Callkeyone Card - "0044"

[ticex]

Greetings,

Well, I was intrigued by the "Global" card mentioned the other day on offer from a company in the UK called "0044". While the price is a little on the high side for the SIM (?34.99 - possibly due to a mark up by 0044) the service is certainly interesting as the rates for calls / sms are competitive and incoming calls are free in all the places I frequently travel in Europe. The card I received is actually from a company called CallKeyOne who are based in the Isle of man (www.callkey.com). The support seems to be good as they replied to a question I sent by email at 20:30 on a Friday within 20 minutes!

I've been using Riing (UM) for over a year and it seems to perform perfectly well with only the occasional glitch but the one disadvantage for me personally was the cost involved in people calling me. To keep things simple for clients and friends I gave them a UK based "personal" number from a company called Flextel which allows free forwarding to mobile phones pretty much anywhere in Europe. The downside of this is the cost for people to call me...GBP 0.35 / min 24hrs a day! Even if I handed out the Riing number most operators charge quite a bit to call the Liechtenstein number.

To combat the large cost of people calling me I've started diverting calls from my landline to my mobile when travelling which is ideal as I simply give my office number to everybody. However, the cost when using this with Riing was just too high to be economic. I currently use a UK based VOIP service called Voipfone and they charge GBP 0.27 /min to divert to Riing whereas diverting to the Isle of Man number issued by CallKey only costs me GBP 0.08 / min. I can even couple this with a UK freephone number for an additional GBP 0.04 / min and have anybody call me for free while I'm pretty much anywhere in Europe and it will cost me less than half the cost of receiving a regular roaming call with my UK Orange phone! Voipfone is particularly good as they have a system called "virtual PBX" that allows me to have several extensions and setup individual diverts on each one. This means I can have all calls to my geographical number ring my SIP phone at home, the office and also ring my Callkey mobile at the same time. If I'm at home or in the office I pickup the SIP phone and pay nothing but if I'm over in Belgium, France or Germany even I pickup the mobile & pay a few pence a minute.

The other thing I have setup might be of interest to people from the USA is a Washington number that forwards for free to my Voipfone extension via SIP - perfect audio quality and once again clients and friends in the USA can contact me wherever I am for little or no cost to them and I pay very little to receive the call. I haven't checked into it in much but I'm sure there will be ways to get geographical numbers in other European countries that forward via SIP to my extension. The main advantage of all this is it's all prepaid and can be setup within a matter of minutes by anybody. You don't even need to use a SIP phone to have the mobile forwarding bit setup.

So far I've found the bad points about the Callkey card are....

There is NO CALLER ID on incoming or outgoing calls - all show as Private Number. I've emailed support and they said they do not offer this service and have no plans to introduce it. While it's only a small problem it stops me using the Voipfone callback service in a simple way which would have given me very cheap calls and I miss seeing the numbers of missed calls. I can use the callback but it's a little complex...I have to go to a special webpage on my PDA, login, type in the Callkey number in one box, the number I want to call in the other and I receive a call. Complex - but at least I can get it to work.

The only other bad point I can see for the moment is how the phone rings when people call. The caller hears the ringing tone (UK style) a few seconds before the mobile actually rings. Initially I thought this meant the caller was charged even while the call is "ringing" but after testing it's not the case - charging starts only when the call is answered on the mobile. The problem is impatient people sometimes only allow a few rings before hanging up so if you're not quick in answering the phone then that will be a missed call with no caller ID.

I'd be interested if anybody else has used this card and to share experiences with regard to it's reliability in different countries etc.. I'll be conducting some more "real world" tests myself over the next few weeks.

:meh:
Michael

[0700700]

i expected some more tests... as in whether the prices were similar to the ones shown on the website, how well it roamed and stuff :bye2:

[ticex]

Yes, these are indeed the most important tests! I'll be back out of the UK next week so I'll be able to test it in France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany. However, on the face of it as the UK mainland is a "roaming" country and it works fine on all the networks things look like they could be ok.

