The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Travel SIM
United Mobile – is the end nigh for travel SIMs?
Apr 21st
It’s been an interesting few weeks in the world of travel SIM providers. If rumours are to be believed, United Mobile – one of the biggest (and longest established) providers of travel SIMs is in the throws of death – and already some of it’s competitors are trying to pick at the bones.
On Tuesday 7th April, Truphone-owned Sim4Travel registered unlted-mobile.com – a typo suspiciously close to the official United Mobile website of united-mobile.com. At the time of writing this entry, it was offering customers of ‘other’ travel SIM providers a free Sim4Travel SIM card: “Having problems with your travel SIM provider? You can’t make calls? You’re experiencing a poor service? Or simply, you just want peace of mind that you won’t be let down when you travel.”
Even more damning was a page found at www.sim4travel.com/um/ – which has since been taken down (but still available in Google’s cache) that went as far as to name United Mobile, by saying “Having problems with your Umited Mobile SIM? You can’t make calls? You’re experiencing a poor service? Or simply, you just want peace of mind that you won’t be let down when you travel.”
Meanwhile on Thursday 10th April Truphone issued a press release – which appears to have been swiftly withdrawn – trumpeting the same offer. A quick search of Google reveals that the largest German telecoms magazine Teltarif picked up on the story – which is translated into English via Google here.
Do Truphone know something we don’t? Perhaps. But their actions didn’t go unnoticed by United Mobile. An article in today’s print edition of Mobile News says that UM are to sue Truphone and Sim4travel for fraud. Both sides are quoted in the article. Firstly Sim4Travel’s Matt Rowntree:
“We have recently heard that global SIM provider United Mobile is having trouble supporting its customers. SIM4Travel would like to reassure all United Mobile customers that we can provide them with a continuation of service and would be happy to send them a replacement SIM card for free by first class post. Their remaining credit will be valid on our network.
“If the situation with United Mobile becomes more serious we will be more proactive in contacting their customers although we don’t want to be seen as vultures stealing their customers.”
United Mobile CEO Sven Donhuysen said: “It seems that SIM4Travel is really desperate. Otherwise I cannot explain their actions. What they are doing is fraud. We have our lawyers involved now.”
Meanwhile, United Mobile customers at various Internet forums are complaining that their SIM cards are no longer working. One poster at Flyertalk said: “I’m trying to use my United Mobile SIM card in Singapore and it isn’t working. I’ve used it in many other countries with no problems. This is the first time in several weeks though. I also notice big chunks of the United Mobile website are also down. You can’t access your account for a example. It’s a worrisome coincidence.” whilst another in a thread on Crunchbase posted: Just heard that United Mobile has gone out of business. Their assets have been frozen awaiting liquidation, there is no way the service will restart.”.
Meanwhile German-based Sunsim announced yesterday an offer for UM subscribers who can no longer use their SIM cards. The starter pack gives customers a new SIM card plus €15 of call credit for €14.95.
Both United Mobile and Sim4Travel rely on platforms hosted by and network connectivity provided by Channel Islands-based mobile operator Jersey Telecom.
The MAXroam road test day 4
Apr 20th
Note: before you read this post, make sure you’ve read the introduction plus my posts for day one, day two and day three. Of course you don’t have to – but this entry will make more sense if you have!
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So it’s day four. just to re-cap, I’m currently in Jersey, armed with a MAXroam SIM, a SIM-unlocked BlackBerry and my MacBook Pro. I’ve managed – after a few struggles – to get my SIM card activated, a GSM number from Belgium assigned to it, and can’t for the life of me figure out how to make calls (even though I’m following the instructions).
After my woes yesterday I’d dropped another email to Chris and Pat. I’m still struggling to add a local number, but the main problem is making calls – or more to the point not being able to make calls.
Got a reply – quite quickly as well. Chris said there’d been some issues during migration to the new platform, which they’d hopefully nailed. As for the number error, they were waiting for their numbering providers to upgrade their systems – and hopefully within a few days they’d be able to start offering local numbers again.
As for the USSD messages and ‘Call Failed’, it’s ‘just the phone telling you what it thought was going to be a call, was not (since a call with MAXroam you actually send a request for callback, so the phone is a little unsure as to what happens and displays that annoying message). Whilst I know that, would the average customer understand these things?
Then came the clanger.
