New to forum. Q on UK/US SIM cards
 

I stumbled on this forum while trying to find out why my United mobile SIM cards suddenly stopped working prior to a trip this month. :chair:

I travel to western Europe quite frequently, with occasional visits also to Abu Dhabi (UAE). UM was working fine, but I now need to purchase some new SIMs (I use 2 when traveling with others or family; great to find each other when separated).

The new dual UK-US cards are especially appealing, since they'll make incoming calls cheap (essentially zero) to my US friends and colleagues. I am looking for reasonable calling rates from abroad back to the US and reasonable costs for in-country calls. Also important are ease in recharging and a long inactivity period (since most of my travel is in summer). Texts are not too important.

The options appear to be (in no special order):

ekit
WorldSIM
GeoSIM
Camel

I am a bit confused, because not all of these dual SIMs seem to be available at present. Also, the dual SIM seems less interesting if I have to pay more than $0.17/min for an incoming call to the US number (this is the rate my family would pay to call me at a European number from Verizon in the US).

Any advice, comments, or experience would be appreciated. Thanks! :)

Welcome

ekit is on the market at the moment. The others you list, plus easyroam and some more, are resellers of the same underlying product, so will presumably all have them arrive in stock at the same time; this looks fairly soon now but not quite for example this week.

Though one ID is active at a time, I think I understand that both numbers would be accept calls, so people could call either the US one, or the +44 UK/IoM one using other providers if you so choose. Or you could arrange a US landline DID forwarded to the UK number, in which case perhaps you don't necessarily need a dual ID - unless perhaps you also want to receive calls from here while you're in the USA.

I have the New EKIT Dual phone number Passport SIM. I also have Verizon wireless. You are correct that if you pay an extra $3.99 a month to Verizon, you can call a cell phone in most countries for 17 cents. With the EKIT SIM calls to the U.S. number costs me 19 cents to a receive a call. In your case, it may cost family 2 cents per minute. But with the EKIT SIM, anyone from any phone can call you on the U.S. number and it will cost 19 cents.

When friends call me on the U.S. number, the call goes straight through like a regular call. No callback issues. And while I am in most countries in Europe, if other associates call me on the UK number, my incoming calls are free.

Lastly, I like EKIT's Service life. Basically, you must make one charged service, (like a call or text message) every 9 months. And you must do one recharge at least every 15 months. You can also recharge through their web site or over the cell phone. This has been a real convenience for me.

Thank you very much for your input. This is exactly the information I wanted. EKIT looks like it may be the winner. Any others out there with experience or knowledge of the other SIMs?

I am intrigued by the DID forwarding but am a bit clueless on how to do it and what the costs would be. Where could I find the equivalent of "DID for Dummies"?

Various VoIP providers would set you up with an account, the number itself free to maybe $3 a month, then whatever their tariff per minute.

Or there are a couple of firms such as Freedigits (Iowa) and IPKall (Washington state) where you can get a free number and set it up to your own choice of provider. The various Betamax VoIP brands have fairly cheap calls to UK mobiles, 7 (Justvoip) to 18 eurocents per minute.

Another huge plus for eKit is their customer service. Of all the international providers I had to deal with they're #1 when it comes to customer service.

I agree with VladS on EKIT's customer service. Last year I bought a new unlocked Z6C World phone from Verizon. I got to Ireland and could not make a call. Even with their *126* prefix dialing.

So I called their customer service from a land line. They were very patient in trying to find a work around. Finally they had me send a text message of the phone number I wanted to call to 1234. Basically I used a text message to trigger a call back. Worked great and I was on my way making calls all over Europe. Their 24/7 customer service is outstanding.

I was going to buy the ekit for all the good reasons explained above when just few days ago I noticed on their web they have restricted a lot the number of countries with free incoming calls. Now only mainly EU and US have free incoming calls. UAE is not free anymore and so is Egypt Seychelles Brazil and many others. By comparison Easyroam and Worldsim will offer all those countries with free incoming for their new dual IMSI. And also offer almost free call forwarding while ekit charges for it. I will wait for their offers.

When I first started looking at International SIM cards I too focused on how many countries had free incoming calls. Then I realized I probably would never get to many of the countries that were not free. I only know one person who has ever been to the Seychelles. And even if I go to Egypt, (I am in September) or the UAE or Brazil it's still only 9 cents a minute from EKIT for an incoming call. That's not enough for me to worry about. I prefer to stay with a company that will be around for a while and has good customer service.