[kupe]

Well...just spent 3 days in Paris with my new eKit sim and have to say it did NOT go well...

Inbound calls were a complete bust. Callers to my US number all reported that calls went straight to voicemail. And in no case did my phone ever ring for those calls, nor did it show any missed calls. At all times I had a full 4-bar signal.

Callers to my UK number reported that the phone would ring continuously, NEVER go to voicemail, and these calls also never rang through to me, nor showed any missed calls.

Outbound calls succeeded sporadically. Frequently I never got the eKit callback, or I would get a message that "call failed" and nothing would happen.

Outbound text messages also were iffy- in most cases it reported "could not send message", though in several cases the message was in fact sent despite that message.

I tried all 3 Paris networks- FSFR, Orange, and Bytel. eKit seems to prefer registering with FSFR, on which I could receive no calls. On Orange, I received one call, but could not make any calls. Bytel seemed to work better, but still no consistency.

I called Customer Service and we went through the usual Tier 1 malarkey- i.e. turn off phone, remove batt and sim, try different networks, etc. Blah blah blah. All stuff I had tried already. The agent tried repeatedly to call my US and UK number and it never rang through to me. Finally on one try to my US number it did ring, and she then said "the US incoming problem is now resolved." I said "whoa- once out of 10 times isn't resolved." She never was able to reach my UK number and she opened a ticket for that.

And that's where it stands. Needless to say this was VERY disappointing, especially given my good experience with eKit in Zurich the week before. I'll be in Germany to try it next week, and I hope the results are very very different. I need a phone I can rely on, and currently my eKit is exhibiting late United-Mobile style reliability! ;(

Kupe