UM Breaking News
 

Unofficial: United-Mobile will be increasing rates, and charge setup fees for incoming calls as well. Keep an Eye

And your source?

Seems rather ODD, since the regular carriers are all being FORCED to cut their roaming rates. Not sure what the competition will do, but IF TRUE, this will make UM less competitive since several other carriers offer FREE INBOUND without any setup fees.

Stan

I agree. UE carriers will have to cut their roaming rates, so the only possible way for UM to be still competitive is cutting its rates as well, as it's been doing so far. Increasing its rates may easily become a suicide.

It seems they are decreasing the set-up fee...

yes they will decrease the connection fee and move some countries between the zones. So some will become cheaper and some more expensive. No detailed list is available yet, if i get my hands on it i'll post it.

Chris

We have to wait OFFICIALLY until 1-1-2009.

Set-up fee from 0,25€ to 0,19 is a great idea, I think. :)

What is funny, is that the latest tariff from Tim, named "Chiara" has a set-up fee of 0,19€ as well...

I see NOTHING about call setup fees anymore. Have they disappeared or are they just hidden?

The new set-up fees will leave from 1st January:)

And let's hope there will be in fact no set-up fee for incoming calls, that would be quite annoying - and it would make UM lose many customers, IMHO.

I think set-up fee doesn't disappear, only it will be lower than now:confused:

Indeed setup fee for incoming calls would make many customers leave. If they start charging setup fee for incoming it's no free roaming card anymore and I will start lokking for another card.

Most calls are less than 2 minutes anyhow so setupcost for incoming would add a lot to the cost of calling.

This morning I've got an incoming call in Switzerland with no costs.

News from um+

Set-up fee from 25 cent to 19 cent (now)
outgoing calls (europe, mobile phones) from 39 cent to 69 cent (:chair:)
outgoing calls on net. From 29 cent to 39 cent
incoming calls (europe)---free
Very bad news:nono:

It's a bit more complicated than that.

Basically, to start with just EU countries on the Jersey numbered SIMs, about 10 have been moved from Zone 1 to 2, while Belgium and Slovenia are in 3 and no longer have free incoming calls.

Roaming in and calling to the cheapest countries still has the same low rates of 29c landlines 39c mobiles. Most other European calls will be 49c to mobiles. But the worst case to EU - Belgium and Italy mobiles are in Area 3 as destination, so can cost 69 or 79 cents from some places.

Looking a bit deeper, there are other movements across groups. Roaming in Pakistan has gone from Zone 2 free to Zone 4 49c incoming; in Liechtenstein from 2 to 5 (99c).

It's all a bit disappointing, when you consider that they were able to launch the Jersey numbered SIMs with lower rates than the Liechtenstein ones, which were later lowered. I think some fans will carry both UM SIMs, incoming calls on one, outgoing on the other.

But the Liechtenstein SIMs see some changes too. Incoming roaming rate bands have gone up a bit, and some countries have moved zones - Uruguay from 2 to 5, while others such as Vietnam and Yemen are now free incoming

Comparing the tables for Oct and Jan is made more confusing as one has changed from upper to lower case for the country names, while the other is vice versa.

A big problem is China - it has been removed from the free incoming for +423. There must have been quite a bit of traffic on that route.

Bad news...the UM+ is no more cheaper than the +423. It is incredible that now we have to pay incoming calls in Belgium and Slovenia, (both EU countries!) :eek:

On the other hand, I see that now UM+ can roam free in Croatia.

Probably now Travelsim and 09 become more interesting...especially if it's possible to find cheap ways to be called on Estonian and Icelandic numbers :confused:

Japan, however, is now listed as doable on UM+ with free incoming and area 1 outgoing.

Question is why is Belgium now in zone 3 if it's part of the eu?

Gymsim now merits another look.....Belgium is listed on the +44 card they offer still at free incoming and 0,29€ outgoing....

I don't know. They (UM) aren't based in the EU of course, so aren't obliged to compete with the Eurotariff, but it does seem odd they'd need to charge me 3 times as much there as O2 UK would.

It's even odder when you consider that some EU-based networks have their cheap roaming rates in more European countries than just the EU, and that some European but non-EU networks have similar rates, so you'd think that reciprocal arrangements could have lowered others.

09 has been down for over a week. Hopefully, it's just temporary and not for good. Itt was mentioned in the "yackie upgrades" thread. Since yackie, which piggy backs off 09 is also down.

as one of the few eu countries, incoming calls in belgium are 0.19 euro. This is strange as the rest of europe remains unchanged. My problem I use UM in Belgium a lot so i will have to find a replacement.

Then let us know what will be your choice! :)

good question, I have looked briefly yesterday at the options.

