Telestial Review & Intl Roaming?
 

Hello,

I am new to this forum and will be leaving on a 5 month assignment across Europe and the Middle East in the next week. Since my job will pay for any landline calls, I don't expect a lot of volume over my mobile. So would just be be looking for one SIM card with the reasonable rates that would do the trick. Would obviously prefer the free incoming.

I saw Telestial's Passport SIM, does anyone have any experience with them? My only issue with what I have seen so far is they do not allow SMS to CDMA phones in the US.

Thanks for your help!

I don't believe ANY European or international GSM phone will send SMS to US CDMA phones. SUNSIM Germany SIM did not deliver to US while we were in GER and FR this summer. I did not even TRY with the UM+ or Travelsim. No porblems to ATT or T-MO, however.

Try jaxtr.com, but you need internet access for that. So you might as well use your Verizon (whatever) website.

Stan

Orange can transmit SMS to SaskTel Mobility in Canada, which uses CDMA (I sent one to my brother-in-law from London, and after I sent it I thought I was dumb because it would never go through - but two hours later I got a reply :) ). It is possible that some non-North American GSM providers will permit SMS to US CDMA carriers.

Oh, No. Quite a few do work sending to US CDMA carriers. When I was with sprintPCS up until 2 years ago, I receive sms from family in the UK using Tmobile, Virgin, and Vodafone. I also receive sms from several carriers in Nigeria. I have friends that are using SprintPCS and have no problems receiving international sms.

I needed to find a workaround for that SMS problem this summer while my brother was in France (we have Sprint and his eKit SIM couldn't SMS to CDMA). I found www.peekamo.com. That site is kind of strange at first, but you register an account for each phone, and then instead of texting directly, you send a SMS to Peekamo's access number for your country formatted as follows: "peek (username) (message)". Peekamo them forwards your message onto the specified person and they can reply the same way. It's basically an SMS proxy. The reason I really liked this service, apart from the fact that it made sending SMS from an international SIM to a CDMA carrier possible, is that this makes any outgoing text messages from the US phone free (as long as there's a texting plan on that line) since Peekamo's access number for the US is local. You can also send SMS messages if you log into your account on their site. It worked great this summer! Anyway, I think there's some other sites like Peekamo, but it's just the only one I've tried. Good luck!

I have had a Passport for a year. Last year it worked well in Europe with a Samsung Z500. Then I bought a Verizon Z6C before a recent trip to Europe.

Turns out the only way to make a call is to send a text message with the phone number you want to call to 1234. Then strangely, by Z500 did not work as easily either. I had to add a "string" (*126*) before each call. Last year I just dialed the number and it worked.

The best feature is the free incoming calls in many countries.