Piranha Mobile Sim Card

[Stu]

You should always carry a backup SIM. I've experience and seen horror stories with plenty of people using gold plated contract SIMs from first tier carriers.

[gkeeper]

Besides Piranha who would you recommend as a second sim provider in the US as backup

[kctopitz]

Originally Posted by gkeeper

Besides Piranha who would you recommend as a second sim provider in the US as backup

T-Mobile has been offering free prepaid SIM cards rather regularly through their website (bottom of the page) - though not at present. If you have some time you could keep an eye on that and order one, though obviously you'd have to have it shipped to a US address.

I was also looking at Truphone, which is another prepaid international SIM that uses T-Mobile's US network. Their SMS and data rates in the US are actually better than Piranha's: $.10 per SMS sent (free incoming), $.15 per MB data (billed every 100kb), calls being $.15 per minute incoming and outgoing. I haven't actually used their service much within the US but I haven't had any problems using their service outside the US.

The other thing you could look into is a SIM that runs on AT&T's network. Overall AT&T's coverage is better than T-Mobile's if you're going to be in more rural areas. Expect rates to be more expensive, though.

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by gkeeper

Besides Piranha who would you recommend as a second sim provider in the US as backup

The easy answer is: "The one that works!'
Of course you do not find out which is
the one that does not
work until it is too late.

Since you are in the UK, I would suggest Tru or ekit. Both do the AT&T and T-Mobile networks. ekit actually does almost all GSM networks in the USA. If you happen to be travelling to some of the weird GSM places in the US, ekit might be better. I believe Wisconsin is one of those weird GSM places. {'lakes in Wisconsin definitely sound weird.} [As is some of the empty places in the West {Wyoming, Montana} and Maine]
Understand ekit's rates can be more--there is a connection fee that means shorter calls are more expensive, but longer ones would be cheaper. If you are using data, than Tru probably is the better choice.

Pertaining to the thread mentioned below. If you could get both Tru and Ekit along with already having Piranha, it would be braces and a belt and a rope.
The 'research' you mention is probably not "GSM coverage" in Wisconsin, but now it can be!

The thread in question is linked below:

Originally Posted by Stu

You should always carry a backup SIM. I've experience and seen horror stories with plenty of people using gold plated contract SIMs from first tier carriers.

Originally Posted by davidtheprof

Carry a backup sim - there was a thread on this!

http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/inte...html#post41610

[snidely]

Just got back from 3 weeks in China. Piranha took a couple hours to register and worked fine for incoming. I was using the SIM in a dumb phone. I stupidly contacted CS when I couldn't make outgoing calls. Stupidly - on my part - because all I had to do is do a battery pull reboot - which I should have done before calling them. (I forgot that even dumb phones need re-booting to get them going at times.) Outgoing then worked quite well - just a few seconds to get the call back connection.
I didn't need to use voice , much, because there is a 15 hour time diff. and that I could make use of T-Mobile's (U.S.) "automatic" wifi calling feature from my 3 y.o. BBerry from most hotels. Calls back to U.S. are free and almost as good as being on a cell tower. (T-M's Androids also have wifi calling builtin, but I didn't find using wife's Android as seamless in making calls via wifi. ) With a Blackberry I could do unlimited email for 67¢/day while there (or anywhere in the world where BB servers work).

I will tell my solution for data in China in a separate post.

Bottom line - Piranha works fine in China. The couple of test calls/SMS here in the U.S. worked fine as well. Did not use SMS on Piranha in China.

[davidtheprof]

that's a pain, thought it was just truphone

[gkeeper]

Just to let you know, I have an Orange contract in UK (my Daughter O2) and the Piranha 07481 number was within both billing bundles as of last month. I will check again and update.

[socrates]

Thanks,
It would be good if other people could report back what other networks are doing. On 3 I got a recorded message before the call was connected saying I would get charged for it. I'll ask a family member to call me from an O2 mobile and see.

PS do other people's piranha UK numbers begin with 07418 or 07481? Mine is 07418. I wonder if that's the difference?...

[Bossman]

It's probably been mentioned already. However, I have VoipCheap, and they charge a higher rate 0.12 euro to the Piranha uk number. Other Uk proper numbers are 0.08 euro.

[VladS]

Even though Ofcom regulates mobile termination rates, smaller UK mobile carriers are still quite pricey to terminate to even at the wholesale level.

A way around the higher termination rates is to port in a number from one of the big three (or four if you count H3G) carriers. This however only works for international or UK landline originated calls.

This being said, Piranha is capable of porting in UK mobile numbers I can't however say for sure if they choose to do it or not.