UMA cheap set up for overseas travel
 

I am looking for any idea of UMA set up with low monthly fixed fees and low termination cost. Would like to use this set up outside of the country, where is network operator home market. Doing about 2000 minutes of outgoing calls. Traveling mainly in SE Asia, Europe and Southern Africa. Currently on have some set ups working like fring, naked voip with pbx plus mobile skype.

The companies that offer UMA that I know of are TMobile (USA), Cincinnati Bell (USA), Rogers (Canada), and Orange (UK). TMobile USA has an unlimited plan over wifi and have just rolled out an unlimited talk plan to many countries:

T-Mobile to introduce 'International Talk & Text' plan - Phone Arena

Thanks Stu. I guess there is a few more companies, which do offer UMA. Orange France, Orange Spain, Orange Poland and China Unicom.

I know US T-Mobile UMA works well overseas, but the 10c/minute or higher monthly fee ( USD 30 for 1500 minutes or USD 50 for unlimited) is quite high.

You could always get a phone that can take a VoIP client, and use that over 3G or WiFi at your destination.

Well Jim as I wrote in my opening message I do use VOIP on my phone. I see UMA in advantage in sending data over VPN, if I am wrong. So voice quality far better over regular VOIP. Of course I can set up data connection first, than VP and VOIP as last one, but this is not handy for regular user.

Plus, SMS works over UMA too.

Yep I forgot to mention this one too.

I kind of knew about Orange FR. The others are new to me. China Unicom would probably be a problem because it is a pain to set up international calling on Chinese phones.

TMobile has a new international calling plan, but the buy in for their unlimited international calling is something like $55 a month. It includes text messages as well, but excludes calls to mobiles and the higher priced countries. It is not, however, limited to the el cheapo calls. India is included, all of Mexico, etc. It is targeted at first generation Americans with strong ties to another country.

What about an IAX based softphone? IAX goes through firewalls better and runs into less blocking issues.

Well I will ask my friend in Shanghai, if he can find anything about Unicom UMA. But in China there are restrictions on everything. So I doubt. Just wish something like UMA is in HK. But here it doesnt have any justification, coz signal is everywhere. Even in MTR once the move.

Will check IAX.

I am on TM USA. Live in the U.S. so have the unlimited Voice plan which for contract users comes out to something under $45/mo. Have made use of UMA in many countries over the past couple years. Voice quality is as good as regular cellular most of the time. You can call any U.S. number "for free". And of course, receive calls. The few times, I need to call a non-U.S. number (like a number in a country I am visiting at the moment) I use Google Voice, which works seamlessly on most smartphones with a GV app. GV charges 2 cents/min. to most countries landlines.
With many countries now having open wifi spots sprouting up all over (like McDonalds) you can often find places to connect outside your hotel.
Because of UMA I have found I no longer need an intl SIM.

...mike

Personally, I can't really recommend UMA or other WIFI reliant methods for most peoples normal roaming needs. I'm not really sure how Snidely manages with it as a complete replacement for a roaming product.

UMA is only any good if you are going to be in one known place for a lengthy period of time where you are sure of having WIFI signal. Its absolutely useless for when you are doing normal travelling or out and about in a city, and you might receive an incoming call at any point. It could perhaps be made to work for instances say when you are doing a foreign assignment and you only shuttle between a Wifi enabled hotel and a Wifi enabled office. If you are relying on UMA for everything, your carrier will always default back to normal roaming when you don't have WIFI coverage.

Perhaps, in Europe and much of Asia there isn't as much of free WIFI as you guys get in North, Central and South America. Here in Europe, even many expensive hotels ask you to pay a ridiculous daily charge for access to their WIFI. This is quite different to when I have travelled in Central and North America, where even the cheapest motels and many restaurants seemed to offer free WIFI. In Europe and Asia, some restaurants and cafes might have WIFI, and there are several private unlocked networks out on the street, but you can't always depend on this as a roaming product.

