United Mobile--coming back?

[hrgajek]

Matha531,

Originally Posted by MATHA531

.....in the past (pre Eurotariffs) a large segment of clientelle would come from Europe as Europeans cross international frontiers a great deal more than say Americans and the roaming rates when say a Brit went on a short holiday to Spain were large, weren't they.

Your contribution brings it up to the point.

With the advent of very reasonable (and getting more reasonable each year) roaming European rates, the need for the international cards would dramatically decrease.

Absolutely exact.

...an American who might visit three or four European countries on a trip was one number, no need to acquire three or four local sims (although pre riiing, that's the way I used to do it and still have the French, German and Dutch sims to prove it).....

I can imagine this. My career started with "Montel" (VIAG Europlatform) which was a Liechtenstein based SIM with +423-7 Prefix at "normal" mobile rates which had incoming free in VIAG and affiliated networks in .de, .ch, .li and .at
Outgoing tariff was allways the same. Montel was officially closed, the customers-contracts were regularly canceled, as the buyer did not understand the business modell

Then I received a Riiing Card and used it occasionally. Travelling to the US the SIM was not useful for me, due to tremendous incoming fees, there my german T-Mobile (contract) or Simyo (Prepaid) were much more lower in the price for incoming calls.

Riiing converted to UM and seemed to be ok, but in the search for new marketing ideas they loosed base contact. Some Dealers who want to buy and to sell theses SIM-cards asked me for support, they suffered in poor service. UM changed their tariffs, their communication was not quite good, the rest of the story is known.

Given my pattern of travel (mostly Europe from North America), .... I relied on a new vodafone uk sim card because of their roaming free summer rates....

Seems to be a good deal, as Vodafone is one of the biggest mobile phone companies world wide and will sustain for a while. Vodafone UK speaks native english and you can reload it by any Vodafone voucher from the visited country - no matter, if Germany, UK, Netherlands, etc. even Vodafone Egypt should work.

Queen of roaming agreements be Swisscom NATEL, but you have to go there to buy it personally (the want to see yourself and your ID-Card/Passport before you get one) in the local Swisscom-Store, no viable solution for most of us here

the dual US/UK ekit card looks very viable).

I had/have one dual-SIM from UM but I never could check out the US part in the US