Hi all,
I recently got hold of a Pebble national roaming sim card and thought I would make a post about my experience with it.
Further investigation revealed that the Pebble service is based on the Chameleon EU sim from Manx Telecom. The SIM I received has a number from a 'Three' allocation but appears to prefer O2 as the home network. I currently have the £34.99 Pay Monthly.
Cannot Force National Roaming
The first thing I noticed is that I could not get the sim to sign on to any network except O2, which I thought was quite odd behaviour for a national roaming sim. When I contacted their CS I was told that the technology is quite clever and will only roam onto other networks when there is no signal from the preferred roaming partner. I'm not sure what would happen in the case you have a very weak barely usable signal from O2 but a strong signal from Vodafone, EE or Three.
Presentation number
After reading a thread on here from the director of Pebble, I asked CS about having my everyday mobile number as a presentation number for calls and texts made from my Pebble sim. They told me this can be arranged and to email their network ops team with the details and proof that I "own" the number. I am currently waiting for this to be implemented.
Rates to Greece
One of the countries I call is Greece. I note from their web site that calls to the EU (plus some other countries totalling 60 in all) are charged at the standard rate. I found this was not the case and I was charged 5p (unit cost on the £34.99 Pay Monthly plan should be 3.5p) for a call to a landline and 8p for a call to a mobile. I contacted CS about this and they refunded the charges and fixed the tariff. I have not tested whether other European countries are correctly charged.
Calling Service Numbers
At first it would seem you cannot call any number beginning with 08 from the sim. Depending on the number called you will either get endless ringing or one of a few error messages. I did find after a while that if you prefix the number with +44, e.g +44 870 123 4567 then the call will connect.
Their web site for PAYG says that when calling service numbers (numbers beginning with 08) you will pay a 5p access charge plus the service charge for the number, however the service charge will be immediately refunded. For Pay Monthly it says that calls to service numbers will not cost more than your standard tariff. In my real world test with a Pay Monthly sim, I found that I was charged 18p for a call to an 0870 number which has a 13p service charge but the service charge was not refunded. I have in effect paid considerably more than my standard tariff. I have yet to ask their CS about this.
General
Calls and texts to 01, 02, 03 and mobile numbers appear to work and be charged as expected. I have not tried numbers in either the Channel Islands or Isle of Man (e.g 07924, 07939, 07781 etc). 070, 118 and 09 numbers are not available as stated on the Pebble web site.
Data speeds for me were around 2Mbps down and 1Mbps up. This is about normal on O2 3G in my experience. I was assigned an IP from Manx Telecom.
I have not yet tried EU roaming with this sim, that will come next month.
Dave
I recently got hold of a Pebble national roaming sim card and thought I would make a post about my experience with it.
Further investigation revealed that the Pebble service is based on the Chameleon EU sim from Manx Telecom. The SIM I received has a number from a 'Three' allocation but appears to prefer O2 as the home network. I currently have the £34.99 Pay Monthly.
Cannot Force National Roaming
The first thing I noticed is that I could not get the sim to sign on to any network except O2, which I thought was quite odd behaviour for a national roaming sim. When I contacted their CS I was told that the technology is quite clever and will only roam onto other networks when there is no signal from the preferred roaming partner. I'm not sure what would happen in the case you have a very weak barely usable signal from O2 but a strong signal from Vodafone, EE or Three.
Presentation number
After reading a thread on here from the director of Pebble, I asked CS about having my everyday mobile number as a presentation number for calls and texts made from my Pebble sim. They told me this can be arranged and to email their network ops team with the details and proof that I "own" the number. I am currently waiting for this to be implemented.
Rates to Greece
One of the countries I call is Greece. I note from their web site that calls to the EU (plus some other countries totalling 60 in all) are charged at the standard rate. I found this was not the case and I was charged 5p (unit cost on the £34.99 Pay Monthly plan should be 3.5p) for a call to a landline and 8p for a call to a mobile. I contacted CS about this and they refunded the charges and fixed the tariff. I have not tested whether other European countries are correctly charged.
Calling Service Numbers
At first it would seem you cannot call any number beginning with 08 from the sim. Depending on the number called you will either get endless ringing or one of a few error messages. I did find after a while that if you prefix the number with +44, e.g +44 870 123 4567 then the call will connect.
Their web site for PAYG says that when calling service numbers (numbers beginning with 08) you will pay a 5p access charge plus the service charge for the number, however the service charge will be immediately refunded. For Pay Monthly it says that calls to service numbers will not cost more than your standard tariff. In my real world test with a Pay Monthly sim, I found that I was charged 18p for a call to an 0870 number which has a 13p service charge but the service charge was not refunded. I have in effect paid considerably more than my standard tariff. I have yet to ask their CS about this.
General
Calls and texts to 01, 02, 03 and mobile numbers appear to work and be charged as expected. I have not tried numbers in either the Channel Islands or Isle of Man (e.g 07924, 07939, 07781 etc). 070, 118 and 09 numbers are not available as stated on the Pebble web site.
Data speeds for me were around 2Mbps down and 1Mbps up. This is about normal on O2 3G in my experience. I was assigned an IP from Manx Telecom.
I have not yet tried EU roaming with this sim, that will come next month.
Dave