So you always need a backup plan as well. Personally, I manage with a combination of calls diverted to a SIP softphone in the few instances when I happen to be in WIFI coverage and which automatically diverts to a decent roaming product or local SIM when I am not. Basically I divert my normal cellphone number to a local DID that I acquired for free through a cheap Voip company. This automatically then forwards to a Betamax SIP account (in my case I am using Voipgain) which means the call will ring my WIFI handset if I happen to be in WIFI coverage and logged onto my SIP provider. If not, the call automatically diverts to whatever preasigned local SIM/roaming SIM/local landline number I want it to go to at the cheap Voipgain outgoing call rate.

In my experience this is a far more robust solution than just depending 100% on UMA which is not really intended to be a normal roaming product anyhow.

By the way, a slightly unrelated further question. Does anyone know of a decent updated list of UMA compatible handsets? I know it isn't every WIFI phone that does it.

In the US, this basically is every T-Mobile USA BlackBerry that has WiFi. Models include the 8120, 8220, 8320, 8520, 8820, 8900, & 9700. There are a few other UMA-compatible handsets like the Samsung Katalyst & a couple low-end Nokias, but almost all of those have been EOL'd for a while. To avoid getting charged for incoming roaming calls you could always hard-divert (forward all calls) incoming calls to another number of your choice, or at least your voice-mail. Then before you place a call, you could (on the BlackBerry models at least) go to Options -> Mobile Network -> connection preference 'WiFi Only' to ensure you will connect to only WiFi.

One problem with UMA is that each handset has to be tweaked for a particular carrier. For example, I have an Orange UK and Rogers Canada SIM which support UMA. I cannot shove either SIM into an unlock TMobile USA UMA handset and get a wifi connection.

You have to buy an enabled handset from a carrier that offers it. Eg. In the U.S., all Blackberrys on TMobile have had UMA capability for the past 3 years - but same models on ATT in the U.S. have not since att doesn't offer UMA service.
Most (all?) new Android phones TM phones have UMA calling ability.

...mike

Above written before reading last 2 posts.

Right. You have to do some hacking to get it to work. Also, some operators, like Rogers in Canada, doesn't sallow UMA abroad (they block it by IP address).

I've seen a Rogers UMA phone work in the US, but that is only one country out of 200 something and for practical reasons I could see why Rogers may not work real hard on blocking US IP address. UMA would be real attractice to Canadian Snow Birds.

Stu -
I know I mentioned this to you in the past - but for others --
When wife and I got to the airport in Dubai 1.5 hrs. early a couple years ago, we both were on our phones making use of the free wifi there to call back to U.S. via UMA Roaming "regularly" would have cost $3+ per min. We ran up at least 100 min. between us. Simply would not have called, or at the least limited the time to 5-10 min if it weren't for UMA.
BTW - I know you left Detroit in economic ruin. It seems you have left Dubai on the way to the same fate, economically. What's your next target?

...mike

Believe it or not, we were seriously thinking about Queensland (but not Rock Hampton). My wife is still working in Dubai fairly regularly. She was there roughly twelve weeks last year. I had taken a few years off and lived there when she did an implementation for their Government.

I have an iPhone with unlimited international data. In addition to my own Asterisks box, I have a service called Line2 from Toktumi. Until their most recent upgrade, it had a great callback feature (which they are hopefully restoring and which I still have since I didn't upgrade). It doesn't use SIP and went through firewalls great, had good VOIP over 3g, and permitted call forwarding on the fly. I'll let people read between the lines where it works. My Bluetooth headset handles inbound calls on two phones.
I also have two great roaming SIMs. SIM #1 is the Classic Maxroam with a US number pinned to it. I have $0.08 a minute inbound in Western Europe, the Bahamas, OZ, Kiwi, SA, and many the standard places (other than the Bahamas). The other is an EKit roaming SIM. Between this combination, I have a great little Swiss Army Knife of telecommunications. We also have a UAE SIM with a US phone number permanently pinned to it with six cents a minute inbound rates.

