Calls abroad: tourist sims instead of local SIM-cards
The holiday season is over, the townspeople are returning to their usual business, and mobile operators are counting their summer profits. On Habré there were many topics on the subject of huge bills for calls in roaming abroad, expensive GPRS traffic, etc. Roaming looks attractive only in advertising brochures:
Image for request “ roaming abroad ”
A well-known alternative to roaming has always been the purchase of a local SIM card, but this method has a number of inconveniences. The third option is the purchase of specialized tourist sims in Russia.
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This topic is relatively young, so it will not be superfluous to bring clarity. Many, like me once, notice the so-called tourist SIM cards on the counters of mobile phone salons, but they are mistaken for some regular Big Three project. In fact, these are independent operators that specialize exclusively in the provision of cellular services abroad, the largest of which, Simtravel , Goodline and Teletie, are familiar to many who have recently gone abroad for a holiday. Tursimok has a number of features that make them a good alternative to buying a local SIM card and, all the more, roaming from domestic operators.
The first telecommunications companies that dealt exclusively with roaming communications appeared in Russia in 2006. These were Travel Telecom and Extellsim. They issued SIM cards for specific countries (Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates), sold poorly in retail and were replenished only with the help of payment cards. Both companies closed, and with the release of the niche, their own “big three” tourist operators emerged: Russian companies Simtravel and Goodline entered the market, working on the same platform of the Estonian virtual operator and differing only in positioning, and began their work a little later. The international brand is originally from Latvia Teletie, whose SIM cards are used by tourists from other countries of the world with a single Latvian number (+371 *******) of the GSM standard.
The main feature of tourist SIM-cards is the ability to save the Russian number, which allows you to stay in touch, avoiding the tedious procedure of notifying people about a new number. It works quite simply: first, call forwarding to the service number is established. Then, with the help of a certain team, the Russian number is tied to a tourist SIM-card (this information falls into a kind of base). Thus, when a subscriber is called to a Russian number, the call is forwarded first to the service number. At the same time, the call is being identified and it is automatically transferred by the system to the subscriber’s tourist SIM card. Following the link is a description of the Teletie forwarding mechanism. Such an incoming call for the subscriber of the tourist operator becomes paid, with pricing can be found on the websites of companies.
At the same time, it remains possible to receive all calls to your international number - in this case incoming calls for the subscriber of the tourist SIM card become free - but the subscriber who makes the call will pay for this connection.
Of course, they do not install cell towers around the world to provide subscribers with cheap communication. Travel SIM cards are prepaid packages of a foreign operator. It is clear that wholesale purchase gives a serious price advantage. By analogy, corporate unlimited tariffs that are very popular in Moscow come to mind: cellular operators provide companies with conditions that ordinary subscribers never dreamed of. Simtravel and Goodline wholesale prepaid packages of mobile communications operating in 190 countries of the world from Estonians, Latvian Teletie numbers work in 150 countries.
Prices for all "tourist" operators are about the same, a lot depends on the direction - the country where the client is going to go. Everyone has their own buns: for example, all companies offer the preservation of a Russian number, but for Simtravel it costs $ 0.2. per minute, Teletie is a bit more expensive - $ 0.49. in a minute. But Teleti has the cheapest Internet (from 24 kopecks per 10 Kb GPRS in Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and some other countries ).
The cheapness of tariffs is ensured by at least two facts:
Some tend to attribute the callback to the disadvantages of tourist communication, believing that not everyone can get used to it. For them there are mobile applications with which help the call is carried out in the usual way, without Call Back. For example, an application for Android from Simtravel (besides, on their website I found more applications for Windows Mobile and Symbian):
Simtravel Comfort Callback application
An obvious alternative to tourist sim cards is to buy local SIM cards in the host country. Especially beneficial is Vodafone. But all local sims have one big disadvantage compared to tourist ones: quite expensive call forwarding from a Russian number, so in each country the subscriber will have to inform their relatives of a new number and condemn them to international calls. In addition, if the subscriber made a choice in favor of the local SIM card, then with a zero balance, the connection will not be available to him. And with the Turksims traveler, even if left aground, everything will also be able to receive incoming calls completely free of charge for themselves in most countries.
Another obvious disadvantage of local operators is the limitation of the SIM card validity period. If you do not constantly replenish the balance (and, most likely, having bought a local SIM card on occasion, the subscriber may not return to the same country in the coming years), the number will be canceled and the SIM card can be safely thrown into the bin. As for local prepaid communication packages for tourists, they are valid for only a month.
