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MATHA531 · 19-07-2006, 03:08

Do not buy from telestial...they are rip off artists...they triple the price of sim cards they sell and besides which you don't get a choice of carrier.

In addition, please note that with French sims, at least with Orange FR (I don't know which one they're pushing) you don't get your number anyway...you have to wait till you get to France to register and at that point you get the number. Not knowing the number in advance is no big deal, you can easily text it or e mail it to friends or make a quick call to tell them the number.

As far as united mobile, united mobile has always had functional voice mail; the previous poster had a problem with something they were doing but voice mail always worked. His problem with it has been fixed now so there is no need to go into what his complaint was.

He does make a good point about calling Liechtenstein numbers; although with a callbackworld account, you get something called a pin2dest for free. This is a US toll free number you can give your friends...the only thing is that it isn't your very own toll free number...when the toll free number answers they have to enter a pin # cbw assigns to you...no big deal...OTOH you can get a US toll free number which is your own for a charge of $1.50/month.....in this case no pin would be needed. In any event, if you are using united mobile, you would pay $0.14 US/minute
timed in 6 second intervals to reach you

French prepaids tend to be expensive...they can work with callbackworld too but the rate is far more than $0.14/minute and callers to it or to an Italian local prepaid would pay in the vicinity of $0.35/minute. Italian sims are pretty cheap for local calls....but united mobile isn't all that expensive for local calls if you use callbackworld....

What everybody is alluding to about the difficulty of united mobile is that it operate on a callback system...you dial a number say in the United States on United Mobile and what happens on most phones is you get a message call not alloweed. You hang up and seconds later you get a call back, you answer it and you will hear your nuimber ringing....united mobile to the United States through its naitive service charges $.49/minute with a $.35 set up fee for each call (note you can buy United Mobile sim cards directly on their web site in one of 3 different currencies, euro, us dollars and British pound sterling....the above are the US charges. Also calls directly on United Mobile are billed to the next highest minute, not rounded to the next highest tenth of a minute like callbackworld.

So that brings us to callbackworld...if you use a callbackworld account to call, what happens is they give you your very own US number...you dial it as above on united mobile...you get a message call not allowed, you hang up and wait for the callback...when this callback comes you will hear a US ringing tone...after 1 or 2 rings you hang up again, no charge by United Mobile as the call has not been completed.

A few seconds later, you get a second callback..you answer it and you will hear a female voice say, "Please enter phone number followed by the number sign key now"...and you do it...you don't press send...the call will go through. As long as you are in a United Mobile no charge zone, all of western, central and a good part of Eastern Europe, Australia, South Africa, China among others, you don't pay to United Mobile as you are receiving.....you pay callbackworld's rates which as noted are to the United States from a United Mobile phone, $0.14/minute raised to the nearest tenth of a minute (6 secons)..a bargain. Some people say the call quality is not all that good which is understandable as to achieve the cheap rates, the calls are probably routed through various discount carriers but that is really no different than using one of those cheap international calling cards which give lots of minuters for very little...calls are not of landline quality but they are good enough for most purposes. You have voice mail and it functions...to access voice mail from Europe you use callbackworld as above and when the female voice answers you dial your Liechtenstein number...callbackworld charges $0.20/minute for these Liechtenstein to Liechtenstein call and since you will be on the Liechtenstein phone, the call will go right into voice mail.

Sometimes for technical reasons your callbackworld callback (the 2nd one) instead of reaching you goes into voice mail..if you suddenly get a message you have calls in voice mail after trying callbackworld, you can ignore them...for the most part as long as the phone is on if you miss a call the phone will indicate a missed call and then you can go into voice mail.

Finally, getting an true world tri band unlocked phone in the USA has become a bit of a problem since T Mobile no longer provides to its customers (and the merchants on ebay) real world tri band phones....again for a variety of reasons (USA non conformity with world standards) the frequencies used in the United Staes on its gsm (the technology you will be using in Europe) are different than the rest of the world (except Canada of course, but then again the Canadian phone system is toally tied in with the US phone system as Canada is the only country in the world without its own country code, something that must bug many Canadians and several Latin American systems and then again Japan uses a technology all its own)..I know some people who have been burned big time by buying a tri band phone in the United States which turned out to be 850/1800/1900 and finding they bought the wrong sim card which has very little 1800 coverage or found that in some countries most of the gsm converage is on 900...so indeed you want a quad band phone and there are some really cheap ones available thruogh web sites.

The only real weakness of United Mobile right now is I have had trouble sending text messages from my T mobile phone to them...I don't know if this is garbage being pulled by T Mobile blocking the text messages (although I can send text message from United Mobile to T Mobile phones)....

Again, you can order a united mobile sim card directly from their web site at a much much better price than the rip off artists at telestial.

Finally, if you read through this forum, there is an exciting start up company called Yackie Mobile...but there have been some problems with distribution of their sim cards and some on this forum have been very upset bu this, understandibly so.

If Yackie mobile is able to get their act together, they may become the best alternative for Americans as you will then be able to use them in the United States as a prepaid account at rates not too much higher than the regular prepaids...but time will tell.

My suggestion is probably united mobile, a quad band gsm unlocked phone but goiong the direction of separate local sims for France and Italy wouldn't be the worst idea either.