‘Just about dialling calls, I noticed from your message you are not including the +? For calls with your new MAXroam SIM, you need to include the +, so you would dial for example +441112223333′
Oh. That’s not what the instructions (both sets – there’s two on the packaging) said. In fact, it explicitly stated:
1. Always dial the full International phone number, excluding “00″ or “+”
Hmm. So I tried to place a call to my roaming E71 from the BlackBerry, and after the stream of messages and dialogue boxes similar to those I got in the previous day’s test I waited a few seconds – and sure enough I got a call back. Success. Well, almost – as by this time I was sitting on a bus heading to the airport and didn’t really fancy having a conversation with myself in front of a bunch of pensioners who were already eyeing me up with the ‘this is a local bus for local people’ stare.
So, in summary, I’ve got it working – to an extent. It’s taken a few days of faffing, but I seemingly make a voice call. I haven’t tried data yet, nor have I managed to add a local number – so all my friends who I call think I’ve moved to the land of chocolate and Stella Artois.
This road test took place during the week before Easter 2009. How have things gone with MAXroam since I got back? I’ll tell you tomorrow..
The MAXroam road test – day three
Apr 19th
So day three of my MAXroam road test (read the introduction, day one and day two if you haven’t already), and having been up first thing to catch a ridiculously early flight from London City Airport and been rushing around for the rest of the day I was now settled into my hotel room in Jersey. Seeing as I was technically roaming (even though the Channel Islands are still within the UK numbering plan) I thought it was time to see if I could get my MAXroam SIM and account up and running.
I popped the SIM in my trusty SIM-unlocked BlackBerry Pearl. My aim? To see if I could make a voice call successfully to my other handset.
Heading back over to the MAXroam website and logging into my account, I saw that I’d been allocated a mobile number in Belgium. I assumed this was my base number, but I was more interested in the feature MAXroam offers whereby you can get a local number in quite a few cities around the world. I clicked the button, and it broke again. ‘ An error occured during communication with server!’, apparently. A little drop-box appeared but no countries were listed.
Hey ho, not the end of the world. Checking my BlackBerry, which had after what seemed like an age finally booted up, It’d successfully registered on the relatively new Cable & Wireless GSM network in Jersey. Good stuff. So, as per my day one post about following instructions, I grabbed the welcome pack and read up on making a call. There were two sets of instructions, slightly different, but on the subject of making a call it had this to say:
1. Always dial the full International phone number, excluding “00″ or “+”
OK, so I dialled my UK Three number in the format it said. No +44 or 0044, just 44 followed by the number (obviously missing the first zero).
2. Even if you are making a local call use the country code + area code + local number. Then press the send key
I get it 
3. Wait about 5-10 seconds and your phone will ring. Answer this.
I waited, then after a few seconds a message popped up: ‘Call failed, please try again’ with another message rather annoyingly over the top ‘Sim call barred’. As MAXroam is using a callback service, I’d come to expect this. However, nothing in the instructions said I might see these rather confusing messages.
Then a few (5-10) seconds later another message popped up: ‘*182*44(number I dialled)# (ok)’
That’s a USSD message. Again, I half expected to see it, but for the average user it’s a little daunting.
And then? Nothing. So I gave it a minute or so, and tried again. The same things happened, then nothing. No call back.
I gave up again for a while, and rattled off another email to the guys at MAXroam. Whilst normally I’d fiddle around and try all sorts of combinations of number formats to get this working, I was planning to test the serviceas a ‘normob’ user – and not someone who necessarily knows what he’s doing
Stay tuned for day four of the road test – and see whether I got it working.
The MAXroam road test day two
Apr 18th
Rather later than planned, here’s day two of the MAXroam road test. It’s a rather short update as I was rushing around the country that day, but with a trip to Jersey planned for first thing the next morning I wanted to at least try and get things working before I left for the airport.
If you’ve read my previous posts here and most recently here, you’ll know I’d got as far as trying to activate my MAXroam SIM. True to his word, CEO Pat Phelan got his tech team on the case, and first thing the next morning Platform Manager Chris Kennedy registered my SIM for activation. So, back to the registration process I went.
