Celtel United Network (a dream for EU...)
 

Celtel Expands Free Roaming Zone to 12 African Nations

Very interesting article here:
Cellular-news.com

The biggest real "roam-free" network in the World is in Africa...

http://www.cellular-news.com/images/..._Nations_1.png

Slightly longer original version of the press release:

http://www.celtel.com/en/news/press-...e59/index.html

Very interesting news. For one time Africa is better than Europe. Congratulations!

ZAIN ? Uganda
 

My niece is going to Uganda at the end of May as a part of her nursing program. My brother bought her a PREPAID ZAIN SIM with a 254 (Kenya) country code.

I believe there are AT LEAST 2 web sites for ZAIN, one for Kenya and one for Uganda.

Welcome to Zain :: Kenya

Welcome to Zain :: Uganda

My brother says he has spoken with the ZAIN customer service reps - not clear which country, however, but I think it was Kenya as the ZAIN Uganda site does not seem to offer any PREPAID SIMs. He was told his daughter (my niece) would be charged ~ $0.12 US for an outgoing SMS to the US -- not bad, if true. It is unclear what tarifs will apply within Uganda other than the fact that calling to the directly US will be cost-prohibitive. He is assuming (notice the ass in there) that inbound calls will be free in Uganda even on the 254 number. Mainly he wants to call her in on his own or in response to her SMS or other signal.

At least this SIM works. He bought one from a seller in Canada and that one seems to have been totally defective as it gave a SIM error in multiple GSM phone he has. That seller was unresponsive and he had no recourse. The ZAIN.KE folks sent him a replacement GRATIS.

However, there no USA roaming for the Kenyan ZAIN SIM, so it does not register on any GSM network here.

Does anyone have any experience in this area - Uganda, etc.? Would appreciate any insight.

Thanks,

Stan

While I do not have experience with Zain in Uganda, I have friends/family that use zain in Nigeria (I usually use MTN). The rates between all of them are quite similar and competitive. Yes, it should cost around that to send sms to the US. MTN/Zain costs about that. See link from Zain below. You are correct about free incoming calls in all countries mentioned above with zain. Actually, calling internationally on the MTN is quite cheap. About $0.33 to the US. So, Zain may be the same. Conversion rate for Nigeria is $1 = N135.

Tariffs