eKit 'SIMple Calling' US/Canada SIM w/ pretty low rates?

[andy]

I looked at it briefly about a month ago, from the ekit site ekit, Mobile Info

But I didn't get round to mentioning it on here, as the call rates are 25 and 40 cents a minute and upwards, and the SIM costs over $60

Although I knew ekit sometimes sell SIMs cheaply on eBay, I'm rather surprised that there also seem to be two tariff systems, as RTuesday mentioned. I'm wondering if this website isn't up to date

[adam917]

Well I got the SIM and true rates aren't listed on eBay. You do get charged higher for the first minute and then the low rates start.

When I stuck the SIM in my Samsung SGH-A117, the greeting I got was 'Welcome to Immix'. I heard of company and they seem to be based in central Pennsylvania and claim widest coverage due to national roaming with all the GSM operators (but have strict limits on it because the user has to be living in the local service area).

My question is: How does Telestial/eKit get to put LA numbers on the SIM & apply their own balance check/voice-mail check codes? The SMS Centre seems to be a 610 number though. Do most MVNOs get this kind of privilege?

[RTuesday]

Thanks Adam for the information about Immix. They do seem to have plenty of roaming agreements, but it's not clear if anything other than T-Mobile and AT&T work for thie prepaid: GSM Coverage Maps | United States | Keystone Wireless LLC (Immix Wireless - Pottsville, PA) | Network Information

The real Immix postpaid even roams on Movistar Mexico (amongst many other countries) - if they added that as well to the Simple Calling card they would have a real winner.

As I mentioned above the eKit ad on ebay did list a 50c connection charge in the examples in the footnote to the rate table, but it's certainly misleading and easy to miss. Hope they haven't forgot to mention anything else (like monthly 911 charges... ).

Having said that, I have ordered a couple of these as I may be in Canada later in the year plus it gives me extra coverage in the US. Got a couple of nice consecutive Hollywood numbers (one of them ends in two sets of double digits) according to the email - haven't seen the SIMs yet as I'm in Mexico right now.

How did the activation process go? Any catches there? Any warnings about when you must reactivate it again to keep it active? Any online call records or account balance?

BTW, a sort of workaround for receiving international SMS might be Google Voice - that is supposed to be able to forward SMS to US numbers, and the Simple Calling is supposed to receive from US. So you could give the GV number to a non-US contact. (but, when you reply to their SMS it will come from the SC phone number, unless you go online to GV to send it for free). Also, GV are not giving out any new accounts right now (I have one).

I noticed 0044 (UK) are also selling these (at higher prices). In their notes, they say the problem with incoming SMS is only from South Africa. So sounds like it may be variable depending on the country, worth experimenting with.

[adam917]

Originally Posted by RTuesday

Thanks Adam for the information about Immix. They do seem to have plenty of roaming agreements, but it's not clear if anything other than T-Mobile and AT&T work for thie prepaid: GSM Coverage Maps | United States | Keystone Wireless LLC (Immix Wireless - Pottsville, PA) | Network Information

The real Immix postpaid even roams on Movistar Mexico (amongst many other countries) - if they added that as well to the Simple Calling card they would have a real winner.

As I mentioned above the eKit ad on ebay did list a 50c connection charge in the examples in the footnote to the rate table, but it's certainly misleading and easy to miss. Hope they haven't forgot to mention anything else (like monthly 911 charges... ).

Having said that, I have ordered a couple of these as I may be in Canada later in the year plus it gives me extra coverage in the US. Got a couple of nice consecutive Hollywood numbers (one of them ends in two sets of double digits) according to the email - haven't seen the SIMs yet as I'm in Mexico right now.

How did the activation process go? Any catches there? Any warnings about when you must reactivate it again to keep it active? Any online call records or account balance?

BTW, a sort of workaround for receiving international SMS might be Google Voice - that is supposed to be able to forward SMS to US numbers, and the Simple Calling is supposed to receive from US. So you could give the GV number to a non-US contact. (but, when you reply to their SMS it will come from the SC phone number, unless you go online to GV to send it for free). Also, GV are not giving out any new accounts right now (I have one).

I noticed 0044 (UK) are also selling these (at higher prices). In their notes, they say the problem with incoming SMS is only from South Africa. So sounds like it may be variable depending on the country, worth experimenting with.

Contrary to what we have read before on these sites, both the documentation I was mailed and the official web site mentioned nothing about short keep-alive times that we all were dreading. The time was shown as the same as regular eKit SIMs...

'You must use a charged service (such as making a call, or sending a text message), or recharge within any 9 month period, otherwise your remaining credit will expire. You can restore the expired credit by contacting Customer Service and recharging your account by a minimum of USD$30.

You must recharge at least once every 15 months to keep the SIM card active.'

Activation was quite smooth. I had to click the activate button on two different pages but after that it shown activated successfully on-line. I hope everything stays A-OK now till I need to use the SIM again, which could be a few months (nowhere near 9 though) from now. I have sent an SMS on it a few minutes ago and it went through fine on my end (got charged). The recipient (in the US) received it just fine as well.

This SIM does not function exactly how the regular Global Premium one I have functions. There is no SIM application & the various numbers like check balance etc. are stored both in the phone book as contacts and as Service Numbers on the SIM. Calling people is only a matter of just dialling and hitting Send, unlike my Global Premium SIM which requires the special application to make calls from some devices. Checking balance is done by calling 187 then hanging up when you hear a busy sound, then you receive an SMS a few seconds later with the balance. The web site is clean and to the point, listing what was used, etc.

