United Mobile - dead, CallBlue - dead, FreeGlobalSim - dead; just ordered TravelSim

[snidely]

Originally Posted by ls129

For the past 2 years i've had 3 SIM cards that came and went.
Every time they die overnight and take away any credit in the account and the access phone number.

I put my trust now in TravelSim.

If anyone can explain the business model behind these free roaming SIMs i'll be happy to learn something.

It is readily apparent. The roaming is NOT free. The bill for the call shows up on your home or office or customer's bill when they call you. These costs are MUCH higher than making a call to a cell phone with a regular lst world SIM. The costs imposed to call a LIctenstein SIM, were so high that many LD carriers in the U.S. refused to route calls to a Lichtenstein (ergo United Mobile SIM because they had to deal w. outraged customers when they got their bill.
The Estonian SIMS, while imposing high costs upon callers, aren't quite as outrageous as Lichtenstein was. Estonia only double most other countries instead of triple or quadruple.

Bottom line - your friends and clients are paying big bucks so you can get "free" calls.

...mike

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by snidely

It is readily apparent. The roaming is NOT free. The bill for the call shows up on your home or office or customer's bill when they call you. These costs are MUCH higher than making a call to a cell phone with a regular lst world SIM. The costs imposed to call a LIctenstein SIM, were so high that many LD carriers in the U.S. refused to route calls to a Lichtenstein (ergo United Mobile SIM because they had to deal w. outraged customers when they got their bill.
The Estonian SIMS, while imposing high costs upon callers, aren't quite as outrageous as Lichtenstein was. Estonia only double most other countries instead of triple or quadruple.

Bottom line - your friends and clients are paying big bucks so you can get "free" calls.

...mike

But it wasn't always this way.....I remember a trip I took in 2005 to Central Europe...I used call forwarding on my Verizon landline through my ld carrier AT&T to my riing (UM was called that then) +423 number. At the time, AT&T charged 10¢/minute for calls to Liechtenstein with a termination fee of 1¢...also the callback carriers for outgoing were charging 12¢/minute...what a bargain! Others kept telling me of the high termination fees to Liechtenstein but I sat back very content.

It was shortly thereafter the termination fees to Liechtenstein shot through the roof even on AT&T so much so that it forced UM to move its prime business to Jersey (+44) where I was paying the usual termination charge to +44 numbers although the call back services became very expensive and remain so today to +44....so I switched over to O9 for a while...I was paying 16¢/minute well through this past winter on O9 to call back to the USA using either a couple of local sims I had or UM for reception. I, of course as I have said, am the classic case of taking but not giving.....

But to me it has become abundantly clear that a major part of the business model has been lost by Europeans who travel within Europe not thinking it really necessary to use anything but their own networks due to the capping of roaming rates by the eu.

Now, we have the vodafone three month promotion of its passport service with free roaming throughout almost all of Continental Europe plus the added benefits of Australia and New Zealand. Quite a discussion going on in the European section....while the offer is only from Vodafone UK, I can't believe the other vodafone subsidiaries will not be forced to match as well as the other British carriers.

At least for this summer, if travelling within Europe, the vodafone offer seems to be the way to go...and with vodafone UK sim cards available for next to nothing or even for nothing, how can you go wrong even if it's only for this one summer?

[ls129]

Originally Posted by hrgajek

Liechtenstein Prefix +423 663 is a "premium" number prefix, this means, Caller have to pay a higher fee, to reach those numbers. Liechtenstein Telco gave a higher amount to United-Mobile and therefore they could pay the interconnect till China for example. But there must have been a new Interconnect-Tariff regime, UM decided to upset their pricing and to charge one time even per incoming call.

IoM (Isle of Man) and Jersey Calls are billed as "landline" but they are ending in mobile system. These Islands have unbalanced calls. Less Calls are going TO the island, most calls are going from the islands. So an international mobile phone company attracts lots of incoming callers and minutes.

But those models are very hard calculated and if the ugly customers do not make enough outgoing calls and pay for this (and do NOT use free incoming to set up a external Callback like "Enlinea" or others) then the model gets instable.

Thank you for clarifying!

and also thanks to others who explained about the Lichtenstein premium number trick. Betamax charges 0.07EUR/min for calls to the UK Islands.

Regarding the new Vodafone UK 3 months free roaming trial, indeed it seems like a new trend will emerge for European operators.
This is probably sign of recession: less business travelers and those that do, care more about their spending. Resulting profit loss for Vodafone UK probably equates to less than 3 months of advertisement spending and this stunt will likely have better ROI.

[FBlack_111]

Matha531

You said "although the call back services became very expensive and remain so today to +44....". What do you mean very expensive? Callback rates through a +44 SIM seem cheap to me.

[kupe]

Originally Posted by FBlack_111

Matha531
You said "although the call back services became very expensive and remain so today to +44....". What do you mean very expensive? Callback rates through a +44 SIM seem cheap to me.

For me, Callback rates aren't the problem, it's connection reliability. During my last few months using UM, Callback World callbacks to my UM +423 had stopped working completely, and callbacks to my UM +44 worked at most 10% of the time.

Now, using Sim4Travel, I'm having slightly better success with CBW Callbacks, but no better than 50% success. In France for some reason, it's closer to 25% success, regardless of network.

Kupe

[MATHA531]

Let me try to explain my thinking on this...

In the "glory" days of UM (AKA riing), I used both cbw and enlinea for my calls out along with the free calls in. I was paying something like 14¢ (all prices here US) to make a call from wherever back to the USA. The service was fairly reliable too, except in France (which has always seemed to be a problem...do the French telcoms block these calls??)....

In any event, then we had the staggering increase in termination fees to +423 so that using cbw and enlinea became uneconomical. Then I switched to O9 which until this very January I was paying 11¢/minute on enlinea (well it was supposed to be 16¢/minute to an Icelandic mobile but for some reason, they had my number not pegged as a mobile)....it worked as late as this past January. In the interim, I had investigated +44 UM and the listed prices on both enlinea and cbw for calls to the USA on +44 phones was close to 50¢/minute (haven't checked it in a while)...France and Germany were listed at around 27¢/minute (and they worked okay this past January) and Estonia was listed somewhat cheaper but for some reason, I could not get the callbacks on my Air Baltic phone while in France (but I could on Orange FR and the triggering numbers were one digit apart!)...

I will be travelling back to Germany, France and the UK next month....with UM being deceased, well I still have a live French sim with Orange FR...I probably would use it while in France with enlinea (although since the French steal your credit, sob's that they are whenever your initial top up wears off, I generally do try to use it up)...I've been put onto a German provider called sonoma or something like that...I, if I can figure out the German web site (there should be a rule they all have to use English for language illiterates like me)...they seem to charge 0,05€ or something like that to call the USA...failing that I might opt to use the Vodafone UK passport promotion coupled perhaps with a calling card (still pricey at 20p/minute)...for receiving calls and of course in the UK there's no problem....oh for the simple days of UM+423 and low termination fees!

[andy]

I dont understand this persistent reasoning that one or two callback providers rates represent a large chunk of the market, and that their increases say something about termination fees due to the destination network. No, 50 cents to UK is over the top compared to wholesale 5p or so to the mainland networks

[littleyip]

andy, where would you recommend finding callback rates lower than 40cents/min from a UK sim? I am very interested...