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new roamer seeking advice please!

Hi,
I'm hoping you guys can advise me. I'm leaving for Asia in 1 week from the Uk, to travel for a few months, first in Nepal and India, then not sure.
I have a little computer support job (maybe one or two calls incoming per week from the UK).
What i need is a solution where people in the UK can call a UK number (i.e. not expensive for them) and i can receive the calls in Asia at the lowest cost.
I'm thinking about getting a truphone Sim and possibly switching my current vodafone number to it. I'm worried though that the truphone or other world sims may not have the same network access as my current vodafone.
ANY ADVICE VERY WELCOME.
MANY THANKS,
PeterGene

Get an incoming number from for example local phone and have it forwarded to your local sim card might be an option as well. (Am not sure about the prices for India/Nepal)

Time too short to risk too much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeterGene (Post 34469)

I'm leaving for Asia in 1 week from the Uk, to travel for a few months, first in Nepal and India, then not sure. I have a little computer support job (maybe one or two calls incoming per week from the UK).
What i need is a solution where people in the UK can call a UK number (i.e. not expensive for them) and i can receive the calls in Asia at the lowest cost.
I'm thinking about getting a truphone Sim and possibly switching my current vodafone number to it. I'm worried though that the truphone or other world sims may not have the same network access as my current vodafone.
ANY ADVICE VERY WELCOME.

With only one week to go, I think it would be very risky to try to switch a number to a roaming SIM in only one week and hope it works. Also with only one week to go to get the SIM you will be using is risking not getting it in time.
1. The second message suggest getting a numbering forwarding service. This is a good idea because whatever SIM you forward to will/should work and perhaps your best option will to be getting a local SIM in one of the places you visit.
2. I suggest you shop around in the NEXT 24 hours for an international SIM card with the best price for INDIA [seems to be the most expensive country by far] Find out now what your Vodaphone rates are in the countries you will be visiting in case that will be an option or an only option of the first option you use in a country before you can get a local card and set #1 above to work for it. You will probably want to test the options to make sure they will work also.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking. But I stronly suggest the forwarding service---and you will need to notify your customers of its number sooner rather than later.

Good luck. And tell us how it goes.

[Truphone's India rates are not low, but better than most.]

Peter. Forget about getting a special roaming SIM (like truphone etc.) as the rates for these for countries like India and Nepal are pathetic, and probably not very different from what Vodafone are charging you in normal roaming.

There is only one feasible economic solution:
1. Get yourself a UK DID in an area code of your choice (there are hundreds of suppliers). Make sure it allows your call to be forwarded to a SIP address. (e.g. I have one from Voiptalk that does this). You can either give your customers this number, or have your normal Vodafone number forward to this.
2. Get yourself an account with a Voip provider that has cheap calls to mobiles in india and Nepal. e.g. Voipgain does it at arround a penny a minute
3. When you get to India/Nepal or wherever get yourself a local prepaid SIM. (actually no longer as easy as it once was, but still possible provided you show ID and a local address)
4. Divert calls from your DID provider to the Voipgain SIP address (or one that gives cheap calls to India). You can do this in the settings of managing your incoming number. Also, in the Voipgain control panel, divert all incoming voice calls to the number of your prepaid SIM in India.
5. If you do not have a SIM in India, you can divert your number to a hotel, landline etc, or worst comes to worst, divert it back to your UK vodafone number. With Voipgain this only costs 3c/min, but Vodafone will obviously charge you incoming charges if receiving a call while roaming.

Sorry this is all probably a bit confusing (no time to explain properly), but I hope you get my drift. I have done the above on around 5 trips to India with no problems. I can receive calls made to a UK landline number (or my o2 mobile) in India for under a penny a minute.

Also... don't buy the links spammed by Lola4479.

THANKS FOR ALL THE ADVICE, AND ANY MORE TO COME IS WELCOME!
(Lola4479 - your comments sound a little like you work for the companies you suggest?)

Re. Truphone they advertise (and i have spoke to them) a UK number and £0.18p (about 25 euro cents) per minute for incoming in both nepal and China so i'd love to know if anyone is using it?

Best wishes,
PeterGene

Actually, Truphones rates for India and Nepal at 18p/min don't sound too bad at all. It would be worth checking to see if which networks in these countries their partner network has roaming agreements with and whether that rate is really applicable to all the networks that the card can roam on.

Try to set up account with localphone.com With Direct Dial you dont have to even purchase incoming number, if you know your callers nos. Otherwise you pay little for direct DID. Nepal calls are 15c/minute. India 1.5c/minute, China even less.

Hi PeterGene

If you do decide to try out our services, please let us know how you get on, and feel free to PM us on here. India is one of the countries we are looking at to get even better rates for 2011.

Happy travels!

Hi Truphone. Do you have any info (or a link) on what networks you have roaming agreements with in India. Is your incoming rate applicable across all of the ones that the SIM is able to roam on?

Also, I travel there frequently, but notice that some networks in some places allow some people to roam for voice, but do not allow SMS. Have you been aware of any problems like this with your SIM?