That Google Voice work-around sounds inconvenient to me anyway as I have a variety of US lines anyway...and if you're going to give the Google Voice number out for SMS, why not do it for voice too?

It also sucks that SMS rates are higher on this than more mainstream operators (even the GSM ones here). I believe my T-Mobile line is 5 cents incoming SMS still for instance.

That being said, I did buy this as a supplement to my other SIMs and as another option for Canada, where my only other easy option was a T-Mobile USA pre-paid line that I could still use there if this gives me problems. Also, it's nice to have extra coverage. It seems that anywhere outside western Europe & I guess the major Asian cities, you really need the extra coverage these roaming SIMs provide. I find it crazy that even in some major cities in the US, there are still plenty of areas that lack GSM coverage.

As a mobile computing hobbyist with a number of devices and SIMs, I do welcome stuff like this and will continue to do my research on stuff like this. Sites like this and Howard Forums really are wonders that try to make sense of the craziness that is the mobile phone/computing world.

This offer must be different from what was being offered last year or even a couple months ago as whenever I seen this 'SIMple Calling' offer on Telestial, there has been no mention of Canada, any extended coverage in the US, and the rates were the same 'simple' AT&T rates. So I passed it up of course as I have a standard AT&T GoPhone SIM that does more than what Telestial was offering at the time.

Any more questions about this SIM? Reply.

PS: I was lucky to stick it in the phone I did as none of my other phones give those greetings at power-on.

[rfranzq]

I have had the two different SIM with different plans for about 6 months now. On eBay, ekit has two different seller names: ekitmobile and ekitmobileusa. Guess which one is based in the UK? They have different prices on similar and the same SIMs so shop around. The information on eBay is accurate for each of the SIMple Calling SIMs.

The one from the UK has the $.25 US call rate with no connection charge. It also has higher SMS rates. The area code I received for it is 213--downtown LA.

The other SIM from the USA is area code 323--the doughnut around downtown LA. Its rate is 9cents +50cent connection fee. The SMS rates are less.

They both are able to use AT&T and T-Mobile networks. I have not really been out of LA and Orange counties with them so I can not allege their usefulness in the hinterlands.

I will be lending one to my mother to use on an Alaskan cruise [Calif to Alaska with stops in Canada.]

{I might have been able to use one or both of them to send SMS while in Mexico last December--but the details are too fuzzy so remember I said 'MIGHT']

[RTuesday]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

{I might have been able to use one or both of them to send SMS while in Mexico last December--but the details are too fuzzy so remember I said 'MIGHT']

Yes, it does indeed work (for SMS) in Mexico.

I just activated one of these (the 323 ebay sim, with the higher first-minute charge) a few days ago in the US. Got back to Mexico today, popped the SIM in and it (surprisingly!) registered OK, on Movistar. Sent and received SMS to/from Google Voice fine (in under ten seconds), and the billing shows the US rates (10c receive, 15c domestic send).

Outbound calls with it (in Mexico) tell me I have outgoing calls barred (which is reasonable, it's not supposed to even register here).

Incoming calls get intercepted with a voice message that says I'm unavailable and gives the option to send your caller-id phone number (or another number) as a text message to the phone - this works great, I get an SMS like "Please call +52... as they tried calling you on +132327..." a few seconds later.

Very useful for me, a single SMS contact number that works across US, Canada and Mexico - with voice calls in two of those countries.

Has anybody tried this US/Canada sim in any other countries? Maybe the SMS feature is enabled in a any roaming location?

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by RTuesday

Any warnings about when you must reactivate it again to keep it active? Any online call records or account balance?

I should probably ad that I have not really had it deactivate on me except once when I did not touch them for a month or so. They would not register when I turned them on. When I went online---they have very good call records and balance info--just like the other ekit SIM cards---It said I was activated. But I was not, obviously, and tried to deactivate and activate again. It would not let me deactivate [which you can do btw], so I had to call customer service and since I was not in a rush I just told them the problem and asked them to fix it. In a couple of days it was working again.


As some one on this board, I suspect you will be playing with them enough to keep them activated.

Also, ekit, has a travel journal and maps that show where you are that can happen automatically. I make a call to check if there is voicemail and that will show up on the map. Unfortunately, The map function does not seem to be as precise as the other ekit cards. The SIMple card maps just shows downtown LA as my location. All the other ekit cards I have tried get down to the specific cell tower location identification.

[adam917]

Immix Wireless -- immix.com -- - Hmm. It seems this SIM may have coverage all around the western hemisphere. I see coverage even beyond Mexico and into the Caribbean.

[rfranzq]

I just checked today and both my SIMs were deactivated---for the first time since my previous message of 4/22. Otherwise they have not deactivated in the last six months. All I needed to do to reactivate them was to log in at ekit and click an 'Activate' button on the 'Account Settings' web page. I am not sure how strict they are about the '7 days' because my use of these cards is pretty sporadic.

[adam917]

Originally Posted by rfranzq

I just checked today and both my SIMs were deactivated---for the first time since my previous message of 4/22. Otherwise they have not deactivated in the last six months. All I needed to do to reactivate them was to log in at ekit and click an 'Activate' button on the 'Account Settings' web page. I am not sure how strict they are about the '7 days' because my use of these cards is pretty sporadic.

Just happened to me about 2 days ago too. Logged in to the site & re-activated and it now seems to work fine. I wonder why it needs activation anyway. All the other eKit SIMs never needed this activity.