Bluefire Wireless - a Manx SIM in transition?
 

I've just found it in the Google ads on the forum.

After reading this:
http://www.bluefirewireless.com/Blue...uideVer1.5.pdf
it seems to me that it's a Manx 7924 SIM.

On the home page, however, there's the following message:

Important announcement for existing customers

Upgrade your BLUEFIRE SIM now
We have just completed a programme of upgrades to the BLUEFIRE system that will add functionality and ensure compatibility with the latest technology. In order to be able to continue to use the BLUEFIRE system after the end of October 2007, it is important that you apply NOW for the latest version of the BLUEFIRE SIM card.

Simply click below in order to complete and submit a form giving us your existing card details and mailing address. We will then send you a replacement card free of charge.
You will receive a new BLUEFIRE phone number and your current credit balance will automatically be transferred to the replacement card.

The coverage seems to be rather like that of 09, not Manx Telecom.

The zones are strangely named when compared with the countries included in them.
"Europe - EU" contains eg. Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Turkey.
"Europe - Non-EU & N. Asia" contains Czech Rep., Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania and a country named "Kakakhstan" :-).
"North America & Canada" (isn't Canada in N.America BTW ;-)?) contains American Samoa.
But the best is "French Guinea" in "Africa & Indian Sub-continent" :-D.

Couldn't find the list of free incoming countries.

The contact data are (http://www.bluefirewireless.com/contact.php)

Customer Service telephone number +44207 850 6000
Email customerservice@bluefirewireless.com
Please note customer service is available 24 hours
Website www.bluefirewireless.com
Head Office address:
Bluefirewireless Inc.
515 Madison Avenue
Suite 1910
New York
NY 10022
USA

OK, it's not strange these days to have a US office with a UK phone number, but why it is the only publicly announced one???

The SIM costs $70 with $10 credit.

Wedged in with 'Durka-durka-astan, Kerbelchistan, Durpastan, durp-durp-astan' and many other fictional countries, like hull and france!


i'll get my coat.......

The Bluefire Service is taken from this new operators network. www.cloud9.im. They are a brand new gsm operator in the Isle of Man, competing with Manx and C&W so will no doubt be looking to mop up alot of the callkey guys.

Really interesting... so this the 1st operator based on Cloud9

(the cute girl on the website is really interesting too :lol:)

cloud9
 

cloud9 is only for use (when it starts working) in the isle of man and not for roaming networks.:p

wire9 who owns cloud9 is the Backbone for the network

Actually, from the beginning Cloud9 have published free roaming in Europe on weekdays

My post should have said.

The could9 service is designed for end users and not for distributors or resellers, and to be sold only on the island (IOM) However I guess anyone could order direct from the retailers.

Bluefirewireless
 

I have just ordered one of these GSM. I'm travelling a lot in Middle East and India. Incoming calls are :eek: with T-Mobile. So let's try this thing and look how it works. Sounds too good to be true for travelling people. I think I would not even need to top-up the account. It's 100% for incoming calls from my office and home. Outgoing? Local SIM - anything else :nono:

Murch,

What did you buy?, please explain your post. Thanks

One SIM Bluefirewireless for 70$ plus 20$ call credit. Added 12.93$ p&p to Germany.
The reply was fast by email. Now I have to wait and see:
- how long it takes to receive the SIM card by DHL
- if it really works as they tell
- I will try it in the following countries: Germany, Czech Republic, Spain, India, Israel, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia.

As soon as it arrives I will continue posting my experience.

I'm surprised you didn't go for one of the vistream-based brands with a German number. Even with a few cents incoming rate, that's probably still cheaper for you and German callers than calling or forwarding to a UK/IoM number.

I'm also thinking that the published tariffs on there may be still from the previous Callkey-based SIM, unless it is a coincidence that they have the same 154 customer service number.

The Bluefire thing was the first which I came to know through an offer on board GULF AIR. In the first instance I did not really believe that something like that really works. I'm paying around 2,500 € each year on incoming roaming calls only. Thus this bluefire thing seemed like 'heavon on earth'.:p
Are there similar providers with german numbers? If so please let me know more details.
For my customers from Spain, Portugal, Italy and France it does not matter if they call a UK number or a german. Costs are identical. Although a german number would provide more 'identity' with my german company of course. ;)

Yes, there are:



* Anny Way Call
* Avantaje
* Brandmobile
* Che Mobil
* Igge & Co.
* Net Cologne
* Phone Home Mobile

* PTT Mobile
* Solomo
* SUN SIM
* Telesim
* Tourist Mobile
* United Mobile
* vistream


Check their website and compare the rates - they are slightly different.

Chris

I don't understand this whole thread, Blufirewirless is a regular reseller of IOm sims, there is no big deal, their website is still not updated to reflect their current sim offerings. so please stop bragging how goot their service is and how cheap it is....................

