What's the real deal with Go SIM?
 

Their web site says there are no annual fees and minutes never expire. They have many countries with free incoming calls and I don't see surcharges or connection fees to make a call. The rates to call back to the U.S. are not bad. Their $48 Travel pack has $40 of airtime. It is an Estonia phone number. So what am I missing? Is there a better deal out there?

International SIM Cards from GOSIM™ - cheap mobile calls from abroad

Expensive number to call !
 

Go-sim use a Estonia +372 number. So do the one-sim-card from the USA and Oneroam. This was a very expensive number to call from my BT line in the uk, it was around 50p / $0.76 per minute.:eek:

BT's ordinary tariffs are expensive for all European mobiles, and landlines in fact, so that's really not relevant

Calls to Estonia numbers are also relatively expensive from the U.S. too. My concern is that GO-SIM seems a bit too good. No connection fee, no annual fee, no losing credits, good rates, etc. I have not seen any other SIM like this. The only issue I have seen is that you cannot recharge over the cell phone. You need the Internet or set up auto-recharge.

With so many SIM's shutting down, I want reliability and a good company to deal with.

Plus it has to be cheaper than the others. :-)

It's difficult to see how any company that targets the small specialist market for globals sims can succeed in the long run (be reliable). The fickle lowest-price-seeking customers (us) will drop them anytime they can find a better deal, and in the meantime exploit any loopholes they can find (e.g. callback to free incoming) to cut their revenue per customer.

My dead GT-sim, 09, 0044, UM FL, and UM JE sims do sort of indicate it's not really a sustainable business model. :-)

If it ever went mass-market it might be possible to make more money (less knowledgeable customers), but with the EU roaming rates deals I don't see that happening.

The estonian SIM i have (from airbalticmobile, was the cheapest to order that time) is very reliable up to today. Also many of our russian customers use them when roaming in the ex. ussr republics or europe. So GoSim might be worth a try if you dont have to pay too much to call to estonia mobile (From germany it is reachable with good quality carriers for around 25ct/min).

Chris

blame ourselves?
 

Yes I think that some of us (I include myself) may only have ourselves to blame when our sim providers fall on hard times. We find a good deal on a roaming sim and then try and beat the system with free callbacks etc. So then there is little hope of the telco creating a sustainable long term business model. With that in mind who can now blame UM when they instituted their modest fee for receiving a call.

I hope UM can solve their problems on +423 and/or +44 or both, I've been with them a long time, since the days of Riiing.

What do you mean by "free call backs"? The GO-SIM has free incoming calls in most of Europe?