ekit dual number [US & UK] SIMs

[VladS]

Would the $0.35 connect fee apply to incoming calls in 'FREE' countries (eg EU) when the call is routed via the US DID?

[MATHA531]

Originally Posted by VladS

Would the $0.35 connect fee apply to incoming calls in 'FREE' countries (eg EU) when the call is routed via the US DID?

From my understanding, I think there's a footnote, the answer is no...if there is free roaming, no surcharge.

[VladS]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

From my understanding, I think there's a footnote, the answer is no...if there is free roaming, no surcharge.

Incoming calls in 'FREE' countries are free only when the call comes through the UK DID. The cost is $0.19/minute when it comes through the US DID.

[MATHA531]

I asked that question and was told you pay only the 19¢ in FREE countries to receive calls on the +1 number.

[FBlack_111]

I have had my Passport SIM from EKIT (Telestial) for nearly 2 years now and have made almost 100 calls. When I first decided to buy an International SIM there were many choices. Naturally, I wanted one with good calling rates back to the U.S. However, experience has shown me it’s often unwise to just buy the cheapest of anything.

Other factors had to be considered. Will the company be around in two years? Will I have to pay an annual fee just to keep the SIM active? Do they have good 24/7 customer support? Are their rates competitive? Can I recharge the SIM with the cell phone? So in the end I settled on EKIT, even with the connection fee. And they are still here after lots of other SIM companies are just a memory.

For me, most of my travels are to Europe, The Mediterranean, and North Africa. If you compare EKIT’s rates on a 10 minute call from one of these areas, even with the 35 cent connection fee, it’s still almost always less expensive than most other SIM’s. And you get a U.K. number rather than one from Estonia, Lichtenstein, or Iceland.

And as for those countries with the extra 75 cent + connection surcharge, it’s for outgoing calls only. And for me, other than Egypt, I will probably never get to any of them. And even if I do, an extra 75 cents per call isn’t enough to offset the other features I like for the Passport SIM.

I am sure if you look hard enough you may find a company with cheaper rates, but as a package, I find my Passport SIM hard to beat.

[Stu]

How can you tell what companies are financially sound? Some have shown problems, but United Mobile had the superficial trappings of being in good shape. They had had a recent cash infusion from investors, they had a sophisticated infrastructure, they were rolling out new services, and clearly had more than one employee (unlike some of the others). I didn't like it when they started charging the 19 euro cent connection charge, but it made sense to me (looking at the issue from their side).

I have to presume that the most of the members of this forum are their worst customers. While we make a ton of calls, we use every trick in the book to squeeze the price of the call downward (third party callback services, our own international forwarding services, etc). Their financial model has to allow them to be able to tread water if all of their phones receive only inbound calls and the calls are being terminated to their lines by Betamax providers. How much do you think they received in call terminations from these carriers?

[FBlack_111]

Stu:

You are right. It's very hard to check the financial status of any company. Just because a company has a great web site, you never really know. But it seems to me that if a company sells a SIM with extra low rates, has no connection fees, no annual fees, a SIM that lasts forever, and limited customer service; their business model is suspect.

Obviously no company is guaranteed to last forever. I lost about $25 recently to a company with a pre-paid calling card system with cheap international calls from the U.S. So I guess it's best to just limit your exposure in case of a failure.

[MATHA531]

The demise of UM certainly came like a bolt out of the blue, but clearly the signs were there i.e. the 0,19€ set up fee for receiving free calls but when all is said and done, unless I really miss my guess, there were 2 factors that really led to their death....

1. The worldwide economic crisis (which obviously also led to the demise of O9) dried up lines of credit and also cut down on discretionary spending for things such as travel throughout the world (perhaps the last thing not so muchy) and...

2. I truly believe another large, very large factor, was the success of the eu in capping roaming rates within the eu. While certainly the international cards were meant to appeal to an internatinal clientele, the fact that as long as roaming rates within Europe were very high, it made sense for Europeans who are constantly crossing national frontiers to see the need for an international card. Now that it is obvious that roaming rates within Europe will be all but disappearing in the near future, why would a European particularly need an international card. For travel to North America? They, until the advent of the dual cards, never were able to successfully do business with the US telcoms and bring US roaming rates down...you paid the same to roam in the USA with the international cards as you did with your home carrier so why do you need it. Also, many North Americans simply do not see th eneed for having mobile phones when travelling throughout the world. They are happy to deal with the asininely high roaming rates of the North American carriers as they were able to use cheap calling cards and also began to understand the use of VOPI methods of communicating internationally. Frankly if AT&T and T Mobile USA had half a brain and brought down their international roaming rates to say a reasonable 30 to 35 cents a minute, that would probably be the end of any need for international cards.

And just thinking back on UM....they were actively testing their dual sim card so one would have to suppose that either events overwhelmed them more quickly than they assumed or they just didn't see that the dual sim card could save their bacon.

RIP UM

[schuster]

Originally Posted by MATHA531

Got the card through telestial and putting it through some testing....

Am in the USA....calls to the +1 number complete fairly quickly...have no idea of the quality of the call as I am not answering it......

Calls to the +44 number also go through quickly......one big big difference though...

Calling on the +1 number I do get the caller id of the calling number

Calling on the +44 number does not show caller id....this is a big problem. Is ekit aware of it???

(BTW got a 978 area code on US card...I think this is in Mass..(would have preferred NYC 212 or 718 or 917 or 347 or 646 for call forwarding purposes...can one choose the area code of the US number and can it be changed)

Finally I always change the pin number to one I use all the time...tried it with the ekit dual card and while it took the change of pin number, when I tried to turn on the card the next time, it said sim card fails to register...had to change it back to the original one....is this a none defect?

Other than that, prices seems right.....

Just received mine and have also done some preliminary testing. Things basically work but there are inconsistencies in the way some things are handled (for instance the pre-stored short codes - e.g. *126*187# works on the GLOBAL side but only 187 seems to work on the US side).

My US area code is 631, for what it's worth.
Also for what it's worth I was able to change the SIM PIN without incident on a Motorola phone, and the change "sticks" after restart.

[VladS]

I got my dual eKit card as well. The US number is in the 718 area code.

Outgoing calls work fine, however incoming calls don't work at all on either SIM profile on the Rogers network in Canada. According to eKit support it's a know problem and it should be fixed in the next week or so.

A real turnoff, at least for me, is that when the phone is unavailable or turned off, even with the voicemail disabled, the caller doesn't get the standard 'customer not available' message but is rather given an option to send a numeric SMS and is in turn charged for the failed call.