new UM card with +1/+44 dual number soon
 

It was reported on the GSM World fair in Barcelona that UM will start a dual IMSI SIM-card soon which carries a +44 and a +1 number.
In the US you can choose which number will be shown for outgoing calls, outside USA always the +44 number will be shown.
Inbound calls in the US will be 19ct/min, the tariffs will be similar than on the UM+ card.
More details in german here: teltarif.de News: +44/+1: United Mobile kombiniert zwei Rufnummern auf einer SIM

Chris

Chris, if they can do that, that will put them a step up on everybody...unfortunately I cannot understand a word of German...any mention in the article of a time frame...

If this is all true, they could make a mint...it would in effect be a prepaid mobile in the USA (and Canada too which also uses country code 1??) and would prices be the same when roaming say in Europe????

If it is what it seems, I might swallow my anger at the 0,19€ set up fee to receive calls!

Let me just add I'm a bit cynical and you'll have to forgive me as Mr. Yackie Mobile who used to post here used to say that a Yackie Mobile +1 card was imminent and coming soon...but then again so is Christmas.

The timeframe mentioned is 1-2 months. So they seem to be pretty far with the preparations. And yes, it seems too good to be true - same tariff for US and EU...

Chris

edit: Henning, the author of the article used the card already on the UM booth. It had a (+44 7937) and a +1-570 number and seemed to work well

Here's a quick translation

Really seems too good to be true but....

If it is true, as noted at the end, UM would jump far ahead of most of the other international cards!

One of their targets is definitely US customers since tmobile and AT&T roaming charges are quite high. The lower EU rates have forced them to look for other options. They also target EU customers that pay high roaming rates in the US. They will definitely compete with maxroam and yackie.

Isn't Yackie currently inactive with the demise of O9?

Yes. Yackie is currently inactive. I mentioned them only because they promised to come back. Of course, nothing is guaranteed.

Wouldn't this compete with what Celtrek is offering?

It just remains to be seen if the US<->EU travelers attracted by this offer will compensate for the EU<->EU customers aggravated by the .29 EUR connection charge. That is if the +1 offer is good compared to other US prepaids to start with. For me for now all UM offers are quite pointless but I don't travel so often and so far.

My objection to celtrek (and Maxroam) is they charge you for calls that are not completed........which is also something we will have to watch out for in the UM offer.

Good point (although I think the set up fee is 0,19€, not 0,29€...

Also, perhaps if there is some competition, AT&T and T Mobile USA might consider lowering their asininely high unreasonable international roaming rates (and of course it bugs me big time when I have to pay this international roaming fee on a T Mobile US call when I'm roaming on T Mobile UK (or any other T Mobile owned carrier)...supposedly a big part of this international roaming fee is to reimburse the roaming partner for using its network...in other words T Mobile USA is reimbursing T Mobile UK....that's akin to me taking money from my left pocket and putting it in my right pocket (of course on the way it goes into somebody else's pocket me to pick up some lots of extra cash) and please don't try to tell me they are separate companies. At the end of the day, its Deutsch Telcom one way or the other.

Yes. they do. They charge you for at least 1 min as soon as you answer the callback. Regardless of the number you called. You can call a totally invalid number that never existed or has been dead for god knows how long. You still get charged.

The roaming charges are partially correct, there is signaling data and potentially voice going to/from overseas even if you call UK-UK with your US mobile while in UK so from the technical standpoint it's not just accounting betweek T-Mobile UK and T-Mobile US. That they could make a profit for a fraction of the price is another discussion.
In any case I don't see THIS making any dent in their bottom line. It might help without your personal bill a bit but a juggernaut like T-Mobile won't care about UM and the like which we have to admit are little more than "apartment companies". And to make things worse UM isn't a good long-term solution for any given place with all the incoming fees/expensive numbers. So you won't be really able to use the UM number as your main number and in effect any UM-based solution would have the added disadvantage of lost convenience.