Another competitive environment for travel SIM-cards is the Russian mobile operators. However, their standard roaming is ten times more expensive. Of course, many of them have released proposals for vacationers by the summer. Yes, and those are less profitable than tourist SIM-cards, because, for example, reducing the fee for incoming, operators leave the outgoing cost equal to 70 rubles (like Beeline), or do not lower the tariff for GPRS. After all, Russian operators are oligopolists who can afford to pledge a large margin in prices due to the actual lack of competition.
One example of the activities of domestic cellular companies in this field: on July 27, MTS blocked the redirection of calls to service numbers 8-800 *******, motivating it with a large-scale fraud (fraud). Allegedly, content providers or IP-telephony operators made these numbers paid, and, giving out free numbers (because the numbers are similar in format), they split subscribers with money. However, instead of fighting unscrupulous partners (which the same MTS successfully leads on the front of short numbers), they chose to close the redirection to all numbers of the above format.
The piquancy of this situation lies in the fact that one of the international SIM-card operators, the number of the format 8-800 was used to provide the service “preservation of the Russian number”. Accordingly, when MTS closed the call forwarding, their subscribers could not receive free call forwarding from Russia abroad. Which, of course, was sad for everyone except the “eggheads,” who, in fact, thus decided to regain some of the roaming profits eaten by tourist sims. Now Teletie has solved the problem by replacing the service number with a straight line. This made the service a bit more expensive (exactly the cost of forwarding the MTS number to a direct Moscow city number). MTS is not the first time in ugly stories , but now is not about that.
As long as dissatisfied subscribers fill up mobile operators with complaints, the tourist sim card market is growing and this growth cannot be stopped. According to unofficial statistics provided to me by one of my acquaintances, by the nature of their activities related to the cellular communications market, no more than 5% of subscribers are now opting for travel SIM cards when they go on vacation. And this means that the potential is huge. The Big Three are unlikely to part with their super-profits, so it will be interesting to follow the developments. Of course, it is possible that some of them will sooner or later make their travel SIM-card, but for this they will have to sacrifice a brutal price policy. Consumers in any case will not be the loser: tourist sims can be bought in any mobile phone shop or even in a hypermarket, stocking up products for the weekend.
Image for request “ roaming abroad ”
A well-known alternative to roaming has always been the purchase of a local SIM card, but this method has a number of inconveniences. The third option is the purchase of specialized tourist sims in Russia.
')
This topic is relatively young, so it will not be superfluous to bring clarity. Many, like me once, notice the so-called tourist SIM cards on the counters of mobile phone salons, but they are mistaken for some regular Big Three project. In fact, these are independent operators that specialize exclusively in the provision of cellular services abroad, the largest of which, Simtravel , Goodline and Teletie, are familiar to many who have recently gone abroad for a holiday. Tursimok has a number of features that make them a good alternative to buying a local SIM card and, all the more, roaming from domestic operators.
Background
The first telecommunications companies that dealt exclusively with roaming communications appeared in Russia in 2006. These were Travel Telecom and Extellsim. They issued SIM cards for specific countries (Turkey, Egypt, United Arab Emirates), sold poorly in retail and were replenished only with the help of payment cards. Both companies closed, and with the release of the niche, their own “big three” tourist operators emerged: Russian companies Simtravel and Goodline entered the market, working on the same platform of the Estonian virtual operator and differing only in positioning, and began their work a little later. The international brand is originally from Latvia Teletie, whose SIM cards are used by tourists from other countries of the world with a single Latvian number (+371 *******) of the GSM standard.
Save Russian number
The main feature of tourist SIM-cards is the ability to save the Russian number, which allows you to stay in touch, avoiding the tedious procedure of notifying people about a new number. It works quite simply: first, call forwarding to the service number is established. Then, with the help of a certain team, the Russian number is tied to a tourist SIM-card (this information falls into a kind of base). Thus, when a subscriber is called to a Russian number, the call is forwarded first to the service number. At the same time, the call is being identified and it is automatically transferred by the system to the subscriber’s tourist SIM card. Following the link is a description of the Teletie forwarding mechanism. Such an incoming call for the subscriber of the tourist operator becomes paid, with pricing can be found on the websites of companies.
At the same time, it remains possible to receive all calls to your international number - in this case incoming calls for the subscriber of the tourist SIM card become free - but the subscriber who makes the call will pay for this connection.