Alright - could be it's regular reselling of whatsoever SIM's. For me as a regular "user" and not an expert in how many providers of hundreds of nets worldwide the focus is: price, value, performance.
If I start testing this kind of technology with Bluefire or any other - doesn't matter. Important is to gain the experience and maybe find ways to either save money or make life easier. Sharing this information is the point.
I am travelling around 40% of the year in the Middle East. Shall I hold a local SIM in UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia?
Unless you can confirm and guarantee which provider is the best for that region let us just try and exchange information. I think this is the real purpose of this thread.
If you don't understand this whole thread - why bother? We do.:)

Murch is as it seems a first time user of any of these roaming free card. Reading his info he spents lots of money on incoming calls and any sim offering free incoming in many countries will seem like a gift to first time users.
Sure when you spent more time to see who is offering what Bluefire might just be on of the many but you need to start somewhere and that's what he did.

There are plenty of providers of SIMs intended for cheap global roaming, and already plenty of discussion already on here about them.

Of course you are interested in finding ways to save money in the places you travel to, and will want to ask for advice about that, but there is no need to suggest that other people don't understand the real purpose of this thread, which until now was about a hitherto unknown brand, and what could be found out about it.

Like several of the resellers of some IoM SIMs, it doesn't seem to have updated all of its webpages at the same time, and it is common on others to find new remarks about replacement SIM cards, but the instructions tariffs and FAQs seem to be describing the old one. Clues to the old one will be 154 for Customer Services, 102... for call forwarding, 103 to cancel it, and 187 for balance query.

It may be that their newer SIMs will also have 154 for CS, but despite that the Cloud9 network will probably have +4479245 or ~6 numbers in the Isle of Man itself, I think that these SIMs will have the Wire9 prefix +4478722, which adds to the suggestion that their Network Guide on the website is not new. Well, of course you should get newer instructions when the product arrives.

While old information is still there though, I would be slightly hesitant to make a lot of assumptions about the new one, including tariffs. Wire9 claim to have more roaming agreements than the brands resident on Manx Telecom, and it will be interesting to find out more about that, but I'll be quite surprised if you have free incoming calls in India for example.

They've published it, but as far as I'm aware their roaming has never worked. I wasn't able to get it to even register on any network in UK/IE/FR/ES or US, even after a roaming update.

And then the service within the IOM (which had terrible voice quality), stopped working. (it may have restarted since, I haven't been there for a while).

I'd be very wary of any service based on cloud9/wire9.

The Cloud9 sim card might have a bit of value to a collector (quite rare) but it doesn't have any other use.

At least the bookkeeping seems to work efficiently. The payment has just appeared on my credit card. I hope the card will arrive by DHL in the next days. Concerning the roaming facilities: in January I will be in Kuwait, UAE and India. By January 25 I should be able to summarize a bit the first tests.;)

It was not my intention to offend anybody. It just did not seem a constructive comment so I explained my personal idea. If I should have misunderstood the character and purpose of this forum I deeply apologise. :(

SIM card arrived
 

Hope you all had wonderful Christmas and a good start into 2008! :cool:

It took a while but it reached by Registered Mail from UK. Nice packing and professional design. Insert the SIM and go. It works so far. Mid/end of January I will have the opportunity to test it in India and UAE.
Results will be posted as soon as possible.

What are the rates for India?

Bbest check BLUEFIREWIRELESS website for this detail. It depends from where you call:
http://www.bluefirewireless.com/call_rates.php

incoming calls are free except for the following countries:

Afghanistan - Argentina - Armenia - Bangladesh - Bhutan - Brunei - Cambodia - Canada - Dominican Republic - Ecuador - Finland - Gabon - Indonesia - Kyrgyzstan - Laos - Macau - Malaysia - Maldives - Mexico - Nepal - Panama - Peru - Phillipines - Russia - Seychelles - Singapore - Sri Lanka - Taiwan - Thailand - Turkmenistan - Uruguay - USA - Uzbekistan

This is the information given in the USER GUIDE. Although they state this list may change since new agreements are being confirmed. Let's see...

Ciao Murch,
what +447xxx use bluefire sim?
Alex

Hello from Germany,

if the Bluefire SIM works well, some of us would like to have some details, e.g. like the Prefix for this card +44 7xxx x for example.

Most of us had bad experience with the gone "callkey" IoM card which disappeared from one to the next day. (Was sold under "Globalsim", "GT-SIM" and much much other brands)

Somebody here suggested the german-based vistream SIM-Cards.
vistream (powered by Materna) is a virtual network operator using the German e-plus Network.
Prefix is +49-1570-xxxxxxx

vistream Customers report about strange problems with Callback-Roaming in various foreign countries. It may work, but it may not work, too. German speaking/understanding readers could have a look at www.telefon-treff.de for more details.

vistream uses a Dual IMSI SIM-Card with SAT-Callback, which is a little bit more sophisticated than the known SIM-cards from IoM, UM or other Companies. So should have a newer SAT-compatible phone (like Nokia 6310i or later)

As a addendum or backup to the Bluefire Card you should give United-Mobile a try:

UM offers two tariffs/cards:

UM423 (based in Liechtenstein) includes a lot of countries like China (PRC) where incoming calls are free. You can get one in a Swiss Postal-Office or mobilezone or from www.callfrom.de in Germany (not listed on this page)
Disadvantage can be the prefix +423-663 which is billed premium-rate in some countries.

