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

[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.