It's fairly unlikely to be intended mainly as a long-term solution for people in only one given place

It's quite possible to use this without telling others the number.

For some UK and all US contract users (particularly those of the latter who haven't arranged cheap forwarding to existing global SIMs) it would come out of inclusive minutes.

Also, for users anywhere who can achieve cheap (e.g. 0 or 2 cent) forwarding to USA it could be quite interesting, achieving close to the Eurotariff in other countries as well, with the added bonus of a landline rather than mobile number for people at home to call it on. Yes, they could instead set up forwarding to a set of local SIMs, but one is simpler than many

Some more information to this card:

It has two IMSI numbers to be switched.
IMSI #1 is from a US carrier and it works on AT&T and T-Mobile in the US. This IMSI does not work outside the US.
IMSI #2 is the +44 carrier from jersey telecom.
So you have to switch to IMSI #1 when you are in the US.
Both numbers can be reached all the time anyway.

The tariff says in Zone 1 + 2 incoming calls are free with +44, 19ct/min with +1 - 19ct setup fee occur all the time.

Henning is testing this card for some time already now and he said it works stable. his full post in german here: Der United-Mobile Thread - Telefon-Treff


Chris

This could be very appealing for users of Canadian MVNOs like SpeakOut and Petro Canada Mobile. These MVNOs use the Rogers Canada GSM network but they cannot roam in the US. Also the standard phones they sell are unlocked.

So Canadians who want to be able to use their SO/PCM phone in the US could use the new UM+ SIM instead of buying a T-Mobile or AT&T SIM. Even though UM's airtime is more expensive there is no need to buy at least $100 of airtime from T-Mobile in order to keep a US SIM and phone number alive for 365 days. They would also be able to use that UM+ SIM outside of North America providing they have a quadband phone.

This development is certainly appealing for me because I already have a UM+ account and I don't travel to the US often enough to justify buying a separate T-Mobile SIM.

Would be nice if UM allowed us switching to 44/1 while keeping our existing Jersey numbers. However existing UM+ SIMs can definitely not be soft-switched to the 44/1 service, since that requires special SIM cards, that support multiple IMSIs.

US market probably NOT large
 

PERSONALLY, I am luke warm on the idea for the US market.

1. Most US travelers, business and private, already have a POSTPAID service as their main phone (like me and MOST people I know).

2. I doubt they are willing to part with these plans and their carriers.

3. Even Verizon apparently offers RENTED phones for international travel or crackberries with GMS capability.

4. Some few have foreign SIM cards, but not many.

5. The question would be whether or not someone would be willing to ADD a service like this FOR FOREIGN TRAVEL.

6. I already have several gold reward SIMs I can loan out to anyone who visits us. We have not had German visitors in quite some years, however.

Again, PERSONALLY, I am unsure I would be willing to invest another - say $25 - in a new UM dual 44/1 SIM. The 1 portion of the card is basically worthless to me EXCEPT when I or one of my family would be traveling overseas. I would be able to reach the traveling family member or be reached by others in US at a lower cost than dialing the +44 or one of my other SIMs.

Now, if they offered a FREE or lowcost conversion, that would be different.

As I have written elsewhere, I will eventually need to decide whether I recharge or not. At this time I am leaning to refrain from adding any money to my +UM card.

I would ask our German friends -- UM is promising, has promised for some time to come up with a dual SIM for 49 -- would you be willing to ADD another SIM? Would you be willing to take on this one as your main SIM?

Stan

19 cents inbound for the usa is expensive. I have a at&t prepaid which cost me 10 cent incoming. also when receiving calls from antoher at&t cellphone there is no incoming charge.

you can choose your of area number in the usa and most us people like that as calls withoin the same area code are mostly free.

We will have to see what the rates are when they are going to market this but UM has not done any good buy charging for incoming calls.

19 cents a minute for a foreign SIM card roaming in the US is great. Yes, you can beat it with a cheap domestic SIM, but this is a good foreign travel SIM. UM should allow you to have both numbers active at once and charge a surcharge to forward the US number to the +44 when it is out of the country. SMS forwarding would also be great.

