Is Maxroam working?

[Bossman]

I just knew I was charged for something, but not sure why. It may well be for the direct dial calls that never went through.

Personally, I do not see all of them (Maxroam, UM, Yackie, Celtrek, etc.) surviving. Especially considering the now lower roaming rates in trhe EU. So, their major target market is probably going to be the US. UM has been around for a long and has pretty much always worked. Never had a problem with my +423663 number except for the high cost of reaching or forwarding to it. The UM+ number is quite stable now. Maxroam has been okay too except for the last month or so. Yackie is another story.

If the US carriers can just lower their roaming rates by 50%, I would not even bother with roaming sims. AT&T already offers data packages with okay prices in most countries I am likely to visit.

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by Bossman

I just knew I was charged for something, but not sure why. It may well be for the direct dial calls that never went through.

Personally, I do not see all of them (Maxroam, UM, Yackie, Celtrek, etc.) surviving. Especially considering the now lower roaming rates in trhe EU. So, their major target market is probably going to be the US. UM has been around for a long and has pretty much always worked. Never had a problem with my +423663 number except for the high cost of reaching or forwarding to it. The UM+ number is quite stable now. Maxroam has been okay too except for the last month or so. Yackie is another story.

If the US carriers can just lower their roaming rates by 50%, I would not even bother with roaming sims. AT&T already offers data packages with okay prices in most countries I am likely to visit.

I agree with much of the above.....the only addition I might add is that significant to the whole discussion is cheap outgoing as well as free incioming at least for me. I know, I know, this is not what the free incoming is intended for. It is sort of like the stores that offer low prices on some item to get you into the store to sell you something else. The free incoming entices you to use the somewhat higher (although better than roaming rates) outgoing....understood. And I was a cheater, admitedly so. When I used UM+ and termination fees were low, not only did I get the benefit of the free incoming, since termination fees were low, I used enlinea and callbackworld for outgoing and saved a mint. Interestingly enough, on all of the Isle of Man and Jersey +44, both CBW and enlinea have very high rates, very high indeed. The cheapest rate I used last summer was on O9 where I was getting 11¢/minute calls back to the USA (it should have been 16¢ but for some reason, they had my number at least programmed at 11¢)...should I have kicked a gift horse in the mouth? Not me; a bargain is a bargain.

Now with the demise of O9, what do I have. Well I travelled to Paris and London in January. I have my Estonian Air Baltic card. Could only complete 1 call through enlinea and that was 27¢/minute while in France which was the cheapest I could deal with. But enlinea only charged 27¢ through my Orange FR sim card and it worked fine (I've always felt the French carriers do something to block enlinea and cbw as I've constantly had trouble with them in France). I didn't bother in the UK as rates to the USA are dirt dirt cheap on T Mobile (through ycw), Talk Mobile (they were running a special of 2p/minute to the USA in January) and Orange Camel.

Next trip is June to London (foresee no problem), Germany (have vodafone de, know it's not the cheapest but since I can't speak German, I don't think I shoud spring for an MVNO German sim, probably the wrong decision)...vodafone DE still works with enlinea or I can fall back on UM+ (especially since the euro has dropped my UM+ rate, denominated in euro, has dropped considerably, even with the nuisance set up fee. Or it might pay, to use one of the UK sims on the eu tariffs as 19p to receive, at the rate sterling is dropping against the USD, might soonbe less than a quarter of a dollar, it's just above now.

Of course, on the horizon, are trips to Japan and China in 2011. Wonder what will be doing then......