How it works
Of course, they do not install cell towers around the world to provide subscribers with cheap communication. Travel SIM cards are prepaid packages of a foreign operator. It is clear that wholesale purchase gives a serious price advantage. By analogy, corporate unlimited tariffs that are very popular in Moscow come to mind: cellular operators provide companies with conditions that ordinary subscribers never dreamed of. Simtravel and Goodline wholesale prepaid packages of mobile communications operating in 190 countries of the world from Estonians, Latvian Teletie numbers work in 150 countries.
Prices for all "tourist" operators are about the same, a lot depends on the direction - the country where the client is going to go. Everyone has their own buns: for example, all companies offer the preservation of a Russian number, but for Simtravel it costs $ 0.2. per minute, Teletie is a bit more expensive - $ 0.49. in a minute. But Teleti has the cheapest Internet (from 24 kopecks per 10 Kb GPRS in Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal and some other countries ).
The cheapness of tariffs is ensured by at least two facts:
- The Baltic countries are members of the European Union, therefore the rates for foreign calls are much lower there;
- Tourist SIM card operators use Call Back technology, which transfers an outgoing call to an incoming call (if the subscriber calls, for example, to Russia from Europe, the server drops the outgoing call, followed by a callback and the phone accepts the incoming call). Due to the fact that the connection is made through the operator’s servers located in the Baltic States, where communication tariffs are, by definition, lower, the cost of the call is significantly reduced.
Some tend to attribute the callback to the disadvantages of tourist communication, believing that not everyone can get used to it. For them there are mobile applications with which help the call is carried out in the usual way, without Call Back. For example, an application for Android from Simtravel (besides, on their website I found more applications for Windows Mobile and Symbian):
Simtravel Comfort Callback application
Alternatives
An obvious alternative to tourist sim cards is to buy local SIM cards in the host country. Especially beneficial is Vodafone. But all local sims have one big disadvantage compared to tourist ones: quite expensive call forwarding from a Russian number, so in each country the subscriber will have to inform their relatives of a new number and condemn them to international calls. In addition, if the subscriber made a choice in favor of the local SIM card, then with a zero balance, the connection will not be available to him. And with the Turksims traveler, even if left aground, everything will also be able to receive incoming calls completely free of charge for themselves in most countries.
Another obvious disadvantage of local operators is the limitation of the SIM card validity period. If you do not constantly replenish the balance (and, most likely, having bought a local SIM card on occasion, the subscriber may not return to the same country in the coming years), the number will be canceled and the SIM card can be safely thrown into the bin. As for local prepaid communication packages for tourists, they are valid for only a month.
Our
Another competitive environment for travel SIM-cards is the Russian mobile operators. However, their standard roaming is ten times more expensive. Of course, many of them have released proposals for vacationers by the summer. Yes, and those are less profitable than tourist SIM-cards, because, for example, reducing the fee for incoming, operators leave the outgoing cost equal to 70 rubles (like Beeline), or do not lower the tariff for GPRS. After all, Russian operators are oligopolists who can afford to pledge a large margin in prices due to the actual lack of competition.
One example of the activities of domestic cellular companies in this field: on July 27, MTS blocked the redirection of calls to service numbers 8-800 *******, motivating it with a large-scale fraud (fraud). Allegedly, content providers or IP-telephony operators made these numbers paid, and, giving out free numbers (because the numbers are similar in format), they split subscribers with money. However, instead of fighting unscrupulous partners (which the same MTS successfully leads on the front of short numbers), they chose to close the redirection to all numbers of the above format.
The piquancy of this situation lies in the fact that one of the international SIM-card operators, the number of the format 8-800 was used to provide the service “preservation of the Russian number”. Accordingly, when MTS closed the call forwarding, their subscribers could not receive free call forwarding from Russia abroad. Which, of course, was sad for everyone except the “eggheads,” who, in fact, thus decided to regain some of the roaming profits eaten by tourist sims. Now Teletie has solved the problem by replacing the service number with a straight line. This made the service a bit more expensive (exactly the cost of forwarding the MTS number to a direct Moscow city number). MTS is not the first time in ugly stories , but now is not about that.
As long as dissatisfied subscribers fill up mobile operators with complaints, the tourist sim card market is growing and this growth cannot be stopped. According to unofficial statistics provided to me by one of my acquaintances, by the nature of their activities related to the cellular communications market, no more than 5% of subscribers are now opting for travel SIM cards when they go on vacation. And this means that the potential is huge. The Big Three are unlikely to part with their super-profits, so it will be interesting to follow the developments. Of course, it is possible that some of them will sooner or later make their travel SIM-card, but for this they will have to sacrifice a brutal price policy. Consumers in any case will not be the loser: tourist sims can be bought in any mobile phone shop or even in a hypermarket, stocking up products for the weekend.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/74895/
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