I don't think anyone who lives in the US will want this, but want about American ex pats or frequent business travelers to the US. I'm also curious what they will do with Canada. Can they get better rates through the US provider.

Lastly, I'm curious whether the SIM will direct dial in the US.

...I re-read the translation...it says something to the effect subscribers will be available simultaneously at the +1 and +44 number...now let's see...my landline provider, Verizon, is one of the few in the USA that allows remote call forwwarding to international numbers...so if I'm on a trip say to Poland, I can use the call forwarding to the +44 sim card (I would probably use other than UM+ because of the 0,19€ fee (parenthetically I can across e-kit passport on ebay selling sim cards for US$20 with US$10 credit...a bit expensive to call out at $0.49 but free incoming throughout Europe including Belgium with, well as of now, no incoming fee)...but, now here might be an advantage. Normally I forward, while in the US, incoming calls to my mobile (which has a local number)...now about 5 or so years ago, T Mobile USA began disallowing call forwarding to international numbers (as well as raising the price without their international plan which is a recent development)....follow me on this...the question is can I now forward calls to the USA +1 number and have it ring to the +44 number while in Europe??? That would be a bit cheaper than forwarding to a UK number via my call forwarding (currently 27¢ US especially if the euro continues its slide down?).....and of course for those without remote call forwarding on their US landlines, well now it would be available.....interesting.

With 44/1 you are definitely available on both numbers simultaneously no matter where you are. So there's no need for forwarding, as that's a basic feature of the service.
However there's a difference in pricing: When you are being called at the US number, you'll always pay a call setup-fee of € 0.19 + at least € 0.19/min, no matter where you are, while calls to your British number are free in many (especially European) countries (except for the call setup-fee of € 0.19).
So it's still 63% cheaper to get a (free) US DID-number from some VoIP-provider and forward incoming calls through poivy.com for € 0.07/min to your Britsh UM-number, than using UM's US number, for which € 0.19/min are charged when receiving calls.
For those, who are able of setting up such VoIP-forwarding, UM' 44/1 doesn't bring any advantage, except for being able of receiving SMS at a US number.
In my eyes 44/1 is rather interesting for non-Americans, who regularly travel to the US and want exceptional coverage (in the US 44/1 roams on T-Mobile and AT&T) while keeping a US-number for the long term.

Yes, you can forward calls to your 44/1-US-number and the 44/1 SIM will ring wherever you are, but as I mentioned above calls to the US number are billed with € 0.19/min while calls to the UK number are free in many countries. So 44/1 is only cheaper for you if a direct forwarding to the British mobile number is more expensive than € 0.19/min.

To make it visual:

US number (US provider) ===[forwarding A: $ ???/min]===> US number (UM 44/1) ===[forwarding B: € 0,19/min]===> your 44/1 SIM
US number (US provider) ===[forwarding C: $ ???/min]============================================> your 44/1 SIM by UK number

the costs of forwarding A+B must be cheaper than forwading C in order UM 44/1 to make sense for you.

Just one quick note to the last comment.....you will get the "exceptional coverage" only if you have a quad band phone or a made for USA tri band as most of the AT&T system operates on 850 mhz.

Will it roam on other providers' GSM networks such as Alltel?

Otherwise, in states like Montana and North Dakota there will be precious little coverage indeed.

T-Mobile roams on Alltel, which helps immensely in using it there.

I've no idea, whether UM 44/1 SIMs may roam on further networks, but US coverage and those US numbers are realized by a cooperation with an American MVNO.
Basicly the UM 44/1 SIM is two SIM cards in one: a regular UM+ SIM with Jersey identity and an American one from that MVNO. Subscribers will be able to switch between those two SIM identities by SIM toolkit (that's the menu, where you can request callbacks and check your credit with current UM+ SIMs).
So maybe you guys can identify that MVNO, who offers service in Pennsylvania and has roaming agreements with T-Mobile and AT&T. The US roaming capabilities of 44/1 should be the very same like of that MVNO.