	(#10)
MATHA531 (Offline) Senior Member Prepaid Specialist Posts: 869 Join Date: 15 Oct 2004 Country:	19-07-2006, 03:08 Do not buy from telestial...they are rip off artists...they triple the price of sim cards they sell and besides which you don't get a choice of carrier. In addition, please note that with French sims, at least with Orange FR (I don't know which one they're pushing) you don't get your number anyway...you have to wait till you get to France to register and at that point you get the number. Not knowing the number in advance is no big deal, you can easily text it or e mail it to friends or make a quick call to tell them the number. As far as united mobile, united mobile has always had functional voice mail; the previous poster had a problem with something they were doing but voice mail always worked. His problem with it has been fixed now so there is no need to go into what his complaint was. He does make a good point about calling Liechtenstein numbers; although with a callbackworld account, you get something called a pin2dest for free. This is a US toll free number you can give your friends...the only thing is that it isn't your very own toll free number...when the toll free number answers they have to enter a pin # cbw assigns to you...no big deal...OTOH you can get a US toll free number which is your own for a charge of $1.50/month.....in this case no pin would be needed. In any event, if you are using united mobile, you would pay $0.14 US/minute timed in 6 second intervals to reach you French prepaids tend to be expensive...they can work with callbackworld too but the rate is far more than $0.14/minute and callers to it or to an Italian local prepaid would pay in the vicinity of $0.35/minute. Italian sims are pretty cheap for local calls....but united mobile isn't all that expensive for local calls if you use callbackworld.... What everybody is alluding to about the difficulty of united mobile is that it operate on a callback system...you dial a number say in the United States on United Mobile and what happens on most phones is you get a message call not alloweed. You hang up and seconds later you get a call back, you answer it and you will hear your nuimber ringing....united mobile to the United States through its naitive service charges $.49/minute with a $.35 set up fee for each call (note you can buy United Mobile sim cards directly on their web site in one of 3 different currencies, euro, us dollars and British pound sterling....the above are the US charges. Also calls directly on United Mobile are billed to the next highest minute, not rounded to the next highest tenth of a minute like callbackworld. So that brings us to callbackworld...if you use a callbackworld account to call, what happens is they give you your very own US number...you dial it as above on united mobile...you get a message call not allowed, you hang up and wait for the callback...when this callback comes you will hear a US ringing tone...after 1 or 2 rings you hang up again, no charge by United Mobile as the call has not been completed. A few seconds later, you get a second callback..you answer it and you will hear a female voice say, "Please enter phone number followed by the number sign key now"...and you do it...you don't press send...the call will go through. As long as you are in a United Mobile no charge zone, all of western, central and a good part of Eastern Europe, Australia, South Africa, China among others, you don't pay to United Mobile as you are receiving.....you pay callbackworld's rates which as noted are to the United States from a United Mobile phone, $0.14/minute raised to the nearest tenth of a minute (6 secons)..a bargain. Some people say the call quality is not all that good which is understandable as to achieve the cheap rates, the calls are probably routed through various discount carriers but that is really no different than using one of those cheap international calling cards which give lots of minuters for very little...calls are not of landline quality but they are good enough for most purposes. You have voice mail and it functions...to access voice mail from Europe you use callbackworld as above and when the female voice answers you dial your Liechtenstein number...callbackworld charges $0.20/minute for these Liechtenstein to Liechtenstein call and since you will be on the Liechtenstein phone, the call will go right into voice mail. Sometimes for technical reasons your callbackworld callback (the 2nd one) instead of reaching you goes into voice mail..if you suddenly get a message you have calls in voice mail after trying callbackworld, you can ignore them...for the most part as long as the phone is on if you miss a call the phone will indicate a missed call and then you can go into voice mail. Finally, getting an true world tri band unlocked phone in the USA has become a bit of a problem since T Mobile no longer provides to its customers (and the merchants on ebay) real world tri band phones....again for a variety of reasons (USA non conformity with world standards) the frequencies used in the United Staes on its gsm (the technology you will be using in Europe) are different than the rest of the world (except Canada of course, but then again the Canadian phone system is toally tied in with the US phone system as Canada is the only country in the world without its own country code, something that must bug many Canadians and several Latin American systems and then again Japan uses a technology all its own)..I know some people who have been burned big time by buying a tri band phone in the United States which turned out to be 850/1800/1900 and finding they bought the wrong sim card which has very little 1800 coverage or found that in some countries most of the gsm converage is on 900...so indeed you want a quad band phone and there are some really cheap ones available thruogh web sites. The only real weakness of United Mobile right now is I have had trouble sending text messages from my T mobile phone to them...I don't know if this is garbage being pulled by T Mobile blocking the text messages (although I can send text message from United Mobile to T Mobile phones).... Again, you can order a united mobile sim card directly from their web site at a much much better price than the rip off artists at telestial. Finally, if you read through this forum, there is an exciting start up company called Yackie Mobile...but there have been some problems with distribution of their sim cards and some on this forum have been very upset bu this, understandibly so. If Yackie mobile is able to get their act together, they may become the best alternative for Americans as you will then be able to use them in the United States as a prepaid account at rates not too much higher than the regular prepaids...but time will tell. My suggestion is probably united mobile, a quad band gsm unlocked phone but goiong the direction of separate local sims for France and Italy wouldn't be the worst idea either.