Toggle Mobile

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Hi all,

a little review after I received my Togglemobile SIM:

• toggle mobile ordered on 22.May 2013.
• Creditcard debited on 24.May 2013, value date 29. May 2013. Wow.
• The card was delivered in a B5-envelope to Switzerland on 27.May 2013 (today), originating from the UK, by registered mail.

Popped the card into the phone, nothing happened. I tried to access all available networks manually - to no avail. After an akward 2 minutes the phone displayed "please reboot your phone". After rebooting, the phone logged itself into the Swisscom network. (Sunrise and Orange not possible, even trying manually).

First thing, receiving a confusing SMS (I´m currently in Switzerland)
"You will pay max £0.28/min for a local call,
£4.10/min to Country (fixed line or GSM),
£0.07/min for calls received and
£0.08/SMS sent"
(I copied the SMS 1:1, inkl. what may seem strange!)

My own Toggle-UK-number wasn´t communicated by SMS. According to the manual it can be found on the SIM card holder, but it´s not there. Effectively, the number isn´t written anywhere. As the number is needed to register online, I called myself to obtain the number (0044-7404...). (EDIT: You can retrieve the number through *132#) Armed with the number, online registration is a breeze (without UK-prefix, thus 07404... only). When registering, all my data was re-requested (name, addresse etc...). I thus assume that you can use totally different details than those given during the ordering process.

After registering I added a Swiss Nummber/IMSI (0041-77-959...). Super simple, but you need a passport to copy the data from one of the machine-readable lines. Any blanks have to be filled with "<". (No idea if this would also work with an ID)

I rebooted the phone, just to make sure. I was hoping to receive a different pricing-SMS now. Unfortunately I received the (incorrect?) SMS (see above) again.

Next I added a Spanish (0034-63-290...) and a French (0033-6-056...) number. This worked between "immediately" and "one minute". All numbers were immediately reachable, without restarting the phone. Status is first shown as "pending" later "registered". Very nice implementation.

As a first test I called my own French Toggle# from a landline. The call was terminated on the Toggle-SIM in Switzerland (Swisscom network) without problems and in perfect quality. After 10 minutes the call appeared in the online "call history" - free .

Next I want to port my "normal" UK-number to the ToggleSIM. I can only do this in about 2 weeks, so I´ll report then.

Rgds,
Christian

EDIT1: Just as I finish writing this report, I receive numerous SMS. Welcome-SMS displaying the UK-Nummer, incl. the invitation to register online (too late ), and each additional number triggered 2 confirmation SMS.

EDIT2: After ~1 hour I received the following SMS: "Call 322 from UK, +44 7438 646322 from abroad or 02071322322 from another phone to fully activate your service and enjoy all the benefits of toggle mobile" I choose the +44 numner, "1" for customer service. "Please have your PUK available". I wondered what else should be activated here. The friendly Indian-English speaking Lady reveals: "Nothing" - if you already registered online, there´s no need to call. This SMS is just sent out to all customers by default. Strangely enough the call was free from Switzerland, I expected £0.03/min.

EDIT3: Call diverts from my Swiss Flatrate to the Swiss Toggle# were blocked/not forwarded, just as expected. As such I have to use an additional detour via my own Voip-equipment. I don´t get it - from Toggle´s perspective this is just another incoming call for which they can charge interconnect. Strange. I´d be willing to pay a few pence/min to be able to divert directly.

EDIT4: I wrote an email to customer service, asking to have the mailbox disabled. Let´s see if this works.

EDIT5: Call diverts on the ToggleSIM cannot be changed. This I also don´t get. Should be in Toggle´s interest to allow this, as they could charge interconnect + termination as per pricelist?

Summary Numbers/Prefixes, in case someone needs:

• UK: 0044-7404...
• Switzerland: 0041-77-959...
• France: 0033-6-056...
• Spain: 0034-63-290...

[willemijns]

on lycamobile galaxy now they are only one network available if the country purpose a lycamobile offer: their partner period.

[inquisitor]

You mean that you cannot use the Dutch Vodafone IMSI (called "Roaming") to roam in toggle countries?
That's at least what has been reported by German users. But I assume that roaming through the Dutch Vodafone IMSI is only barred for those countries you have a local IMSI from.

[willemijns]

roaming in france or choose FR number give me only bouygues télécom as choice. no others network.

[inquisitor]

So you can still use the "Roaming" IMSI but it is restricted to Bouygues like the French Lyca IMSI? Have you tried to manually select the other networks four times in a row while you use the Roaming IMSI? If you try to register on a certain network less than four times, your SIM may be refused due to steering of roaming which can be overcome by repeatedly trying to register for four times.

[ChrisNeedsToKnow]

Originally Posted by inquisitor

So you can still use the "Roaming" IMSI but it is restricted to Bouygues like the French Lyca IMSI? Have you tried to manually select the other networks four times in a row while you use the Roaming IMSI? If you try to register on a certain network less than four times, your SIM may be refused due to steering of roaming which can be overcome by repeatedly trying to register for four times.

I can only talk about Switzerland right now. I am in Switzerland and I ordered a local Swiss number.

When choosing the "Roaming"-IMSI I cannot access any Swiss network. I requested access 5 times in a row (just to make sure) on each of the 3 networks, to no avail.

Choosing the Swiss IMSI gives me access to Swisscom (only).

For testing purposes I use a Nokia C2-00. When choosing "Automatic" in the SIM Kit, I cannot access any network. I have to choose Switzerland manually.

I´ll report about Germany (without local number) when I visit Germany next time (probably Friday).

Rgds, Christian

[willemijns]

oups. in fact i'm on the same case as ChrisNeedsToKnow, i think they changed my roaming to france without warn me

on ROAMING vodafone NL, no network in France
on France, only bouygues telecom...

lycatel now has negociated with vodafone no network agreement on several countries... so when a lycamobile country is open or if you ask / have asked one month free country number it is now one network you must force. period.

[inquisitor]

It's hardly surprising that toggle now blocks roaming through the "Roaming" IMSI for those countries you have an IMSI from. I would rather assume that there were technical reasons why this barring hasn't been implemented earlier and not legal/contractual ones. You probably remember what I wrote in February in this regard:

Originally Posted by inquisitor

I'm rather surprised that you can still use the global IMSI within a toggle country even if you have a national IMSI from the corresponding country. Once a subscriber has obtained a national IMSI by ordering a local number, roaming through the global IMSI should be blocked in that particular country in order to save costs.
With FreeTimeTelecom the global IMSI did not register in Germany, where they had a local IMSI from now defunct vistream/Telogic Germany. But I guess for toggle it's way more complicated because you would need to define allowed roaming networks for each subscriber individually based on each subscriber's activated local numbers/IMSIs and then you would need to permanently update Vodafone NL's HLR with these records.

[willemijns]

IMHO i think this barring was recent and during the last negociation, lycatel has asked to better filter network and countries.

in any case, it is always b€tt€r than a lycatel customer use a country partner
with his own lycatel MCC/MNC code

[inquisitor]

Originally Posted by willemijns

IMHO i think this barring was recent and during the last negociation, lycatel has asked to better filter network and countries.

Interesting.

Btw, according to this German forum post toggle has recently enabled data roaming for the Roaming IMSI, though the observed charge of £0.66/MB seems a bit high. Can anyone confirm this?
Having a German IMSI and being out of reach of foreign networks I cannot test is myself.