By the way, I’m now pretty much resigned to paying eKit their $0.19 a minute. I can find cheaper rates to connect to them, but after a few weeks (when the company gets the actual termination rates, the fees rocket upward). Whatever Manx Telecom is charging to terminate these calls, it is obviously far more than the UK mobile provider. Better the devil you know….

I'll answer or initiate my call on Line2 most of the time and transfer the call only if the connection quality goes South on me. If I know I don't have a good connection, I flick one softswitch and I dial on my iPhone and answer the call on one of the previous SIMs just by tapping the button on my Bluetooth. It is a great setup.

I just lost my Rogers SIM but don't miss it. With access to Rogers, Bell, & Telus's 3g networks, I can make pretty good 3g VOIP calls in most places. If I have to transfer the call to eKit, I'm paying $0.19 a minute which is cheap for Canada.

Toktumi’s international rates aren’t great, but 95% of my calls are to the US/Canada and with US numbers tied to my roaming SIMs, it seems like a good setup and is certainly good enough to work temporarily with my SIM de jour until I get to the hotel room and on to my Asterisks box back home.

I have a source for all the Michigan DIDs I need for free and this has made my life easier as well.

If you are a power traveller (like me), and want to use T-Mobile USA UMA all over the world, for no additional costs, you can get unlimited international data add on from Verizon for $69 a month to any phone plan, but, you have to have at least the $29 a month domestic data plan. You can then buy a GSM MiFi, like the MiFi 2372. You stick the Verizon SIM (given for international use) into the Mifi when you're away, and, you use it as a mobile hotspot, wherever you are, and, use UMA from your T-Mobile phone, connecting to the MiFi hotspot via WiFi.. The nice part is, you can cancel and reactivate the Verizon international data plan, pro-rated, before you leave, and, when you return. So, in effect, to be international 80 days a year, would end up costing you about $160, with unlimited 3g data. Since you also need to have the $29 a month domestic data always in place, it would make sense to get a Verizon Android phone, and, use the mobile hotspot feature domestically.

PS - I believe Verizon is the last US carrier to offer unlimited international data

I use my Andriod phone as Wifi router/hotspot Works well.

Are/were you sober when you wrote the above post?, there is NO unlimited international data plan anywhere, the only plan-Blackberry unlimited worldwide that was available, has also been stopped since around Jan. 15.

T-Mobile U.S. has an unlimited BB Email plan that can be used world wide. Cost is $20/mo pro-rated for the time you are overseas. (You turn it on and off.) I think ATT also has an unlimited BB email plan.
Just email - no other data.

...mike

I have heard of some Android users getting on the Verizon Blackberry plan. ATT allowed some non-Blackberry devices on their plan. I have iPhone International which gives me the same rules. I fear that the various providers will use LTE and HSPA+ as a tool to force us off these plans. I would rather have global HSPA than US only 3.5g, but that may not be most people. I would also rather pay US$500 for my next smart phone than taking a subsidy which would force me into a different solution. One of the nice things about being a stubborn fool is that after a couple of years, the carriers forget about you.

You are quite right Stu. I don't buy subsidized phone for quite some time too(about 4 and half years now). In long run, it does pay off well as you are not taken as hostage by your mobile operator. This saved me more than enough and I can use gadgets I like, not only ones which are available by given operator.

Yes, I was sober. I actually have the AT&T unlimited Blackberry international data plan, that ceased in June 1 of last year. I have never used it in a Blackberry, and, have enjoyed unlimited data everywhere for the past 4 years (Japan, Hong Kong, all of Europe, Australia) by simply using the wap.Cingular APN.

I walked into a Verizon store 2 weeks ago (in Los Angeles), and, they again confirmed unlimited international data (on Blackberries, and also possibly any phone) is an additional $69 a month. But, wiht the knowledge of the APN, you can use it on a mifi, or other router type device. Also I believe Sprint has an unlimited plan. Yes, I believe they will cease as well, but, theyre good to get while the bettongs good.