abroadband

[Effendi]

my abroadband - abroadband.com

Someone used this service?
It seems to be postpaid and it also seems to be owned by A1 Austria Telekom.
€ 0,59/MB everywhere is not that bad and it has a yearly fee of € 10.00 too.

Could be interesting for low data usage.

[GadgetKen]

I don't have it but it looks intriguing.

The flat rate is very reasonable for most countries and they have a good list of roaming countries, but not everywhere I would need them. Doesn't have non-US Caribbean or Bermuda (which would be roaming on Digicel or LIME/Cable & Wireless plus a few local providers). Does have U.S. but they are cheaper options for that location (either prepaid or postpaid). Do like that they offer a sim card and USB stick modem package and it is both PC and Mac compatible. If they added some Caribbean service, I might consider going with them.

[snidely]

Could you put the SIM in a BlackBerry which is easy to tether to a computer - thus using your phone as a modem?
I should know the answer - but how much data per minute does a voice call use - like over Skype?

...mike

It's a fraction of the price my home carrier (TMobile U.S. charges to roam for data - $15/mb. Truphone seems to charge $2.17/mb in most countries. This is less than $1/mb.

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by snidely

Could you put the SIM in a BlackBerry which is easy to tether to a computer - thus using your phone as a modem?
I should know the answer - but how much data per minute does a voice call use - like over Skype?

...mike

It's a fraction of the price my home carrier (TMobile U.S. charges to roam for data - $15/mb. Truphone seems to charge $2.17/mb in most countries. This is less than $1/mb.

between 300k and 1 meg per minute, depending which encoding skype will use.

Chris

[snidely]

Originally Posted by dg7feq

between 300k and 1 meg per minute, depending which encoding skype will use.

Chris

If that's the case, then it would pay to use this SIM for voice calls as well. Am I overlooking anything? Which would be the best/easiest method to use? Skype? Someone else? I assume someone like Skype has an app for most smart phones to make calling seamless?
Is there much diff. in voice quality between 300K and 1000?
And, can you designate the codec on Skype or someone else to attempt to save money? At 500K, you would be paying approx. 40 cents/min.
IF there is a seamless way of setting up a service like Skype on a phone - wouldn't this be a big game changer?

...mike

[GadgetKen]

Skype can definitely be used on a mobile device. Used to have an AT&T Tilt on prepaid AT&T service for a year or two. Had Skype mobile installed under Windows Mobile. Skype also has various clients for other devices including Blackberry, Android and non-PC's (such as the MacBook I'm penning this response on), and on my Sony Mylo wi-fi device.

If using Skype over a cellular connection, 3G seems to work best (EDGE is just too slow under many conditions for decent quality VOIP).

[dg7feq]

Originally Posted by snidely

And, can you designate the codec on Skype or someone else to attempt to save money? At 500K, you would be paying approx. 40 cents/min.
IF there is a seamless way of setting up a service like Skype on a phone - wouldn't this be a big game changer?

...mike

yes, there is some difference between the differnet codings.
With 500kbyte/min skype uses a codec similar to the one that the DECT digital cordless phones use which have a data rate of 32kbps+IP overhead.
Otherwise skype uses the ISDN like codec with 64kbps+IP overhead.

You can not set the quality by yourself, skype calculates the line quality before establishing a voice connection. On mobile phones i suppose that they always will use the low bandwidth codec.

Chris

[snidely]

Chris -
So, it sounds like this SIM might be suitable for roaming for voice as well as inexpensive data. They cover 50 countries, most of Europe and the main places in Asia. Except for U.S. and Canada, nothing in the Americas.
The initial cost because of expensive shipping is close to $50. Cheaper if one is in Europe.

...mike

...mike

[andy]

Originally Posted by snidely

I should know the answer - but how much data per minute does a voice call use - like over Skype?

I accidentally made a roaming data call from my phone using Fring, Justvoip and 3g data a couple of years ago - the accident was I thought I was using wi-fi, and because I hadn't gone through all the settings Fring swapped to the O2 access point without me noticing.

Fortunately it was only a 2 minute call, so the damage wasn't too great

This used 350k of data, so a megabyte would cover about 6 minutes. I have no idea what codec was used.

On Nokia phones with SIP, Nokia's SIP VoIP Settings program can be installed to control a wider range of settings, and I assume that selection of codec would be an option, but I haven't looked into this yet

[snidely]

Originally Posted by andy

I accidentally made a roaming data call from my phone using Fring, Justvoip and 3g data a couple of years ago - the accident was I thought I was using wi-fi, and because I hadn't gone through all the settings Fring swapped to the O2 access point without me noticing.

Fortunately it was only a 2 minute call, so the damage wasn't too great

This used 350k of data, so a megabyte would cover about 6 minutes. I have no idea what codec was used.

On Nokia phones with SIP, Nokia's SIP VoIP Settings program can be installed to control a wider range of settings, and I assume that selection of codec would be an option, but I haven't looked into this yet

Andy - Definitely sounds that this would be the way to make low cost voice calls. Since they just started selling product 11 days ago, there don't seem to be any reviews out there yet. I am not sure I want to spend $40 incl. shipping to try it out when in Spain and Portugal the end of next month.
I need to do some research on how much data various voice options would likely use. Skype an option? Fring (which I've never used). I would use it in an older BlackBerry. Since I am slow, technically speaking, might just wait.

Just tried doing some research.
Here is a quote from their help section at Abroadband:

====
How much can I surf with one MB?

One MB allows you to send about 40 e-mails (avarage size 25 KB), make around 80 Google searches, surf on Facebook, Linkedln or Expedia 5 times.
On Skype, one MB is enough to send and receive about 15 messages a day and make two Skype calls of about 2 minutes each - every day in one month (Source: Skype).

============
Sounds unbelievable. I found that quote on the Skype site myself.

...mike