I have a Voicetrading account which is pretty cheap to call UK Mobiles (including Jersey Mobiles). I have a number of friends who don't want to mess with all that and I don't want to become the "telephone company." For these folks an easy out of the box solution that just works is great.

United Mobile also works great for the corporate traveller with a conscious, e.g. the one who is a little concerned about gouging his company, but doesn't want to reconcile thirty statements to get reimbursed on his/her phone bills.

Additionally, US prepaids generally have a short shelf life. If this goes for a year between recharges, it would be great.

PS: Is poivy.com a Betamax brand?

Yes it is....

Found it out: The US-identity of 44/1-SIMs comes from a Pennsylvanian MVNO called Immix, so 44/1 should work where Immix works: Immix Wireless ** immix.com ** Coverage

Immix claims to have native coverage in central Pennsylvania, so perhaps it's a misnomer to call it an MVNO.

I see Immo has a roaming agreement with Rogers in Canada; rates, however, are not posted.

There is coverage in North Dakota and Montana, so a roaming agreement with Alltel must exist. This is good news.

You're right, Immix is a real MNO, though a tiny one. After I had learned that Immix is the US partner, I realized that tonight, too. But I doubt 44/1 SIMs will roam in Canada through the Immix-IMSI, as Henning Gajek stated in his article (which I've translated on the first page of this thread), that the American IMSI won't work outside the US.

I e-mailed Immix and asked what their Canadian roaming rate is. Rogers reports back charges to US providers instantly so it is a good bet that if they can handle Alltel's tiny GSM roaming network, they can handle Rogers. In any event, we will know soon enough- particularly if they do a cheap upgrade option on the SIM.

I'm wondering whether they a use a callback scheme on US calls.

How did you find it out???

Dream on. There's a good reason why those of us who have ever had dealings with Rogers refer to them as Robbers.

See also negative-option billing. Robbers were also (the?) first to throttle Internet traffic even though their management denied it for years.

Robbers has a monopoly on GSM in Canada. You won't get any bargain roaming rates from Robbers.

Didn't Rogers, as I understand it, cripple some of the phones they sold so you could not use any mp3 downloads as ring tones? All the better to make you pay for them eh.

Ah, I know Rogers/Robbers all too well. I live 10 miles from the Canadian border. I deal with Rogers a ton -- not as much as the Canadians out there, but I go to Canada for dinner, family events, parties, go to Canadian beaches in the summer, etc. I have multiple relatives in Canada. Even two of my three sister-in-laws are Canadian.

My wife also has several Canadian clients. We have a Rogers contract cell phone which is basically a family plan phone belonging to a Canadian relative. We trade him one TMobile SIM for one Rogers SIM and engage in various strategies to keep our usage from seriously impacting the other's minutes.

Back to the point, this is what I received form Immix:

"Thank*you for contacting Immix Wireless. Unfortunately we do not*know the charge for Canadian*roaming, it is billed to us after usage and varies depending on your location in Canada. It can vary anywhere from $0.32 to $1.65*or possibly more.
If there is anything*else we can assist*you with please contact 1-888-249-8030 or*611 from your cell phone."

I don't think they are going to assist in Canadian prepaid roaming.

They do, but only for a few more months. Telus plans to have 3G GSM in place in the Vancouver area in time for the 2010 Olympics. Also, while it won't make an immediate difference in roaming revenue for Rogers (at least until people start acquiring compatible phones), we're even closer to 3G GSM at 1700 MHz with Quebecor in Quebec and Yak/Wind in all the other provinces.

You are already seeing a few cracks in the armor/armour in the Canadian cell market. FIDO has rolled out a month-to-month contract plan, there are a few unlimited offerings coming on the market, there has been an attempt by the Canadian cellular industry to put out more attractive data packages, etc. It ain't much, but I think it is a start.

Rogers Canadawide MyFavs has definitely been improvement for Vlad and I.