Can we trust callblue again??
 

Hi,

Had the problem with GT-Sim as per previous thread, and am considering Callblue again.

Just wondering how callblue can offer this kind of service again, and whether people believe they will survive?

Cheers

Richard

There are many sellers, reseller, dealers, wholesale or whatever they call themselfs.

When selecting a service it's better to look at the background of the company. Have they let down customers in the past, if yes it's a good question if they will not let you down a second time.

The other question is how reliable does the number you get needs to be. Are you just using it some times per year or are you using it all year long. If all year long you want a reliable partner having a long good record.

Strikes me that United Mobile is the only outfit than can be trusted for International SIMs, or am I wrong?

Both the Estonian sim cards and O9 have been pretty reliable the past couple of years too. What UM does deserve credit for and right now makes it the best buy, IMHO, is its realization that the asininely high termination fees being imposed by whomever were killing its convenience and the move from +423 to +44 has worked brilliantly.

As you said UM+ is a good buy at the moment and UM at least looks like a solid trustwurthy company.

Also it uses a +44 number which is good specially for business use as giving an Estonian or Iceland number to customers might seem a bit strange. Also we all now that calling Iceland mobile is not very cheap and some voip carries do not even connect. The same higher rates apply to Estonia.

Yes there are other companies offer card, but most are just resellers or rebranding an existing card.

Speak to both GT SIM and Callblue and see what they propose.

I don't know what GT SIM are doing now, nor about what happened when these companies split their arrangement last year and whether anything to do with that is still open to you.

But anyway Callblue were recently offering a free SIM card, perhaps with some modest credit on that would at least let you test it. I know a friend has recently used one a fair amount in France and Spain without any problems.

There were also rather predatory adverts from certain other resellers, which have now been changed. But don't exchange in your old card to separate companies, both for security reasons and in case it gets working again soon.

At the moment, the main +447-numbered SIMs are Callblue ekit United Mobile and Xfone. Some former Callkey resellers are now split mainly across the last 3, but will probably also be receiving information from new owners

Most UK networks charge separately for most of these numbers, apart from: all come from inclusive minutes on Virgin, but they don't support call diversion of incoming calls. The IoM 079244 ekit numbers come from minutes on O2 CPW and Orange.

There are some other new operations in the pipeline, plus potential new arrangements from other brands discussed here, so you might hedge with only small credits on one or two for a while.

Or for use in Europe, the main networks are no longer terrible. A 3 UK SIM is cheaper than any of the global roaming ones for calling to UK mobiles at 25p, and cheaper than most to UK landlines; 10p incoming though. 3 Like Home applies in some countries. Or consider O2 My Europe Extra: £10 a month gets free incoming, 25p outgoing to all Europe, and look at using separate callback.

After Freeglobalsim took my money and ran, i went ahead and gave more money for charity this time to CallBlue .

To my horror I found out (now that my prepaid credit has been exhausted and the sim card is blocked!) that they actually DO charge for roaming!!!

you wont find this on their home page or in their rate table!

it is hidden nicely in the terms and conditions that their "fair use policy" implies that after 10 minutes of an incoming call, they start charging 10p/min. :chair:

Someone should up update http://www.prepaidgsm.net/en/international.html as it endorses a card that doesn't really provide free international roaming.



So.. are there any hidden roaming costs after 10 minutes also with UM+ ?

I updated the page, I really didn't knew about this "fair use policy" at all, thank you very much for the news.

not at all, as well as with all the other simcard that I've used (both UM, Travelsim, 09...)

I got dinged with the "fair usage policy" too when i purchased their SIM as a replacement for Cherry to use in Rome, but then i found out that it only starts charging after 10 minute per call. So if the person hangs up and calls you back, you can speak for another 10 minutes for free and so on. It's kinda cheeky..but hey it works :)

There is no such thing as "free roaming". Either the cost shows up on your home or office phone when the premium number is dialed to reach the SIM - or a local number is dialed and you incur a (hopefully) small charge against the credit on your SIM.

...mike

Mike,
What are you trying to point out with your reply?, just admit that it's unfair not to mention in large print....and that's it.

Sorry but both Callblue and UM share the same Jersey prefix, so with the same calling costs from "home" (which can be very cheap, and the roaming actually free). But UM doesn't apply that ridiculous "fair use policy". I think that's the difference between a serious company and one of the many...

Wow If I would have said that some people would have been pissed.

Again I can only repeat when chossing a sim, look at the provider you choose, look at their background and also look at how they solved problems in the past. The solving problems in the past can be a very good indication on how they will react in future when something goes wrong.

Snidely does make a point as we now all know that calling iceland mobile is almost impossible or very high price. lichtenstein the same. Withinh the UK they sometimes have different rates for the 07 numbers but most carriers worldwide just have 1 rate for +44 mobile.
The roaming free carriers are using that advantage because +44 mobile is a big destination and iceland or lichtenstein is only called mainly to roaming free numbers.

