Landing Gear:
RangeRoamer's service provides you with two phone numbers, both of which ring to your cell phone. The European number allows you to receive calls for free in 40 countries. Your service also comes with a US-based toll-free number that we uniquely assign to you.
Who is the "we" about whom you are speaking? Is Range Roamer your company?
Has anyone used Go-Sim Global Sim card? How is the service? How is the customer service? Are you happy with it? would you recommend this? Could you please share your expetience? I like that the number and airtime never expire.
This thing doesn't work in most countries. If you ask them for help they tell you it works in every country except the one you're in. They tell you that it doesn't work in your kind of phone. I tried it in different types of phones and it still didn't work. It didn't work in NYC, Jackson, Wyoming, Seoul South Korea, Singapore, Denpassar or Balikpapan, Indonesia, Tokyo, Narita Japan. When you ask for a refund all you get is an endless offer for more help. Their idea of help is, "of course it doesn't work in those countries." If you want to waste money give it to the US government not Bluefire Wireless. Best to take the US$70 bucks or so and give it to a charity. You're much better off to buy a SIM card in the country you're visiting. You can usually get one and register it at the Post Office in the airport of the country which you traveled. Then buy a local "cheap rate" card. These Bluefire people and a guy named RogerF are worthless for help.
What global sim card would you guys recommend and why? Since I'll be in a few country and in each country for a short period of time I feel it'd be more convenient to have just one sim card.
I went with the Tellestial one. They had one of the longest terms till expiring, I had used a couple others I wasn't thrilled with, and I like this one.
I would recommend United Mobiles UM+. They have been around for a while. It uses a UK number. If you want a US number you can go with Maxroam or Yackie Mobiile. Or you can just do your own forwarding to the UM+ sim via one of the several VOIP providers out there, such as voicestick, myglobaltalk, kall8, etc.
This has probably been posted before. Here is a good place to compare them. You can even post the same question there in the international forum
What global sim card would you guys recommend and why? Since I'll be in a few country and in each country for a short period of time I feel it'd be more convenient to have just one sim card.
thank you very much! I really appreciate the replies. They help me a lot. What I don't like the most is when you can't get help from the company you signed up with. So I think other than good connection and signal we all are looking for great customer service too
And while reading your advice and searching I found http://www.rebelfone.com/. What do you think? Does it look too good to be true?
I went to Stuttgart and London recently. I was not interested in voice, only data.
Last year when I was in Stuttgart the same hotel wanted €22 per 24 hour period for Internet. I did not have a choice of hotel (conference, paid by someone else,etc.)
The €22 per day irritated me and this time I would be there longer so I made alternate arrangements.
I own an unlocked Novatel Merlin X950D data card so I purchased a German Vodafone Call Now sim on ebay for $8.50 before I left. Although this site http://prepaid-wireless-internet-acc...essions?t=anon
says you can buy the sim for €2 on ebay.de, I bought mine from a US seller on ebay.com. This turned out well because the top up preferences were already set to english.
I purchased a €25 top up voucher from a news agent at FRA while changing planes. Vodafone websessions is €4.95 per day with 1 Gbyte data limit per 24 hrs so I have 25 eurocents left after 5 days.
I applied the top up voucher by putting the SIM in an Samsung A437 phone ( unlocked AT&T Go Phone) and calling the number on the voucher. Then put the sim in the data card. Using the Novatel Mobilink lite software with APN of event.vodafone.de I connected no problem. Opened browser, Home page went to vodafone and I had my choice of 15 minutes 2 hours or 24 hours. I forget the other prices because I was mainly interested in the 24 hr. This worked great for the 5 days I was there, including use of skype to check my voice mail, phone home etc.
I got good speed/reception everywhere I used my laptop, mostly in the Vaihingen and downtown areas.
For London, after checking coverage for the areas I would be in and looking at the various carriers, I chose 3. The 3 sim cost £3.95 including shipping from ebay.co.uk , around $7. I bought a £10 top up voucher at a news agent at LHR, put the sim in my unlocked Novatel Merlin 950 data card, went to https://my3.three.co.uk/myaccount/activateVoucher.done
where I converted the voucher into broadband lite 30 days of service capped at 1 Gbyte of use for £10 and was off and running. I tried APN of 3internet and three.co.uk but mostly used three.co.uk as it seemed faster.
Once again skype worked fine and I was able to stream video (on the last day in UK when I wasn't worried about going over my data limit)
The only place I could not get a connection was in the Star Alliance Lounge at LHR Terminal 1 on my departure but they had free WiFi so it was OK but 3 does has more limited coverage than other UK carriers. I was mostly in London SW5 and SW7.
The only scary part was that my Samsung A437 is not a 3G phone and 3 is a 3G only network so I would have been in trouble if I had not been able to apply the voucher from the website.
For London, after checking coverage for the areas I would be in and looking at the various carriers, I chose 3.
i wish i had seen this last week ... i have a vodafone uk number and i tried o2 and orange ... o2 worked on a pay-as-you-go sim but chewed through the credit quickly ... couldn't get orange to connect at all. ended up paying 30 pounds for five days of internet at the hotel where i'm staying in manchester.
i need a one-day data solution while i'm in paris (at CDG) ... i won't pay AT&T's ridiculous rates (I have an option gt 3.6 express Max card for my mac book pro) ... the hotel where i'm staying wants nine euros per hour (!!) for in-room internet access with my own computer ...
The Meteor network in Ireland now offer pre pay data at 99c per day with a daily 50MB allowance. You will be charged 2c per kB over this amount.
You can order a free SIM from them here:
Unfortunately you need to have it sent to an Irish address, if you are visiting maybe you could use your hotels address and have it sent ahead of time.
You can buy vouchers to re-charge in denominations of £10 and £20. Unfortunately, and I don't understand why, you cannot use your credit card to add more minutes unless it is UK iisued; makes no sense to me as in terms of possible fraud it really shouldn't make any difference where the cards are issued and but is their dumb policy.
For those who are looking for free GSM data, and low cost dialing to the US and beyond, T-Mobile UK has a pretty good deal going right now.
For new users, the web'n'walk feature is free for the first 10 days of the account -- plenty long for most trips. On my unlocked 2G iPhone, I saw data speeds around 180kb in central London, YMMV. You also get a handful of free SMS + MMS to boot. Here are more details about the offer.
Here's how I did it:
First -- get your free SIM (up to 2, actually). If you do not live in the UK, a politely-worded email to customer service may get them sent to your home address (it worked for me, anyway).
Next -- go to YourCall to find the dialing prefix(es) for the country(ies) you would like to call from your UK T-Mobile number while there. The site has easy instructions. It worked brilliantly for calls to US during my last trip in September, and prices were exactly as advertised (no suprises).
You're set. If you create a My-T-mobile account for your new number, you get a 5 pound credit to your account. (I used my hotel's mailing address.)
I'm going back to London for the holidays, and suspect that activating the My-TMo account right before I get on the plane should a) ensure the data coverage is active when I land, and b) possibly even have the 5 pound credit applied to the account. Free SIM and free calls (even cheap international ones).
Bluefirewireless Bluefire Worthless
