Callkeyone Card - "0044"

ticex · 11-02-2006, 00:00

Greetings,

Well, I was intrigued by the "Global" card mentioned the other day on offer from a company in the UK called "0044". While the price is a little on the high side for the SIM (?34.99 - possibly due to a mark up by 0044) the service is certainly interesting as the rates for calls / sms are competitive and incoming calls are free in all the places I frequently travel in Europe. The card I received is actually from a company called CallKeyOne who are based in the Isle of man (www.callkey.com). The support seems to be good as they replied to a question I sent by email at 20:30 on a Friday within 20 minutes!

I've been using Riing (UM) for over a year and it seems to perform perfectly well with only the occasional glitch but the one disadvantage for me personally was the cost involved in people calling me. To keep things simple for clients and friends I gave them a UK based "personal" number from a company called Flextel which allows free forwarding to mobile phones pretty much anywhere in Europe. The downside of this is the cost for people to call me...GBP 0.35 / min 24hrs a day! Even if I handed out the Riing number most operators charge quite a bit to call the Liechtenstein number.

To combat the large cost of people calling me I've started diverting calls from my landline to my mobile when travelling which is ideal as I simply give my office number to everybody. However, the cost when using this with Riing was just too high to be economic. I currently use a UK based VOIP service called Voipfone and they charge GBP 0.27 /min to divert to Riing whereas diverting to the Isle of Man number issued by CallKey only costs me GBP 0.08 / min. I can even couple this with a UK freephone number for an additional GBP 0.04 / min and have anybody call me for free while I'm pretty much anywhere in Europe and it will cost me less than half the cost of receiving a regular roaming call with my UK Orange phone! Voipfone is particularly good as they have a system called "virtual PBX" that allows me to have several extensions and setup individual diverts on each one. This means I can have all calls to my geographical number ring my SIP phone at home, the office and also ring my Callkey mobile at the same time. If I'm at home or in the office I pickup the SIP phone and pay nothing but if I'm over in Belgium, France or Germany even I pickup the mobile & pay a few pence a minute.

The other thing I have setup might be of interest to people from the USA is a Washington number that forwards for free to my Voipfone extension via SIP - perfect audio quality and once again clients and friends in the USA can contact me wherever I am for little or no cost to them and I pay very little to receive the call. I haven't checked into it in much but I'm sure there will be ways to get geographical numbers in other European countries that forward via SIP to my extension. The main advantage of all this is it's all prepaid and can be setup within a matter of minutes by anybody. You don't even need to use a SIP phone to have the mobile forwarding bit setup.

So far I've found the bad points about the Callkey card are....

There is NO CALLER ID on incoming or outgoing calls - all show as Private Number. I've emailed support and they said they do not offer this service and have no plans to introduce it. While it's only a small problem it stops me using the Voipfone callback service in a simple way which would have given me very cheap calls and I miss seeing the numbers of missed calls. I can use the callback but it's a little complex...I have to go to a special webpage on my PDA, login, type in the Callkey number in one box, the number I want to call in the other and I receive a call. Complex - but at least I can get it to work.

The only other bad point I can see for the moment is how the phone rings when people call. The caller hears the ringing tone (UK style) a few seconds before the mobile actually rings. Initially I thought this meant the caller was charged even while the call is "ringing" but after testing it's not the case - charging starts only when the call is answered on the mobile. The problem is impatient people sometimes only allow a few rings before hanging up so if you're not quick in answering the phone then that will be a missed call with no caller ID.

I'd be interested if anybody else has used this card and to share experiences with regard to it's reliability in different countries etc.. I'll be conducting some more "real world" tests myself over the next few weeks.

:meh:
Michael

	(#1)
ticex (Offline) Member Advanced Member Posts: 67 Join Date: 05 Jan 2006 Location: Edinburgh & Brussels Country:	11-02-2006, 00:00 Greetings, Well, I was intrigued by the "Global" card mentioned the other day on offer from a company in the UK called "0044". While the price is a little on the high side for the SIM (?34.99 - possibly due to a mark up by 0044) the service is certainly interesting as the rates for calls / sms are competitive and incoming calls are free in all the places I frequently travel in Europe. The card I received is actually from a company called CallKeyOne who are based in the Isle of man (www.callkey.com). The support seems to be good as they replied to a question I sent by email at 20:30 on a Friday within 20 minutes! I've been using Riing (UM) for over a year and it seems to perform perfectly well with only the occasional glitch but the one disadvantage for me personally was the cost involved in people calling me. To keep things simple for clients and friends I gave them a UK based "personal" number from a company called Flextel which allows free forwarding to mobile phones pretty much anywhere in Europe. The downside of this is the cost for people to call me...GBP 0.35 / min 24hrs a day! Even if I handed out the Riing number most operators charge quite a bit to call the Liechtenstein number. To combat the large cost of people calling me I've started diverting calls from my landline to my mobile when travelling which is ideal as I simply give my office number to everybody. However, the cost when using this with Riing was just too high to be economic. I currently use a UK based VOIP service called Voipfone and they charge GBP 0.27 /min to divert to Riing whereas diverting to the Isle of Man number issued by CallKey only costs me GBP 0.08 / min. I can even couple this with a UK freephone number for an additional GBP 0.04 / min and have anybody call me for free while I'm pretty much anywhere in Europe and it will cost me less than half the cost of receiving a regular roaming call with my UK Orange phone! Voipfone is particularly good as they have a system called "virtual PBX" that allows me to have several extensions and setup individual diverts on each one. This means I can have all calls to my geographical number ring my SIP phone at home, the office and also ring my Callkey mobile at the same time. If I'm at home or in the office I pickup the SIP phone and pay nothing but if I'm over in Belgium, France or Germany even I pickup the mobile & pay a few pence a minute. The other thing I have setup might be of interest to people from the USA is a Washington number that forwards for free to my Voipfone extension via SIP - perfect audio quality and once again clients and friends in the USA can contact me wherever I am for little or no cost to them and I pay very little to receive the call. I haven't checked into it in much but I'm sure there will be ways to get geographical numbers in other European countries that forward via SIP to my extension. The main advantage of all this is it's all prepaid and can be setup within a matter of minutes by anybody. You don't even need to use a SIP phone to have the mobile forwarding bit setup. So far I've found the bad points about the Callkey card are.... There is NO CALLER ID on incoming or outgoing calls - all show as Private Number. I've emailed support and they said they do not offer this service and have no plans to introduce it. While it's only a small problem it stops me using the Voipfone callback service in a simple way which would have given me very cheap calls and I miss seeing the numbers of missed calls. I can use the callback but it's a little complex...I have to go to a special webpage on my PDA, login, type in the Callkey number in one box, the number I want to call in the other and I receive a call. Complex - but at least I can get it to work. The only other bad point I can see for the moment is how the phone rings when people call. The caller hears the ringing tone (UK style) a few seconds before the mobile actually rings. Initially I thought this meant the caller was charged even while the call is "ringing" but after testing it's not the case - charging starts only when the call is answered on the mobile. The problem is impatient people sometimes only allow a few rings before hanging up so if you're not quick in answering the phone then that will be a missed call with no caller ID. I'd be interested if anybody else has used this card and to share experiences with regard to it's reliability in different countries etc.. I'll be conducting some more "real world" tests myself over the next few weeks. :meh: Michael