I entered the number of the SIM into the registration screen, setup my details and, well, it worked. Sort of. As you may know, MAXroam gives you a default GSM voice and SMS number (in this latest incarnation, it’s a Belgian +32 number) – and the option to add other local voice numbers in various cities around the world. However, when I first registered I just had a blank space where the Belgian number should be, and trying to add a local number threw a rather bizarre website error.
With the hours getting fewer and fewer until a rather early start to get to London City airport in the morning, I thought I’d have another try tomorrow and see if I could get things working. Stay tuned for the next update!
The MAXroam road test day one
Apr 15th
MAXroam packaging
If you haven’t already read this post, let me bring you up to speed. CEO Pat Phelan over at MAXroam sent me one of his new version five SIMs to play with. Here’s how I got on, from registration to making a call, during five days – and a few thousand miles of travelling – last week.
So the package arrived, and I finally got my hands on it. Due to a slight co-ordination/space-time continuum issue (you know the sort) it took me a couple of weeks to actually get a hold of the package, but last Monday evening I opened the envelope, took out the contents, and armed with a BlackBerry, my trusty MacBook Pro and a nice cup of tea (milk and two sugars please, if you’re offering) I sat down to try out the service.
Now I don’t know about you, but there’s been many a time when I’ve believed I’m too clever to read the instructions. It usually happens with technology, and occasionally IKEA furniture. However this time I thought I’d go through the five easy steps printed on the inside of the packaging. And rather pretty packaging it is too – as you can probably see from the couple of photos taken with my trusty Nokia E71. Anyway, back to the instructions.
1. Buy your MAXroam SIM here and simply register it online at maxroam.com
MAXroam packaging
A little strange to find the packaging of a product I just bought asking me to buy it, but not to worry. Flipping over the back of the packaging I found another set of instructions – ableit slightly different, that started with registration – so I figured I’d follow those instead.
2. Go to www.maxroam.com and click register my SIM
So far so good.
3. Enter the number on your SIM and follow the instructions
“I can manage this”, I thought rather proudly – so I typed in the long number into the website. And bam – it broke. ‘This SIM has not been registered by staff to allow activation. Please contact Customer Support.’ Hmm, it’s nearly 8pm on a Monday night, wonder if I can get this fixed tonight? Rather than try the usual customer service approach, I emailed Pat. Within 10 minutes, I got a response asking for a different number from the SIM card. Sent that over, and within minutes Pat replied again saying it’d be sorted in the morning.
More tomorrow..
The MAXroam road test
Apr 14th
A few weeks ago I had a brief email exchange with Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom – the Irish entrepeneurs behind MAXroam. I’ve been following their progress for a while, and have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the new version of the platform.
Fast forward to last week, and Pat had very kindly sent me a SIM to try. Due to my lack of time it’d been sitting unopened in a non-descript brown envelope for a few weeks, but with a week packed with travel ahead of me I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Now that I’ve had a chance to recover from my busy week last week, I figured it was time to write about my experiences with MAXroam. Whilst it wasn’t the most exhaustive test in the world, I thought it’d be interesting to share my experiences.
More coming tomorrow..
MAXroam ink MVNO deal with Qik
Apr 14th
Cubic Telecom, the people behind popular travel SIM MVNO MAXroam, have just announced a deal with live 
mobile streaming video service Qik, which should help Qik users save money whilst they’re travelling.
Following on from a recent deal with travel social network service Dopplr, the deal with Qik will give their users the opportunity to purchase Qik-branded SIM cards enabling them to stream video live from all corners of the planet – without coming home to an astronomical phone bill. The Qik SIM also provides massive savings on voice calls, email, web browsing and texting while they travel. Under the tagline “Go mobile, not broke,” Qik is offering its users a simple, inexpensive way to share live video no matter where they are.
“Travellers can now share their world journeys with videos, photos, text, and calls from their mobile device without it costing the earth.” said Pat Phelan, Cubic Telecom CEO “We’ve heard of the horror stories of travelers returning from a trip abroad to cell phone bills in the thousands of euros. The Qik SIM eliminates this worry for our customers.”
“We are excited to partner with Cubic Telecom to offer Qik SIM cards to our users,” said Ramu Sunkara, Qik CEO. “With the Qik pre-paid SIM cards, Qikkers across the world can now share their moments when they are traveling without having to worry about voice or data roaming costs. It’s like sending a live video postcard to your friends and family from wherever you are.”
The QIK offering is available now at http://qik.com/roam
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