Piranha for Canada?

[davidtheprof]

I travel a lot to Europe and Canada, and was just checking out a new sim MVNO, Piranha-Mobile, and noticed that they have the best offering for Canada that I have seen in a global sim - 22c/min within Canada or back to US, and only 48c/MB for data.
looks like you have to use call-back dialing outside of the UK and US, but you can add local phone numbers, and some intriguing integration with VOIP, so you can receive calls at same numbers over wifi when connected.
Have been using Truphone, but looking at alternatives...

[rfranzq]

Originally Posted by davidtheprof

Have been using Truphone, but looking at alternatives...

Which Truphone have you been using? The VOIP or the SIM?

[davidtheprof]

the sim, don't see the point in their VOIP, skype is better quality.
Piranha claims a degree of wifi-VOIP/mobile network integration, I might get one just to try it!

More expensive than Tru on data in the UK, though, unless you can force it register on O2.
Tru has just announced they will lower roaming rates in rest of Europe to meet the new EU regulations, but seems like it might only be for European customers. That would be disappointing...

Originally Posted by rfranzq

Which Truphone have you been using? The VOIP or the SIM?

[fsotirop]

piranha has great rates, i have one of their sims and works great!
tested also their wifi service is ok

piranha is somehow in association with tel.n.a ...they also use their number prefixes in their uk numbers.

[Stu]

Tru's Twitter feed says that they are not giving the EU data rates to US/Australian subscribers.

[Stu]

Originally Posted by fsotirop

piranha has great rates, i have one of their sims and works great!
tested also their wifi service is ok

piranha is somehow in association with tel.n.a ...they also use their number prefixes in their uk numbers.

Telna doesn't give you a UK number and people have reported reliability issues with Telna. I like Telna's hybrid VOIP/roaming SIM combo and like their concept, but there has been some problems in the implementation. The fact that they are actually a GSM provider rather than an MVNO may help a bit, but I think the ultimate problem is companies falling behind to their upstream provider. I have never heard of the UK mainstream MVNOs having the roaming problems that the roaming SIMs have.

I think the problem is undercapitalization and the fact that they have less backup systems. They may have one server doing the interconnection where the other folks have ten or twenty with fallback capacity. I think the other problem is that the DIDs are often hundreds or thousands of miles away from servers and that some of the interconnections here are done over public VOIP to make matters worse.

That's my personal opinion. I am watching Pirahana Mobile and I like their price structure. My concern is that many of these companies come to market at a lower rate than they can sustain. Many of them have very good incoming rates which they intend to offset by higher outgoing rates only to learn that people carrying roaming SIMs have far more inbound calls than the average carrier. Folks like us may use technology to invert these calls. Other folks may send a text and say "call me back."

Intra-European roaming is coming down which was an area where they often turned a nice profit.

[davidtheprof]

just been testing my Piranha Mobile sim (and tried to set up a new thread under "international sim cards" instead of here!
I like the VOIP/sim integration, with dual US/UK numbers on both VOIP and the sim card, but I'm not getting calls reliably on wifi, don't know if it's my old Samsung Vibrant or what...

[Bossman]

I agree Stu. I have experienced way too many issues with telna that I can in no way depend on them alone. I will always have a backup or in use them as a backup.

Piranha's rates look really good, almost to the point of too good to be true. Only time will tell if they can maintain these rates on the long run. Like you said, especially with the lower EU roaming rates, a significant portion of the roaming sims business will be gone.

Originally Posted by Stu

Telna doesn't give you a UK number and people have reported reliability issues with Telna. I like Telna's hybrid VOIP/roaming SIM combo and like their concept, but there has been some problems in the implementation. The fact that they are actually a GSM provider rather than an MVNO may help a bit, but I think the ultimate problem is companies falling behind to their upstream provider. I have never heard of the UK mainstream MVNOs having the roaming problems that the roaming SIMs have.

That's my personal opinion. I am watching Pirahana Mobile and I like their price structure. My concern is that many of these companies come to market at a lower rate than they can sustain. Many of them have very good incoming rates which they intend to offset by higher outgoing rates only to learn that people carrying roaming SIMs have far more inbound calls than the average carrier. Folks like us may use technology to invert these calls. Other folks may send a text and say "call me back."

Intra-European roaming is coming down which was an area where they often turned a nice profit.

[fsotirop]

Piranha Mobile Sim Card thread for piranha mobile