Chart comparing Roaming Rates for 4 intl. SIMS in 190 countries

[andy]

Originally Posted by snidely

. He said that the free ride for the IOM resellers will probably end soon - for the same reason the Iowa "free calling to Europe" operations were shut down.

He didn't tell me the exact reasons and I didn't know anyone else to verify this with.
My guess is that either (1) the central UK govt. subsidizes the IOM operator and/or (2) there is a much higher termination cost for calling an IOM number that the carriers either (a) don't know about or (b) do know but their systems can't distinguish between calls going to diff. UK - +44 - systems.
I do know that some operators can't distinguish between calls going to the mainland U.S. and countries in the Carribean w. +1 numbers for setting rates.

So, for now, this is just a RUMOR. I have seen this mentioned either here or elsewhere in a forum.

...mike

It sounds rather too speculative to me, and the termination and subsidy issues would be on rather different scales if indeed they are the reason.

I understand, perhaps wrongly, that it was when AT&T, not the taxman, found itself with multi-million dollar bills that those Iowa numbers came under scrutiny, though it was presumably federal policy to mandate the subsidies.

Manx is not simply a poky regional operator, but part of a larger firm. I doubt that the person you met has detailed knowledge of any cross-subsidies between the companies and the Manx and UK governments, and whether the regulators have it on the agenda. Ofcom don't seem quick on reducing de-facto subsidy due to the higher termination charges of 3, didn't intervene on 07744 callthough number issues, and given the pig's ear that they have been making of shared-revenue numbering issues for several years, I don't think we'll see fast progress on something more complicated.

I don't think your case 2b is likely. Anyone who can program a dialplan to filter and select carriers to use can distinguish between different phone number prefixes. Some Asterisk pundits do this at home for themselves, but on a global scale all retail call providers will be doing something similar, including a few mistakes we may or may not be aware of. Some carriers can and do have separate rates for the different UK mobile networks.

For another example, some cheap providers have slightly different tariffs for US landlines and mobiles. It is possible to tell the difference, but whether they do so correctly I don't know.

There is a callback company in the UK that still has a rate of 2 pence a minute from UK mobile to UK landline, probably still a promotional price, as their sister companies are in the 4 to 8 pence range. Usually the callback has come back with no caller ID, but I have seen about 5 Nanjing Chinese gateway numbers.

If Finarea could do it on a bulk scale, maybe we can try having a look there too. Is it far-fetched to use China? Well, I recently set up a VoIP account in Brazil, but I have no idea if I will ever go or even phone anyone there.