Buying a German SIM card from Canada

[Kritiker]

Originally Posted by dg7feq

I have eplus based SIM cards for private use for several years and i have never experienced any dropped calls. The voice quality is very good.
For data o2 might be the better solution, but as my phone only supports GPRS there is no difference for me either..

dg7feq, which E-Plus cards do you use, have you used, and can you speak to the roaming call-back problems and unreliability that inquisitor mentions?

Originally Posted by inquisitor

@dg7feq
I don't know where you or your company have been using the eplus network, but three of my friends recently switched operators because they had continuing enormous problems with ... voice calls with eplus. Two of them live in Stuttgart and one in Hamburg - they reported not being able ... to receive or place calls while their phones were registered on the 3G-network almost every day during the rush hours.
When I was an eplus customer from 2006-2008 the 3G network in my home town was so congested, that with a probability of 80% incoming phone calls would not reach me, although I had very good signal strength.
Problems may lessen if you switch your phone in 2G-only mode, but all in all their network still is a pain.

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Solomo surely have cheap roaming rates especially for outgoing calls through their callback service. However their callback service is unreliable and some phones (e.g. some Samsung phones) even don't support it at all, since it is a tweaked STK/USSD-solution which seems not to be complying fully with standards.
Further there are dozens of reports on the solomo customer forum of solomo SIMs not even registering on foreign networks.
You should know that solomo is based on a MVNO called vistream and vistream is a real MVNO running some essential core network infrastructure by their own while they basicly only use the cell towers of eplus. However vistream have a lot of problems with their infrastructure - e.g. a lot of users experience no calls and SMS coming in while there's an active data session.
This combination of the messy, overloaded eplus network plus the buggy vistream infrastructure results in an inferior product, which I just cannot recommend. You may end up spending way more money if solomo once again does not work.

Perhaps some E-Plus provider (although it doesn't seem likely, does it?) other than solomo is the answer? Or, inquisitor, are they all afflicted?

I'll reread everything again to see what else I missed. Every time I reread this, and inquisitor's sticky, thread I seem to find something else that I missed. Thanks to all.

[kuba.g]

I don't think that E-Plus grants some kind of priority in traffic to one of their operators.
If they would, they would probably do it for their own customers (E-Plus prepaid card), but E-Plus doesn't provide a prepaid service of their own any more so it's all highly unlikely.

[Kritiker]

Originally Posted by kuba.g

I don't think that E-Plus grants some kind of priority in traffic to one of their operators.
If they would, they would probably do it for their own customers (E-Plus prepaid card), but E-Plus doesn't provide a prepaid service of their own any more so it's all highly unlikely.

I was actually wondering about

Originally Posted by inquisitor

... You should know that solomo is based on a MVNO called vistream and vistream is a real MVNO running some essential core network infrastructure by their own while they basicly only use the cell towers of eplus. However vistream have a lot of problems with their infrastructure - e.g. a lot of users experience no calls and SMS coming in while there's an active data session.
This combination of the messy, overloaded eplus network plus the buggy vistream infrastructure results in an inferior product, which I just cannot recommend. You may end up spending way more money if solomo once again does not work.

and whether other discount carriers using the E-Plus network do it differently. For example, Ortel and Blau, other E-plus discount operators, are not listed as a vistream partners at vistream's web site. In the prepaidgsm.net DB also they are listed as non-vistream MVNOs.

Aside: Is the Rufaufbautaste [literally build-the-call key] just the button we push to start a call, to answer a call and to go off-hook? Sorry to ask such a basic question.