The cloud9 operators don't seem to be an alternative as they have stange terms. Looked at goglobalsim at don't like these terms:

The GoGlobal SIM card rates and tariffs assume fair usage of the Services by the customer. This includes, but is not limited to maintaining a ratio of outbound tariff enabled calls to inbound calls of more than 30% on the customers account.

Looked at geosim, but don't like the yealy cost and yes it can be found in the faq but they do hide it a bit.

Maxroam I have but can't call the number direct, yackie, what more do I have to say. I might look at easyroam.

Just need to check what numbers they can issue as the 7624 numbers were in problem in the past calling the with betamax/voicetrading.

and what about travelsim?:)

travelsim.com ? looked at their website, what I don't like is that you have to pay 45 euro for a sim card, 45 euro for a card seems like a rip off to me. Most other prepaid card don't ask that much or just a fraction.

I asume I receive an estonian numer +372 ? I prefer a +44 uk number, just looks better when giving away the number.

I don't know if I can call +372 using betamax/voicetrading Iceland mobile is a problem and will not connect on voicetrading and I expect the same problem on a +372 number

just looked at gt-sim, but this is in their terms:

.

Kind of unclear, is making one or 3 calls in these 3 month's enough to keep the phone active that is what it said but it also reads that to avaid these charges you have to topup 25 euro per 3 month or 100 euro per year. This almost reads like it will cost you 100 euro per year no matter if you make calls or not.

Looked at www.easyroam.co.uk now and think I will order a card from them. 29 euro including 15 euro credit, so just 14 euro for the sim. This is a lot less than what travelsim is asking.

I've looked up on travelsim.com and yes, they ask 45€ - I agree, that's too much!
But here it seems to cost 29.90€ with 10€ airtime included...

On the other hand, +44 numbers are cheaper to call, and that's still one point in favour of UM+ :confused:

And we charge $43 for the sim card and you get $20 call credit - Good for our USA/Canada customers

I've never experienced or heard of any connection problems specific to these numbers. A few months ago there very occasional odd connections from Betamax/Finarea brands happening on all +447 mobiles, but I haven't heard of any recently

exactly, the travelsim card costs 29,90 euro with 6 euro. 45 (cent) is the cost per minute. Don't confuse :)

Yes a bit confusing at travelsim and the other site travelsimshop seems to have a lower rate. Reamins that you will get an estonian number and I prefer a UK number.

Just ordered the easyroam sim, paid through paypal and got a responce very fast, will ship on monday so middle of the weeks I can start using it.

The 7624 problems date back some time ago and I never had problems calling 7937 (some minor onces) and as I posted elsewhere betamax also seems to connect to UM lichtenstein now.

I have never had a single problem from any Betamax or Finarea brand in reaching active 07624 numbers for 3 years, and nor have I heard of any from several people who own or make calls to these SIMs, such as my family reaching me using 18185, a Finarea prefix-select brand for BT (UK) landlines.

I don't recall and can't find you previously identifying Betamax, and I had previously assumed your non-specific comments meant other providers, such as some that don't have +4476 in their dialplans.

As I said, there were just a few strange calls a few months ago, but not recently; I had one on an attempt to an 07937 number, while other people had them using these providers for ordinary UK mobiles - a recording answered, but to begin with one thought it was a live call, with a person saying hang on a moment, then background noises of a dog barking and TV news. I haven't heard or read of any repetition of this odd problem for quite a while now; perhaps the underlying provider fixed it.

So I think you can be confident that there won't be problems reaching your new SIM, whether ~7624 or ~7924.

Andy the fact that you never had problems does not mean that other ones can have problems. That's the problem with these type of problems, some times everyone has them than it's a provider problem, sometimes a few have then than it might be another problem. Connection problems can have many causes. Betamax voicetrading using 3 different routes all having different qualities. You never know which provider it goes through and how they route calls. Hence it might even be different if a call originates from a uk or spanish voip account. So some users might have problems while others not.

I did have some problems some time ago calling the 7624 number but this was in the time those number were in problems, sometimes the call did connect but it just took 50 seconds. sometimes it did not go through, than it worked.
Since betamax now also seems to be able to connect to +423 numbers I don't expect any problems calling the 7924 number.
Even now betamax can call +423 numbers the price is still almost douvle compared to calling a uk mobile number.
As I mentioned above, island does not work with betamax, estonia, no idea if it works. UK mobile still seems to be the only good option.
The only reason I switch from UM is that only belium has incoming call cost, and I use it a lot, most of the time in belgium. 19 cents incoming is than to much and it's strange that only Belgium seems to have this problem as all other roaming card have no roaming cost in belgium. I have mailed UM customer service asking for a reason, so I'll wait and see what they answer.

Apologies, perhaps it's just a nuance of language - it seemed to me you might be suggesting this had been a problem for a protracted time (i.e. date back [to] some time ago) and speculating it might still be, hence my attempt to put minds at rest.