Toggle Mobile

[inquisitor]

Here comes some more experience with toggle:

Although local numbers may expire the related local IMSIs seem to remain active forever. So despite you may have lost your local number, your toggle SIM will still use the local IMSI to register on the local network and you will be charged "local rates" even if your local number has expired long time ago. So there is no need to re-activate a local number if you don't need a local number but only seek the lower local rates.

Although the tiny state of Liechtenstein has its own cellular networks (MCC 295) and despite toggle lists quite expensive rates for Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein is being treated as Switzerland by toggle.
On the one hand that means if you have a Swiss IMSI you will get the cheap local rates also in Liechtenstein. On the other hand, however, you cannot roam using the "Roaming" IMSI anymore but you must use the Swiss IMSI which can only register on "swisscom FL" (295-01) (once you have a Swiss IMSI registration through the Roaming IMSI is rejected by all Liechtenstein networks (FL1, Orange FL, swisscom FL)).
This is very likely a side effect of the fact that swisscom offers free roaming between Liechtenstein and Swisscom for their customers from both countries. By the way the Swiss swisscom network, which is Lycamobile Switzerland's physical home network, uses 228-01 as MCC/MNC-tuple, so Liechtenstein and Switzerland have at least different virtual Radio Access Networks (which however probably both use the same core network).

Toggle's text messages are still full of grammatical and typographical errors. The SMS providing written APN settings as well as their website still say "Swiss" instead of "Switzerland" while the earlier SMS clarifying call rates gives the correct country name just to be followed by a double flaw: "Welcome to Switzerland. Its costs £0.28/min....".
By the way, why doesn't toggle send those APN settings as OTA SMS so the phone can take these settings automatically after user approval? It's pretty stupid to send APN settings as plain human-readable SMS when there's a so much more convenient way.

Toggle's STK application does not work at all on a Nokia Asha 210 DualSIM. My phone did neither register automatically on any Austrian network for 30 minutes nor did it on any network available in Liechtenstein (which includes all the Swiss networks beaming from the surrounding mountains) although it was in automatic IMSI selection mode (set in the STK menu) as well as in automatic network selection mode (set in the phone settings).

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Thanks, Inquisitor, for all the details you keep providing! Very interesting!

I have a problem with toggle: For a few days now I do not receive my mTANs from my bank when trying to effect a transaction. That´s text-messages to my German Toggle#.

I rebooted the phone, logged it into the Swiss and German networks, all to no avail.

I do receive all other text messages, both from other mobiles and from internet sites.

The bank (DiBa) sais that they do not have generel problems in this regard.

It´s odd - any idea of what I could do short of changing the number with DiBa?

Thanks for any possible ideas,
Rgds, Christian

[NFH]

New lower European regulatory price caps will be force from 1st July 2014, so what will Toggle's new GBP prices be? The price caps are specified in EUR without VAT in Articles 8(2), 10(2) and 13(2) of Regulation (EU) No 31/2012, and in order to convert the price caps to GBP, the EUR/GBP exchange rate is calculated in accordance with Article 1(7) by taking the average of the exchange rates published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 1st March 2014, 1st April 2014 and 1st May 2014, which is 0.82581. Consequently the price caps will be £0.1569/min for outgoing calls, £0.0495 for outgoing SMS and £0.1652/MB for data. UK VAT of 20% is then added when roaming inside the EU VAT area, but not when roaming in parts of the European Economic Area that are outside the EU VAT area, specifically Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Åland Islands, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, in accordance with Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992. The United Kingdom opted to exempt non-EU VAT area roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 ("the Sixth VAT Directive") so that it could impose UK VAT on services used in the UK but billed outside the UK (e.g. US-based services marketed to UK residents).

In view of the new price caps and the existing VAT rules, please could the Toggle representative confirm the new prices from 1st July 2014?

[peterdoo]

The published Toggle pricelist is not really up to date. Recently I received a call in a EU country where the Toggle pricelist claims it would be charged 19p per call. I was happy to see, it has been charged according to the current EU price cap regulation instead.

