gt-sim, 862,000 customers??
 

Judging from GT-sim's web site,

http://www.gt-sim.de

they say their sim card "one world, one sim" has been sold more
than 862,000 times... Can this really be true?

And they still have 07624 numbers, but never the ones with the next digit 0 3 4 or 8?

Or are they the people responsible for 07624 8... text contact numbers all over the mainland UK, including the BBC, police, local government and voluntary bodies? I don't think so, as some of those look 4 or 5 years old.

Some funny maths going on somewhere

Callkey (provider of numbers to gt-sim) only have access to 07624 1 so far I think - most of the rest are Manx Telecom. 07624 3 and 4 are Manx Telecom mobiles, and 6,7,8 (possibly also 5) can't be allocated in 07624 because they're used for short dialling to local landlines.

In other words, a local number of 661 661 can be just dialled like that from a manx mobile, no need to add the landline 01624 code, so 07624 6.. isn't possible. All local landline and mobile numbers are just 6 digits.

This may all get shaken up with the arrival of the two new companies (plus 07924 as well, which is unknown on the island, just used for international sims).

However...

First i'd heard of those, so I had to go look them up. Yes, numbers like 07624 800 101 are strange, don't know if it can be dialled from within the IOM (I'm not there at present). Locally it would look like 800 101 - which probably isn't allocated to avoid confusion with 0800. So they seem to be filling in the gaps in the local number range.

Just noticed the BBC one is even stranger: "Send your text messages to 07624 800 100 (00 44 7725 800 100 outside the UK)." - now why wouldn't 00 44 7624 800 100 work? Weird setup.

To get back to the topic, the "sold over 862,000 times" probably includes all the numbers pre-allocated to wholesalers, resellers and agents. And probably includes 07924 ranges.

And Truphone uses 07624 0... which wouldn't fit in a local dialplan.

Yes, yesterday was the first I'd really noticed those ...8 numbers, except that the free (to UK) text service cbfsms also sends from one, which I tried a bit the other day (too busy).

It's pretty likely that it's only 07624 1... and 07924 numbers then, in which case that's 1.1 million for all of them, and with other companies using them, and 07924 only starting from a few months ago, my guess is a factor of 10 misprint (if we see another prefix pretty soon I'll retract this)

Hello,

From some e-mails, I got from Global Termination:

Translation:

"+447624 and +447625 are our own numbers. We are using 3 English networks, between others MANX. Calls are not terminated by these 3 networks, but by us."

Unfortunately, I don't find the e-mail, where he mentioned which UK networks he refers to. I darkly remember, that it was o2, Orange (and Manx).

But I never saw GT-SIM with other prefixes than +447624.

Furthermore, Global Termination wrote:

Translation:

"Between January and February 2006, we will make an independent agreement with WC in the USA, which allows us to provide additional IP-traffic. We will then offer GPRS in countries, where we don't have a roaming agreement.

The amount of roaming countries should "increase by leaps and bounds" (increase dramatically) in spring 2006, as I said, we use 3 English networks, not one English network."


My comment: I did not realize this "increase of roaming countries".

Furthermore, I remember that they told me, that by February 2006, they wanted to install an "SS7-patch" in their switch, to make CLIP working. This did not happen until now...

Kind regards,
Klaus Wegener

They said the same sort of thing to me around that time. Like you say, there has been no visible change in coverage or roaming partners. GPRS still only works with Manx Telecom settings, so doesn't work in some countries where MT don't have GPRS roaming, such as Mexico.