Riiing united mobile and Dubai and UAE?
 

Anyone have any experience with how cards, GSM and such work in Dubai? I was hoping to use my Riiing card there in the next few weeks.

What about frequencies too? Will European Freq, 900 and 1800 be sufficient?

Stu's the expert on Dubai. Last time I was there you could only get local prepaids at the ariport and the phone company office downtown. European frequencies are what you need. Can't say about UM but if UM says it'll work, it should work.

I use Etisalat with my IOM SIMs all the time, and it works fine.

I believe Etisalat is 900 only (and WCDMA, but, that's irrelevant on the world SIMs), see here http://www.gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_ae.shtml

Keep in mind, UAE has blocked Skype (and possibly other VoIP services), so, you will not be able to use it there (although you can have Skype forward to your UM card, if you wish, but, do it before you go!)

The UAE actually block many sites, including any sites with any nudity, foul language, or even dating, like jdate, match, etc ... when I tried Islamic dating sites, just to see, the dating ones were blocked, but, the ones that look specifically for a Muslim wife worked!

It's actually kind of nice, as they inform you that it these sites are "inconsistent with the cultural, political religious, and moral values of the UAE"

See here http://www.pbase.com/bengalboy/image/69955145.jpg

You can receive calls just find using Riiing or an IOM SIM in Dubai. Outbound calls are a different story. In Dubai they seem to work, but if you get outside of the Dubai area (e.g. Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, etc.), the official callbacks don't work. I can't explain it. For months they worked fine, and then one day I had problem in Al Ain. In Jumerah, there was no problem.

...but if you can receive calls then you can use callbackworld or enlinea to make calls, right?

Sometimes you can use Callbackworld. I have problems not only with USD triggering, but also intermittently I have problems dialing touch tones at some places, particularly in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. I know it doesn’t make sense, but in Al Ain after having the problems, I forced my phone on to an Omani tower and tried it again and everything worked fine.

On Etisilat and Du, you can designate a “favourite” international number which gives you off peak rates 24/7. I designated my Asterisks box in the US. The phone would answer fine, but I could not extension dial at all.

I also found a route to a UAE mobile at $US0.17 a minute and tried to set up a home brewed callback system on Asterisks. The callback worked, but the tones were not recognized. Call forwarding to the phone, however, worked brilliantly.

As someone else pointed out, VOIP inside the UAE is blocked. Skype still works in the Free Trade Zone, but nowhere else in the country. The block is not perfect and every now and then Skype will register with no rhyme or reason. SIP based VOIP is dead.

Stu, What about VPN and HTTPTunnel?

Look at your Private Mails.

I"ve been taken to the mat about my private IMs. VPNs work in the UAE for VOIP. Pptns don't seem to work in public hotspots. Ipsec works in most places. The average corporate VPN won't help you because they don't port the whole internet over the connection, only their intranet portion. If you have a "tunnel mode" you should be set. Otherwise, you'll need to set up a VPN with one of the many services.

I'm gun shy about talking about this issue in public because the State phone company is clearly surfing the webn and reading this stuff.