Virgin Mobile UK Now Roams in the US
 

I'm in the US. I stuck a Virgin SIM in a phone because I deliberately did not want the phone to register on a network for reasons irrelevant to this post. To my amazement, it registered and showed that data services were available.

Stu

Hmmm. I hadn't thought about this, but I tried out Virgin prepaid cards this past June in the US, and they worked as well. (I'm a direct debit customer, so it has always officially worked for me.) In fact, I'm pretty sure my dad used his prepaid VM SIM to call home from Philadelphia in early 2005, as he left his Verizon paperweight-outside-the-US phone at home. I didn't realize VM were still saying that prepaid SIMs didn't work Stateside.

It's worked in the USA (Virgin Mobile UK that is prepaid) for at least 3 or 4 years! And data worked too...as a matter of fact to keep the card valid (I believe they require one paid event every 6 months; although it may have increased to a year) I simply downloaded a ring tone from somewhere which cost a grand total of 9p.

I bought this SIM in 1999 and didn't have the activity restriction. This is my wife's SIM and it is used loosely once a year. Last year, it was used three times, but other times it might be 18 mos. Last time I tried it in the US, it didn't work, but I am not sure of the timing.

Yep, this is why I was fiddling with VM phones in the US, to send an SMS just to make sure they didn't expire. According to the website, it's 180 days, but experience suggests it's at least 365 (Customer Service told me it was exactly 365 days).

The exorbitant call costs when roaming in the US are reason enough to not use it there, but this is true for most foreign operators, not just VM. (Note to mobile phone operators: In a market economy, the higher the price, the less likely people will be to use a service, particularly when it is a notional cost.)

I never use a roaming SIM in the US. Even most Canadian SIMs burn you for US usage. I wanted a SIM that would permit the phone to boot up,

...as noted the value of roaming in the US is absolutely not to make calls but to be able to keep it alive cheaply....for example UM required one paid activity every 9 months although according to most, it's loosely enforced....calls are very expensive but sending an sms is much cheaper and serves the purpose...as noted where internet is available, a quick download of a ring tone from a free service will also do the trick....with Virgin Mobile as noted it was 9p and voila problem solved....

Mobile World (before the advent of the other cheap services such as Orange Call Abroad) from Carphone Warehouse was a good deal but without roaming ability, the card expired after 60 days originally (I think that has been increased to 90 days) although as I understand it I think, you could call customer service to restore service to the sim card perhaps with a different number and get your credit back.

Then there is what the French providers pull and this is one place perhaps the eu could do some good...if you buy a €15 recharge, for example, one month and then they steal your credit and six months later the sim card expires...no amount of making calls or sending sms keeps it alive and since the only way foreigners can recharge is with recharge slips from the carrier (although SFR can recharge with vodafone slips provided you are in a vodafone country) it is hard to keep the card alive if you desire retaining the number and sim card.

Of course, it must be added, that for Americans travelling to the UK, Virgin Mobile is far from the bargain it used to be. Their price to call North America from the UK was 20p/minute which once upon a time was a good price compared say to Vodafone (which still charges, I believe, £1/minute to call North America) with their local UK rate of 15p/minute for first five minutes of use each day and then dropping to 5p per minute...ever since they instituted the 10p minimum per call that rate is no longer the bargain it once was.....and of course there are now far cheaper alternatives to calling North America from the UK (Mobile World, Orange Call Abroad, and the T Mobile service with YourCall). But for some strange reason, I do try to keep the sim card alive.

I think the SIM lasts quite a long time even if totally unused; I've never heard of someone disconnected in under a year, and 18 months or more seems to be quite often survivable. The data at 0.5p/kB even when roaming is useful from time to time, especially with their occasional free SIMs including £5 credit.

One possibility is to send an sms equivalent with a Vyke account - and you can change the Vyke PIN to represent another account for one of your other numbers as source of the message if you wish

- provided that that number also has data capability and has been used first, otherwise it seems a default resets the sending SIM phone number on to the account instead, an issue I'm still trying to work around - in other words, I could use a Virgin or O2 SIM to send a message from my O2 or Sunsim number, but haven't yet succeeded with the UM+ Jersey one ...

Virgin has roamed here for a long time. Bought mine brand new on ebay over 4 years ago. It came with 5 pounds credit. It roamed and was data ready out of the box. It will usually roam on tmobile here. My primary use for mine is for data when roaming...As already mentioned, they charge the same for data roaming or not. It has worked in every country I have used it in. Even in countries that's not listed on the payg page on their website. For example, I have taken mine on several cruises that have taken me through at least 12 Caribbean Islands/countries and it has worked every where. Heck! Even on the ships themselves. I have also used it in Nigeria.

My Virgin is not on direct debit. I could pass Orange's credit check, but not Virgin's.

I have a UK phone number hooked to my Asterisks box with numerous "virtual extensions." Calls to the number plus a five digit extension connect me to my top fifty numbers.

I also use this approach to extend "my fav" plans on an American and a Canadian carrier that I use. It is also my UAE favorite international number on Etisislut. With this approach, I also have free incoming throughout the US and unlimited 1.2 cents a minute inbound in Canada.

Agree with everything said. I suspect the extreme roaming costs in the US are just part of the insular phone-company "gotcha" mentality and a failure to notice what a revenue source roaming is elsewhere. (For example, on all the major landline carriers, you will pay $4 a minute to call Europe -- you must order a monthly "package" to drop this down to 10-20 cents, which is itself not particularly cheap. I discovered this at my sister's house after checking my German voicemail several times ended up costing me $140!)