In the case of data they charged me 67p/MB in some EU countries few months ago. Way above the EU price cap regulated price.

[bourbonkiller]

Dear fellow Togglemobile users,

I've been travelling extensivley this spring and my togglemobile UK SIM has served me very good in India. Call rates as follows:

Making calls 1.64 £/min
Local calls 2.35 £/min
Receiving calls 0.00 £/min
Send SMS 0.48 £/SMS
Data 1.34 £/MB

Then I went over to the toggmobile NL website to check rates and found to my surprise the following rates:

Making calls 1.61 ct/min
Local calls 2.32 ct/min
Receiving calls 0.00 ct/min
Send SMS 0.14 ct/sms

I am curious if this is just a typing mistake or if the togglemobile NL SIM has realy so much lower call rates than the UK SIM. Has anyone experiences regarding this?

BK

[dg7feq]

that's one of their lovely typos on the website. Of course they mean € and not ct.
Also SMS from all non toggle countries are written with 41ct, from india with 14 - again i suppose a typo

[NFH]

Lots of Toggle's published prices are wrong, particularly as they breach Regulation (EU) No 31/2012.

First you need to understand how GBP prices are calculated for UK-based operators. The price caps are specified in EUR without VAT in Articles 8(2), 10(2) and 13(2) of Regulation (EU) No 31/2012, and in order to convert the price caps to GBP, the EUR/GBP exchange rate is calculated in accordance with Article 1(7) by taking the average of the exchange rates published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 1st March 2014, 1st April 2014 and 1st May 2014, which is 0.82581. Consequently the price caps are £0.1569/min for outgoing calls, £0.0413/min for incoming calls, £0.0495 for outgoing SMS and £0.1652/MB for data. UK VAT of 20% is then added when roaming inside the EU VAT area, but not when roaming in parts of the European Union and wider European Economic Area that are outside the EU VAT area, specifically Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Åland Islands, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, in accordance with Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992. This is because the UK opted to exempt non-EU VAT area roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 ("the Sixth VAT Directive") so that it could charge UK VAT on services used in the UK but billed outside the UK (e.g. US-based services marketed to UK residents).

Have a look at Toggle's prices for roaming in Norway for example. It publishes a price of 7p for sending SMS, which breaches the price cap by 41%.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by NFH

£0.0495 for outgoing SMS...

Have a look at Toggle's prices for roaming in Norway for example. It publishes a price of 7p for sending SMS, which breaches the price cap by 41%.

current rate for norway:

Making calls 0.18£/min
Local calls 0.18£/min
Receiving calls 0.04£/min
Send SMS 0.05£/SMS
Data 0.67£/MB

Seems they changed some parts yesterday.

I never looked at the "outside toggle" rates before as i only use the card in toggle countries...

[peterdoo]

Well, the data rate of £0.67 is really far over the EU cap of £0.1652/MB. Four times higher !

The SMS sent in Toggle countries are listed with 0.07 £/SMS. Over the EU cap as well. Or making calls in the EU member country Croatia: £0.28/min.

On the outgoing calls from Toggle countries which still have good pricing, unfortunatelly more and more often the call is delivered without a caller number to the destination (EU mobile or fixed). This makes me impossible to reach many people that have a line configured in a way that does not accept anonymous calls.

At the end of the day the only advantage that remains for me is the additional number in Toggle countries. As caused by the other problems this has not removed the need for using a second SIM, I am considering returning to the usual double-SIM operation without Toggle.

As ChrisNeedsToKnow mentioned often, Toggle is a good idea, however with too many practical limitations that have not been solved over the time and will probably make it unusable at the end.

[bourbonkiller]

I've just checked for rates when going to Spain later this month and found out, that Toggle has launched (finally) roaming packages for their Toggle countries!

http://www.togglemobile.co.uk/roaming-data/en

1GB for GBP 20
2GB for GBP 30
3GB for GBP 40

This (if it works) is a very good reason to stay with Toggle!