The prices within the UK seem to actually be slightly lower than the ones quoted on 0044's website. They are actually calculated in USD but 0044 quote them in GBP and it seems the exchange rate used by 0044 is slightly pessimistic. For example I made a 1 minute test call to a UK landline number which was charged at USD 0.15 (~GBP 0.859) which is ever so slightly lower than the rate of GBP 0.09 quoted on 0044's website. I know that buying credit on the credit card will give a poorer exchange rate but this initial test seems to show that the 0044 rates are pretty much correct for that section. The exact charging system seems to charge the call in 2 chunks..one relating to the country roaming in and the other for the termination. Here is a copy of what the user area of the website said about the call:

From United Kingdom [GBR] 447624xxxxxx 0:01:00 US$ 0.1100
To +44131xxxxxxx +44131xxxxxxx 0:01:00 US$ 0.0352
Cost: US$ 0.15

I'll make some more calls over the coming days and post the actual charged rates from the website control panel thing at callkey. However, as mentioned some more thorough tests are needed but for me the incoming possibilities are certainly interesting.

[andy]

I got one recently, and took it abroad 2 weeks ago. It roams on any UK network, but chooses O2 for preference. Travelling through the countries ticex names plus Austria and Slovakia, I didn't try to register with every single network in every single country, but I didn't find any where it wouldn't.

I had read a comment here that it wasn't always reachable from O2, so I called it with my O2 phone several occasions in each country and it always rang. It's noticeable with both phones next to you that the caller hears about 3 rings before the other phone rings; this applies to calls in both directions. I made 3 calls home to UK from Slovakia Germany and France. A 10.2 minute call from France cost $2.11 + tax, about ?1.45 total.

The tariffs on the CallKey site are only available on secure pages, are quoted in dollars, and probably without VAT, as an initial balance of US $10.13 became $8.62 (= ?5). There are some errors on the 0044 site; typical call costs to landlines are in the range 20c to 25c. Mobile destinations are relatively expensive at around 60c, but I think I've found what could be a cheaper workaround. There is a cheaper rate of around 35c for calling UK 08 numbers and there are a wealth of especially 0871 callthrough numbers that could be used for many international mobiles, so this should save a typical 25c plus tax. I've called like this about 5 times, but not answered to see what the call quality was like - probably difficult to judge anyway with a phone to each ear and hearing your own voice

As ticex suggests, there may be cheaper callback possibilities with other providers, but some of these may be more tricky due to no caller ID at present. I suggested another possibility to someone here, and have two similar ideas - think about using callback and call diversion together. Or use web triggers, either on a PDA or via gprs ...?

Voipfone in fact has UK 0844 numbers on its tariff at 5p, and some of these can reach UK mobiles at the moment, but these are promotional offers; so for now it would be possible to use Voipfone with this SIM to call landlines for 9.6p, UK mobile for 13.5p, other mobiles for 18.5p per minute. They have some cheaper rates that are almost certainly tariff mistakes, but with certain other tariffs elsewhere it may be possible to make calls for about 4p per minute, or less. I really doubt if this would work though, but more playing about required.

It is rather odd that many companies count IoM mobile as a UK one without even knowing it, but other cheap call providers have no coverage there at all. From the UK, the cheapest way to call there has risen twice recently from 1p to 4p per minute; promotional price as I said, but maybe 18185's 5p weekdays, 2p weekends will last

[0700700]

Originally Posted by andy

A 10.2 minute call from France cost $2.11 + tax, about ?1.45 total.

typical call costs to landlines are in the range 20c to 25c. Mobile destinations are relatively expensive at around 60c, but I think I've found what could be a cheaper workaround.

was the first charge for a standard landline call to the uk ? i ask because by phoning a calling card number (0208************) i can then call for less than half a pence a minute everywhere in europe

Also have you tested any calls where the differences (as in prices to call landlines and mobiles) were really obvious ??? thanks a lot


both Andy and Ticex... Great work

[andy]