UM+ (based on Isle of Jersey) has less countries with free incoming, but offers some countries, the UM423 does not and vice versa.
UM+ SIM-Card is available from www.united-mobile.com

There are some threads in this forum with more details with United-Mobile.

Hope this will help you.

see above:

prefix
 

Andy is absolutely right.
The number is +447872....

When dialing you have to add # at the end, example: +4937512345#
After a few seconds you receive a call and you are being connected to the desired number.
(Dis)advantage: the number is not shown when you dial (at least while calling from Germany)

SMS is trouble free. Incoming calls work well and the line quality seems to be as good as with any other card.

Hope you all have a nice Saturday evening...
I'm hosted by our couch with a nice flu and hope to get well before monday when work will have me back. :chair:

Well callkey will be back, that is what the expert here on the forum says. So don't say there gone they will be back;)

The same expert attacked me saying I said dual sim was a home brew solutions (I used other words) It's funny that I read now that there are indeed problems with these dual sim card. But agian there is 1 expert here that knows everything so don't speak bad :)

If you think to go on in this way you have good chances to be the first ever user banned on this forum. If you have problems with Andy, and it seems you have, there exist Private Messages, so please use them (or any other private communication service). I'm not tolerating other stupid personal-flames between the two of you on the public forum, so please stop here.

I said that the company behind it has €150million+ annual turnover and supplies other products like SMS or IVR to main networks in several countries, such as O2 SFR & Proximus. I said this for 2 reasons: you claimed it was home brew; you said you would not deal with products without financial strength behind them.

I see that the solomo thread has 1500+ posts, so may take some time to read

Are the difficulties in certain countries constant or variable, and has there been discussion of whether or how this might depend on the roaming agreements of what appears to be the other country ID on the SIM card, or maybe added by Materna/vistream themselves?

Or perhaps the problems are that the SIM never registers on the network? I had this to begin with, until Sunsim told me that on some phones the PIN should be prefixed with a 1 or 2: 1xxxx in Germany; 2xxxx roaming. Since then I've also found a SIM menu setting that reboots into the other mode.

solomo thread at tt.de
 

I have not read the entire thread. Read recent posts. Appears to me that the problems are sporadic without any pattern. Seems a VERY FEW users are quite upset. Earlier problems with PORTING other #s to solomo. Seems many more defenders than critics.

The sunsim thread is not as active.

I don't travel that much. Will be able to test in France this summer.

Maybe our German friends have more experience.

Stan

Understood, looks like there are 2 user going to be banned, that is if everyone gets treated the same way :)

Concerning the possibilities in other countries: I will test my SIM in India (18-25 January) and Spain 28-31 January. In February United Arab Emirates and Kuwait will follow. Until June I should have done tests in Middle East and maybe Israel.

Reg: dual SIM
I am using a phone made in Taiwan: CECT model T689
Some nice features (touchscreen, bluetooth, microSD slot and some more) but the most important is: two parrallel SIM slots.
Means: whenever I am travelling outside Germany I have my local SIM and my german SIM active at the same time in only one phone. To decide which number I am using to establish calls I have two different dial-keys (green and silver).

It works perfectly and I can surely recommend it.

Don't worry about that, it's not your business, I'm the Admin and I can do my job. Please stop going back to this subject or I'll start to use my Admin powers very soon.

Cect T689
 

Interesting, I have a CECT T689 dual-sim as well. And yes I am very pleased with it but mine hasn't got Bluetooth!

Roaming in India
 

The first experience with Bluefirewireless in India is: :mad:
In four days the SIM card did not log onto any local network. Lucky I had my local Airtel prepaid and could do my calls as usual.
I requested support through Email and received an answer within 6 hours. Very positive impression. After replying with a contact telephone number I waited for a call through the service. Until today nobody called me back... :confused:
Next week I will stay three days in Barcelone area and in the second week of February I will test the service in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Let's see...

Well, I purchased mine in November 2007 in Dubai (Dragonmart on Hatta Road) and it is not bad in design and handling. Working excellent and the bluetooth connects even with my AUDI handsfree. Only the second SIM does not work properly with my car's bluetooth device. When connected to a handsfree on-ear (e.g. Plantronics) it is working very good.
It would be even more interesting if accessories were available. If the only charging cable breaks down you have no chance. Syncronization with OUTLOOK would also be a nice feature. But you can not expect everything for 150$...;)

Callkey
 

If I can use this service for one week only in any place in Europe I will have a return of my investment of 70$
There will always be a start and beginning of new technologies. My personal expectation is a general 'worldwide' cellphone number in the future. :)

We should not have a pessimistic look but be interested in any new development.

Next week: Spain and February will show Saudi Arabia and UAE experience