Toggle Mobile

[petkow]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

Has anyone used or tested Toggle in the USA?
How has it been. What network[s] does it use?

I used them quite a bit on my last trip accross the pond (January 2014). Worked very well both for incoming and outgoing. I made several lengthy outgoing calls to US phones at 3p/min as well calls back to Spain, UK and Germany (all at 3p/min to landlines). A good product overall.

In terms of network I think it was T-Mobile. Only one thing to note however. Initially it did not work at all when I had the "Automatic" mode selected from the Toggle menu. (I really do not know why...) Its only when I went into the Toggle menu and selected the USA IMSI that I managed to connect to a network. Strangely, the "Roaming" IMSI does not register with any local carrier.

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by petkow

Strangely, the "Roaming" IMSI does not register with any local carrier.

That's with intent. Once you register a local IMSI roaming through the "Roaming" IMSI is blocked for that particular country (this has actually been implemented only in early 2012).
As mentioned earlier in this thread the "Roaming" IMSI comes from Vodafone Netherlands and so any airtime generated using the Roaming IMSI must be bought from them. In contrast local IMSIs come from the numerous Lycamobile subsidiaries which can buy the same airtime at significantly lower wholesale tariffs than the earlier because from a technical point of view using local IMSIs is no more roaming but covered by Lycamobile's MVNO wholesale agreement with the local MNO partner.
That said toggle has no choice but to charge higher tariffs when using the Roaming IMSI. Given that most subscribers won't understand the technical background of this multi-IMSI solution there is a significant risk of subscribers using the Roaming IMSI (in particular because the SIM toolkit application does not work reliably on all handsets and so automatic IMSI switching will not work always as in your case) but to expect being charged the local IMSI tariffs.
By disabling roaming through the Roaming IMSI for those countries you have a local IMSI from this risk of unexpected substantially higher charges is eliminated while also increasing revenues of Lycamobile's local subsidiaries.

[petkow]

Thanks Inquisitor for that very detailed reply. The particular problem I experienced was I was coming into the USA from Mexico where I had the "Roaming" profile selected (as they do not have a local IMSI option there). Understandibly (by your explanation) the phone did not register in the USA on this profile. I then put the phone to "Auto", thinking it would automatically change the IMSI to the USA one but this also did not work.. so the only thing left to do is manually select USA in the toolkit option. Out of habit now, I always my phone in manual and then manually select the required IMSI.

Interesting point about the Lycatel MVNO under each local IMSI. As a side thought, I wonder if calling any of the Toggle numbers are counted as Lycatel (LycaMobile) numbers in their current promotion of free calls to other Lycamobile numbers: http://www.prepaidgsm.net/forum/showthread.php?t=8457
If so this could indeed be a very interesting extension to the Toggle roaming product. Has anybody got a normal LycaMobile SIM to try that out on?

[HappyCamp]

Originally Posted by petkow

Thanks Inquisitor for that very detailed reply. The particular problem I experienced was I was coming into the USA from Mexico where I had the "Roaming" profile selected (as they do not have a local IMSI option there). Understandibly (by your explanation) the phone did not register in the USA on this profile. I then put the phone to "Auto", thinking it would automatically change the IMSI to the USA one but this also did not work.. so the only thing left to do is manually select USA in the toolkit option. Out of habit now, I always my phone in manual and then manually select the required IMSI.

Auto works for me here in the US and everywhere else I have traveled. But it can take a long time, like 5-15 minutes before it finally registers. Once it has registered, if I turn the phone off and back on it seems to re-register faster.

[inquisitor]

Reliability of the automatic IMSI switching very much depends on each handset's STK implementation. So this is rather a question of which device you use than which country you are staying in.

[bourbonkiller]

@ petkow

I have tried to call my swiss toggle number with my swiss lycamobile sim and it does not recognise the toggle number as a lyca own number. By the way, this is in line with the information of the lycamobile hotline which told me that it will not be charged as on net call of lyca mobile.

[inquisitor]

While using my toggle SIM in Germany using its local IMSI yesterday, I could not connect to the voice mailbox by dialing the short code 121, as this failed with the announcement that "the number is invalid".
Dialing the long number (+44 7438 646121) did however work. Obviously the short code (121) does not work in Germany.

EDIT: Customer service has just informed me that short codes won't work outside the UK. It's not very far-seeing to store the short code instead of the full international number on their SIM cards and to include only the short code in voicemail notifications, especially not for a product that is addressing frequent travellers.

Anyway I would prefer if we could completeley disable voicemail.

[peterdoo]

I called the CS immediatelly after receiving the SIM. They have disabled the voice mail after requesting that. It has never answered any call since.

[MBK]

The short code to disable the voice-mail is the same as the lyca one.

I think it was *185#, but you can verify this on the website.

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Anyway I would prefer if we could completeley disable voicemail.

I sent an email asking to have voicemail disabled - and it is!

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Reliability of the automatic IMSI switching...

Along the D/CH border I tried "automatic" IMSI select extensively. On my crappy C2-00 phone it just crashes the phone and doesn´t work.

So my procedure at the border now is: Manual select, phone off, phone on.

What I find most annoying are the then-following confirmation SMS "welcome to", which cannot be de-activated. That´s ~6 SMS every day, with no value whatsoever. :/