telna Mobile [split thread]

[telnamobile]

Hi

My name is Herve and I work at telna Mobile. We just launched a new international roaming service that looks like all the ones you are mentioning in this post. It took us many years to work on it as we didn't want a service that would go down as quickly as many others you mentioned in this thread.

The reason I post in this thread is that we decided to waive our first year of annual fees for former celtrek customers as long as they still have the celtrek SIM card. The reason is that we would be able to switch those cards onto our network and make them work with our equipments. Our company would save, so we share the savings.

Our service is not prepaid, it is postpaid. But at this time we only sell it to customers in the US (sorry for the others).

You can check our website at telna Mobile - Low cost cellular service for international travelers(reduced roaming for inbound and outbound calls while abroad)

I'll keep an eye on the forum for your questions.

Thanks for looking!

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by telnamobile

Hi
The reason I post in this thread is that we decided to waive our first year of annual fees for former celtrek customers as long as they still have the celtrek SIM card.

Which Celtrek SIM card? #1, #2 or #3?

[telnamobile]

Hi

Because our company has been providing long distance services in the US since 2002 and we have our own network and direct relationship with dozens of the world largest carriers, as well as network equipment on 2 continents. The cellular carrier from whom we get the SIM cards doesn't have as much influence as in the case of the other providers we've seen on the market who were only reselling SIM cards without much influence on the technical handling of the calls, and without any other revenue stream to ensure their service would be there for many years.

To save you from decompiling the cards, I can tell you that the SIMs are coming from an Israeli mobile operators. This being said, that does not mean it will encounter the troubles of other cards from Israel as the technical setup is completely different. 100% of voice calls transit over our own network.

We could imagine this SIP option indeed where you would send the calls to yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver . Would you need a proxy to register into, and/or are you sending from a fixed IP address?

Currently we offer numbers in California, Florida and New York. We will add shortly Washington DC, Nevada, Illinois and Texas

We don't pretend to have better rates than everyone else for all countries and we know that roaming to Canada or Mexico for example is a weak point for our service at this time. However we offer free voicemail online, which means that if you travel in one of the expensive countries with our service and you have access to the internet, you can check your voicemails from our website.

We understand that the missing text messages can be a deal-killer. We're working on making sure our US numbers properly receive text messages before rolling out the text messages service.

[VladS]

Originally Posted by telnamobile

To save you from decompiling the cards, I can tell you that the SIMs are coming from an Israeli mobile operators. This being said, that does not mean it will encounter the troubles of other cards from Israel as the technical setup is completely different. 100% of voice calls transit over our own network.

Do you run your own MVNO registrar or do you piggyback on your provider's HLR? Running your own registrar would allow the call path to entirely bypass the Israeli operator's infrastructure thus reducing latency.

Originally Posted by telnamobile

We could imagine this SIP option indeed where you would send the calls to yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver . Would you need a proxy to register into, and/or are you sending from a fixed IP address?

To be compatible with the SIP world out there you must allow anonymous/unauthenticated calls to the client's SIP URI.

Originally Posted by telnamobile

However we offer free voicemail online, which means that if you travel in one of the expensive countries with our service and you have access to the internet, you can check your voicemails from our website.

Can you also send voicemails to a specified email address?

[telnamobile]

Originally Posted by VladS

Do you run your own MVNO registrar or do you piggyback on your provider's HLR? Running your own registrar would allow the call path to entirely bypass the Israeli operator's infrastructure thus reducing latency.

We piggyback the calls to our provider's HLR.

Originally Posted by VladS

To be compatible with the SIP world out there you must allow anonymous/unauthenticated calls to the client's SIP URI.

We will then work on making this option available. As long as you send yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver to one of our IPs we should be able to add this feature.

Originally Posted by VladS

Can you also send voicemails to a specified email address?

For the voicemails we already have the option of a notification of new voicemail or notification of voicemail with the voicemail attached (wav file).

[VladS]

Originally Posted by telnamobile

We will then work on making this option available. As long as you send yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver to one of our IPs we should be able to add this feature.

The call would come as a SIP INVITE from any source/URI to yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver.

Originally Posted by telnamobile

For the voicemails we already have the option of a notification of new voicemail or notification of voicemail with the voicemail attached (wav file).

Voicemails would be best compressed with either .gsm (limited number of players) or low grade single channel mp3 (to make it compatible with most email enabled phones out there). I for one use 16kbps/mono cbr mp3 to encode voicemails before emailing them to their destination.

[telnamobile]

Originally Posted by VladS

Voicemails would be best compressed with either .gsm (limited number of players) or low grade single channel mp3 (to make it compatible with most email enabled phones out there). I for one use 16kbps/mono cbr mp3 to encode voicemails before emailing them to their destination.

gsm files shouldn't be a problem. I added this to the roadmap of future additions. MP3 I don't think we'll add it because it requires licensing of the codec.

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by VladS

Do you run your own MVNO registrar or do you piggyback on your provider's HLR? Running your own registrar would allow the call path to entirely bypass the Israeli operator's infrastructure thus reducing latency.

Latency is a key issue in these international callback systems. I recommended Celtrek service to a friend as being cheaper than using a Japanese prepaid in Japan. It was. It worked just fine. His wife refused to talk on the phone because she could not get used to the latency. When talking to her relatives in Japan, while in Japan, the call had to go around the world and back again. This introduced such a delay she couldn't accomodate to it. (Most people don't have a half-duplex mode.) Had they been roaming normally, the delay wouldn't have been an issue.

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by telnamobile

We could imagine this SIP option indeed where you would send the calls to yourtelnamobilenumber@sometelnaserver . Would you need a proxy to register into, and/or are you sending from a fixed IP address?

As VladS said, we would just need a SIP-URI, to which we could forward, however in my case my IP-address would change every 24 hours, as most providers interrupt ADSL-connection once a day here in Germany and I would forward calls from my Fritz!Box Fon (a superb VoIP-ATA/PBX/DSL-router).

We don't pretend to have better rates than everyone else for all countries and we know that roaming to Canada or Mexico for example is a weak point for our service at this time.

Against EU-regulated roaming rates your rates are also kind of weak. But of course since you assign landline numbers you don't have any termination income, which could subsidize inbound rates. On the one hand that makes incoming calls more expensive for your users, on the other hand that saves costs for callers and again for your users, if they forward calls (especially if we could forward calls for free via SIP).

What about data service? Will you offer such?

[telnamobile]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

As VladS said, we would just need a SIP-URI, to which we could forward, however in my case my IP-address would change every 24 hours, as most providers interrupt ADSL-connection once a day here in Germany and I would forward calls from my Fritz!Box Fon (a superb VoIP-ATA/PBX/DSL-router).

We'll do it without registration or anything. It's now on the roadmap.

Originally Posted by inquisitor

Against EU-regulated roaming rates your rates are also kind of weak. But of course since you assign landline numbers you don't have any termination income, which could subsidize inbound rates. On the one hand that makes incoming calls more expensive for your users, on the other hand that saves costs for callers and again for your users, if they forward calls (especially if we could forward calls for free via SIP).

Since our first market is the US, we didn't think it would make sense to offer number on the Isle of Man or Liechtenstein or Iceland where the outrageous rates for incoming calls sponsor the calls. That prevent us from offering free incoming calls like some other services, but at least it's easy for anyone to reach our numbers and we are building a long term business model that ensures the users know the real costs.

Originally Posted by inquisitor

What about data service? Will you offer such?

We'll add the data service shortly. We're working on making sure regular customers don't leave their data on at night downloading useless stuff and ending up with a few thousand dollars of data. From our experience that's the most common trouble.