France suffers from having a market without a great deal of competition and a big dominant incumbent (France Telecom/Orange) that can dictate terms to newcomers, and weak competition from "cash cows" (SFR, Bouyges) belonging to national conglomerates that aren't otherwise telecommunications heavyweights, who clearly have no interest in rocking the boat (despite --or perhaps causing -- France being the only mobile market in Western Europe that still has a lot of potential growth, with relatively low penetration and use of value-added services, especially SMS). It's always amazing to me how competitive (and thus so much better from the consumer perspective) the German market is nowadays, when it was in much the same position as France's a decade ago.

As for Virgin, I don't know exactly why they instituted the 10p minimum; I don't think it was due to rising costs from using T-Mobile as their base network. I imagine it has more to do with Virgin a) introducing postpaid accounts and thus wanting to make its prepaid offer seem less attractive and b) becoming part of what is essentially an expanded NTL, a much less "cool" company than VM was when it launched. I find it surprising that, far from continuing to innovate, Virgin has left its price list exactly the same as it was when it launched (aside from the minimum charge of first 5p in 2004 and now 10p and the new restrictions on which calls count toward the first 5 minutes of each day, which is now only standard landlines and other VM numbers). They could have offset this with lower calls to other networks or something. As it is, I generally recommend T-Mobile now instead (as you can place international calls for 3p using a dialthrough service).

Motel 75...

Didn't take a court order in Germany to get the prepaids off of stealing away people's credit the same way the French do and going to a fixed period, if any, of expiration?

Virgin has always roamed outside the UK its just the tariff/ payment type that either allowed it or barred it!

PAYG up until recently didnt (as far as i know) allow you to roam, but only with a tri or quad band handset but on standard payg the costs where quite large! i have yet to use my virgin payg or virgin pay monthly abroad (well my payg i took to france not long after virgin mobile launched and at the time they didnt offer roaming!) so i cant really comment on roaming partners or coverage! nor can i comment on costs!

Yes and no. It's a bit of a long story, but until about four years ago, all three networks (and from late 1998, with the addition of Viag Intercom, now O2) all four had prices and policies that were almost identical. Each company had one prepaid offer, later adding a couple of tariff choices, before the MVNOs arrived and changed things. However, expiration wasn't that bad. Vodafone (and Mannesmann/D2 privat before it) CallYa prepaids cost essentially 40 DM, later €20 per year to keep going. They initially had 15 months validity to begin with, and as I remember (perhaps incorrectly) this could be extended to two years via topping up (with the extension added to the existing validity), but this was later reduced to 15 months maximum. Of course, when time was up, whatever credit was on there was gone if you didn't top up, and this is what the court decision changed.

Although the expiration was OK, and you could periodically get a starter packet with phone for what was then a highly subsidized price (In 2001, for example, a basic Sagem with Vodafone card for 49 DM, or 25 €, with 15 DM credit), the per-minute rates could be quite high; on the typical variable-rate prepaid, about 80 cents for calling a landline during the day and 70 cents for calling other mobile networks off-peak, although the 7 cent weekend landline calls were a good consolation prize). In short, the offer was still better than what is available now in France, with its extortionate rates and extremely short expiration dates after which all credit is lost.

BTW, the €2 per minute charge that many German prepaids charge for international calls dates from this time: all prepaids charged DM 3.99 for all destinations (remember that until 1998, Deutsche Telekom had an expensive monopoly on landlines; calling the US was something like DM 2.50 a minute, or $1.50, billed in fixed 23-pfennig impulse units that were valid for a shorter duration, depending on the distance of the target country (5.33 seconds to Argentina, for example). While landline calling prices plummeted in 1998, this international rate remained unchanged on mobiles, and was even converted into the euro equivalent (€1.84) in 2002 -- or even rounded up to 1.99.

However, in the last few three years there have been many new MVNOs, starting with Simyo, and the majors have tried to compete. Some of the new MVNOs, and offers such as the low-price Vodafone CallYa Compact, offered low prices but poor expiration policies. CallYa Compact originally expired after 92 days without topping up, and maximum topup validity was 92 days, no matter how much you added (officially minimum 15 €). Having switched to Vf Compact from 10 years on a contract, and with my expiration date initially 15 months in the future, I received an SMS from Voda in early summer 2006 telling me that my account was now valid only till August -- didn't make me happy... However, it turned out there was a loophole -- you could restart the 92 days by sending a smaller amount via bank transfer...)Smobil, another Vodafone-in-disguise offer, offered max. 180 days after the biggest top-up. (OTOH, MVNOs with more independence, such as Aldi Talk, offered very generous expiration policies, initially one year, max. two years).

In the end, the court ruling changed this, and now the topup validity issue is largely moot, though some providers such as Talkline, still maintain them (even the 92-day limit on Vf Compact), but they return the money to your bank account at the end if requested. Not a good way to retain customers, in my view.

I'm not sure this is true. I've been with Virgin since 2002 and for the first year my phone did not roam anywhere. I believe they added this in 2003 -- remember, until less than two years ago, Virgin was prepaid-only, so there were no contract customers with more features. There are just direct debit customers, who get lower roaming rates, and (it is claimed) more roaming countries, though even this might not be true, hence this thread.