surcharges. So, an international sim with an Iowa number is not possible....

Also most of these companies were shut down (from AT&T I think)

I believe it is. This is similar to some of the schemes/systems I've seen in Europe where you use your included mobile minutes to call a premium-rate access number which then gives you "free" international calling. One thing to keep in mind is that all these services live on a regulatory razor's edge caused by a quirk or loophole in the regulations. They can be shut down in a nonce if they become too much of a bother to the big companies who own the politicians.

[QUOTE=DRNewcomb;16633]I believe it is. This is similar to some of the schemes/systems I've seen in Europe where you use your included mobile minutes to call a premium-rate access number which then gives you "free" international calling. QUOTE]


I guess the people using this service don't mind paying high fees for the access number especially according to this blog i just saw on blog.roam4free.ie regarding yak4ever

"Yak4ever hits its first million minute week"

This is pretty impressive even though we knew it was coming, Yak4ever terminated 1 million minutes in the last 7 days.
We are thrilled with the progress the site is making and top destinations are China, Israel (thanks for the initial plug Jeff) UK (cheers Ewan) and Thailand
Whilst I totally agree with Moshe on the future of free calls and the customers expectations of free call being derisory to the industry, I am nevertheless over the moon with this as it took months and months of hard work to get it back up.
Hopefully we can keep this growing and out of the deadpool.

Thanks for the link. So, if I understand correctly, the whole Iowa tariff "mess" is caused by the fact that in sparsely populated rural areas the costs of creating the telecom infrastructure (mainly cables, I think) per subscriber are very high, while the expected revenues aren't.

Going back to the subject of the thread - why are international SIMs are "home-based" in small European countries. Of course, the fact they are often a kind of "tax paradises" may play some role but the main reason is that their telecom companies have "no room" to grow on local markets. I suppose that there is similar reason for which GSM-on-ships services are also often provided by companies from small countries (and at least in two cases are the same companies which provide roaming agreements for international SIMs).

I checked roaming partners list of the Polish mobile operators looking for GSM-onships roamings and I found the following

Large countries based
MCP - Norway (an operator "specialised" in "on-ships" roaming)
TIM - Italy
ATT - USA

Small countries based
OceanCell - Landsimmin Iceland
Seanet - Vodafone Malta
P&T Luxembourg
Jersey Telecom
Manx Telecom

Perhaps someone of you knows more examples.

I think it may have something to do with the willingness of the telecoms administration to set up a special termination rate for a particular group of mobile numbers, or perhaps that there is already a high termination rate. I believe that this may be the case in both Man and Jersey with the added benefit that most international carriers lump them in with UK so that the impact of the higher rate is diluted.

Yes, I agree with you that the high termination rate is the key factor that makes the whole "free incoming roaming" profitable.
But then there is another question, related to "particular group of mobile numbers" - why don't telecoms which provide roaming agreements for international SIMs don't offer the same free incoming calls (and low outgoing rates when abroad) to their "home" customers, neither postpaid nor prepaid ones? E.g. Manx Telecom customers can enjoy free incoming calls in English-language European countries only (UK, Ireland, Channel Islands).

My supposition is they can't do this because termination fees are applicable only for off-net calls (incoming from other operators) whereas the customers pay for their on-net minutes much below the termination fee. Let's say the operator charges 20 cents/min for incoming off-net calls and, thanks to this rate it can pass up to 15 cents/min to pay the termination of the call in the roaming partner's network. That's why it is able to offer free incoming calls in any roaming network with termination rate <=15 cents/min. But if the operator serves also on-net calls which due to number of inclusives minutes, lower per minute rates, packets, rebates etc. bring to it on average 10 cents/min only. In order to offer free incoming calls in roaming everywhere it costs <=15 cents to terminate, it would have either raise the on-net rates or subsidise its own customers.

To summarise, I think that high termination rate is not enough. Another necessary condition is that all (or almost all) calls to international SIMs are off-net calls or least they are charged as off-net calls. BTW, I wonder if e.g. calls from "local" +44 7624 SIMs to "international" ones are charged at on-net or off-net rates?