Originally Posted by 0700700

was the first charge for a standard landline call to the uk ? i ask because by phoning a calling card number (0208************) i can then call for less than half a pence a minute everywhere in europe

Also have you tested any calls where the differences (as in prices to call landlines and mobiles) were really obvious ??? thanks a lot

Whilst you could do that with the calling card, there will only be pretty marginal savings on some destinations, as the variation is only about 3c for common European landlines and they will probably be a bit more on the calling card as well

eg calling in France to -
USA .206, UK .206, A .222, B .234, CZ .226, DK .222, EE .238, F .214, D .214, H .238, I .230, FL .278, NL .218, PL .230, SP .222
- these are default landline tariffs, and most but not all capital cities plus a few others eg Antwerp, Barcelona, Milan, are slightly cheaper

If your UK calling card has 0800 access (but not 08081), then the rates drop by 3.2c, but your card provider will probably charge more. The same lower tariffs apply to what they call UK VoIP, which I assume without asking yet will be SIP peering arrangements, but probably not Skype.

From UK itself, the outgoing rates are all lower, starting at 13.2c, or 0800 or VoIP from 10c. I know that some people here have UK SIP numbers, so that might interest them.

Your calling card idea could be useful for replacing the higher CallKey tariffs for foreign mobiles, or an 0871 number would be similarly priced, as I suggested.

Apart from the CallKeyOne SIM itself, their callback can be used separately, by filling in web form, sending sms or email. Then, the cheapest tariffs start at about 4.5c between landlines - all these prices are plus tax of course. I noticed that their rate for Liechtenstein has only a default of 9.52c (7.28c to a UK VoIP number) ... how to start the call though ... the sms method only calls back the number it's sent from, and Riiing's sms rate is high. If you have a facility to send email or webform, that could be useful but then you may have other VoIP possibilities anyway. I'm wondering about wap/gprs trigger possibilities as DRN has suggested before. Maybe they would consider a trigger portal number, but if they haven't so far ...and you somehow feel they wouldn't be keen to support a rival SIM.

Other VoIP providers would have similar possibilities of course. Voipfone as already mentioned has free UK 0800 numbers, VoIP peering, and some other interesting possibilities.

[ticex]

Certainly some interesting ideas floating around. I'm glad to hear from andy that this sim seems to roam ok in different countries as this is the main reason for having it!

I did a small experiment today and was able to setup a callback from voipfone using their "PDA" login (Voipfone Link)via the WAP browser on a Nokia 6230. Even though this system does work it is far from ideal as it involves entering a username, password, phone number for callback and then finally the number you want to call. If any of you guys are like me then you'll have so many mobile numbers just even remembering the number you want the callback to ring to is a challenge in itself! I saved the username and password in the wallet function in my WAP browser but it still involves a fair bit of typing to setup the callback. My concern is it's just too complex to use in the real world. If the IE on my windows smartphone or PDA had the facility to save usernames etc.. like the PC version then this would make things a lot easier. Perhaps there is a plugin or something?

When experimenting with the voipfone callbacks I noticed another good feature is the CLID sent is that of my landline number. When combined with call diversion it means people who miss my call or whatever can simply call me back.

[andy]

I just used the CallKey callback to connect my Riiing number to my home phone. The published tariff is 9.52c. I was charged 53c for 48 seconds, which is 65.52 cents per minute. I'm pretty confident this is an isolated error/omission, but I'll see what they say. Doesn't look like the plan to use this callback with Riiing has much future though.

[ticex]

Oh dear - that's a pity

It would have been particularly "interesting" to use a callback system from one international sim provider with one of their rivals and have the call end up cheaper! For some reason I would have found that especially satisfying :P

[0700700]

andy why did you do that for :blink:


BTW, with o2 i have no problem diverting my calls to an international number (including riing)... it might be a hassle but you can divert your bt line to your mobile phone and your mobile phone to your RIIING card ... it will still work out
cheaper in the end