To my understanding, the phone number provided by UM+ is +4479...
I dont have to pay anything when I receive a call in Europe even if the call is 45 minutes long.
Calling this number costs as low as 2-3p/min in the UK or 8p/min with Betamax SIP service (http://backsla.sh/betamax)


The ideal free-incoming-call-when-roaming SIM card would have a country code such as +1 (USA), +65 (Singapore), +852 (Hong Kong)
Because these prefixes are currently free with Betamax.

This would allow me to have a landline number anywhere and forward it to this mobile phone for free..

And you realy think that a free business is releable?

Some one have to pay your call Ls129......i understand that you want a free world,

Question, do you work yourself for free? if yes, whatever you do, you can work for us but some one will have to pay your food, your gas and your bills........

I do have such an option and yackie knows which one :). There is a way to do this but it's due to a mistake in one of the sim card providers here. I don't really use it because the forward quality suck and it takes up to 30 seconds before the forward gets thru. Most people have hung up by than. But it is due to a mistake so it's not a solution.

I have writen a review on yackie and their $ 0.29 incoming rate on a fixed number is fair. I also explained that it can be done cheaper using betamax and pbxes but this is really a do it yourself solution, not suitable for most people.

But the thread is about callblue, the above can also be found by searching the forum.

I realize the world is not free but i love finding new tricks to save a few cents. And I hate being a sucker of FALSE advertisement practiced by Callblue.

I don't understand exactly how UM+ (or the defunct Freeglobalsim) can offer free roaming.

My guess is that Jersey and Lichtenstein have reciprocal free roaming agreements with 80 or so operators around the world. And these 80 operators assume that there are only a handful of Lichtenstein sim cards that are ever going to show up on their network.

With this line of thought, I imagine that once UM+ subscribers pass a certain volume of subscribers, the magic will be over.

Is that why the Isle-of-Mann free roaming sim cards have magically disappeared a month or so ago?
were there too many IOM sim card owners ?

An interesting idea
 

An interesting idea, but don't the ESTONIAN cards offer FREE INBOUND, too? Now I admit Estonia does not have as many mobile users as say Germany.

Wonder what others think? I am guessing the OUTBOUND payoff to the host networks are lucrative.

Stan

Well, its a mixture of inbound call fees and outbound revenues.
German mobile carriers take about 10cent/min for calls that are placed to their subscribers. So they could offer free inbound calls for countries that charge 10ct/min or less for incoming roaming calls. Combined with the revenues of outbound calls (which can be very high...) you can make a nice marketing mix.

Slightly off topic, but do you know some rates that carriers in other countries take (minimum) to connect to their networks? eg. for Belgium, UK, Iceland, ...

Voicetrading charges 10c to Germany, so they hardly make money on that, do they?

Not necessarily. The essential value is what is average rate which any specific operator receives per minute. I mean, what if a large part of the overall traffic are cheap on-net calls (=much cheaper than 10 ct/min). As long as the whole thing remains within the home network, that's OK. But what should happen when the SIM is roaming in a foreign network with the termination rate 8 ct/min.? If the call to that SIM comes not from the home network, the operator receives 10 cents which is probably enough to cover forwarding abroad including the termination fee of the roaming partner. But if not, i.e. the call comes from the home network at the on-net rate, let's say 5 ct/min who will pay the difference? Differing the inbound rates depending on the origin of the call is technically possible, but would it be acceptable by customers? Of course, my example doesn't exclude free incomig calls since losses on the inbound calls may be compesated by profits from outbound calls. But such pricing may force some "fair use policies" like limiting the volume of incoming calls or the inboung/outbound ratio...

Poland: "the Big Three" i.e. Era, Plus and Orange and their MVNO's take 0.40 PLN and Play takes 0.65 PLN. At the current exchange rate it makes about 0.11 and 0.18 EUR, respectively. The rates above are exclusive of VAT, of course.

Have you found better rates to Poland mobile? Probably yes. How do they do this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_cellular_terminal
Of course, it's illegal here, not by the national telecom law, but by the operators' ownership rights - Polish SIMs are formally properties of the operators and FCT usage is a violating of T&C's of someone's property :-).
The same trick applies to many other countries :-).

Voicetrading charges:
Poland (Mobile) 0.0489
with ability to set CLI, so they are probably not using a Sim box.

I understand the working of a Sim-box (the idea behind it), but I still don't understand how Betamax has so many rates that are below 'the possible'.
I can 't believe that they deliberatly loose money to make money on other destinations. Have they found holes in the system? Possible, but how can they keep doing it for such a long time without getting caught?

Maybe Andy knows more ?