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Do you need a dual-SIM smartphone?

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

Do I need a dual-sim phone? The answer is probably not. Most people sign a carrier contract and live with that service for two years. 


There is a small niche group that could benefit from a dual-SIM phone, and this is an article for them. Who are these mythical "special" people:

  • users with a personal and professional mobile phone line that want to carry one phone
  • users that travel often and want to use a low-cost SIM in their destination
  • users that live in regions were carriers aren't national providers, and "good" coverage requires service from 2 providers (much of Asia)
  • users that can find low cost unlimited data-only SIM and want another SIM for voice calls and text messaging, 

Not all dual SIM phones are created equal. 

Categories of dual sim phones

Passive dual-sim phones

Passive dual-SIM phones can only use one of the SIM cards at a time which means the user can switch between SIMs using software or a physical switch. 

Standy dual sim phones

Standby dual sim phones (often with the MediaTek chipset) use both SIMs using time multiplexing. Anytime you start using one of the sims (to make a call, send a message or use data), the other SIM is ignored. If someone calls the second sim when the first one is "active", the caller would receive a busy signal.

Active dial sim phones

Active dual-sim phones are capable of using both sims simultaneously and typically have to IMEIs since the phones come equipped with two radios. 

and we continue...

Because things weren't complicated enough, there is also the concept of unequal connectors. Some phones will be passive or active dual sim but may only be able to support full speed 4G on the primary SIM while slowing down to 3G/2G for the second sim.

Some buys mistakenly assume you can leverage both SIMs simultaneously for doubly fast data connectivity. This simply isn't the case. Dual sim capable phones do not perform network bonding to allow dual network stream aggregation. 

When I upgraded my daily drive smartphone, I switched from an iPhone 6s Plus to a Note 8 dual sim. When not travelling, the second slot hosts my SD card, but when I travel, I will load my KnowRoaming SIM. 

I know several account executives that use dual sim phones (one with their personal sim and the other with their work one). This means they can carry one device yet send/receive messages from either. Even in Canada, I know people that use dual sim phones with low-cost fringe providers. They use these providers when in their home zone for cheap service but switch to a pay as you go national carrier when outside of their "home" coverage area.

My Note 8 SIM Manager

  • I can choose if both SIMs are active.
  • I can choose which service to use with which SIM by default (calls, texts, mobile data).
  • I can even ask the phone to confirm which SIM card to use before each call.

Another important consideration

With carriers that support VoLTE (Voice over LTE) or VoWIFI (Voice over WIFI), this functionality is typically only supported on the primary SIM slot. Don't expect both to support VoLTE and VoWIFI. 

Where do I buy a dual sim phone?

Most North American phone models do not come in dual sim versions. The most common way to buy a dual sim phone is either from an importer or you have to import one from a region that sells these devices.

My 128GB dual sim Note 8 was imported from Hong Kong by a Montreal based smartphone importer called PDA Plaza (this is not an ad and is not a sponsored post). I was able to buy my dual sim phone cheaper than what I would have paid locally from Samsung, Bestbuy or my carrier.

There are many options to choose from including Samsung, LG, Asus, OnePlus, etc. Just make sure you check the specifications and ensure the device supports the dual sim model you are looking for.

Examples

Asus Zenphone 5

OnePlus 5T

Huawei Mate 10 Pro

Xiamo Red Mi dual sim

Canada has 12th fastest wireless networks

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

OpenSignal uses its millions of mobile users to map and test global wireless connectivity and they just released their latest global review summary. The 2 main takeaways are that wireless connectivity speeds are improving globally and users are still leveraging WIFI when available. 

Canada is the only western country to reach 20Mbps wireless speeds, making us the 12th best in the world. Our wireless may be expensive but at least it ranks well for performance. As expected, South Korea has kept its crown as the king of wireless speeds. 

For those wondering, our closest neighbor and friend, the United States of America ranks at the 20th position with a speed of 12.48Mbps. 

Talk to me about WIFI

Canada ranks 4th as it related to time on WIFI. Canadians spend on average ~60% of their time connected to WIFI. Again we rank better than the US at 10% more WIFI time than them. 

Discussion with Roujeh Ramadan, CEO of Chill Telecom

GeneralEdward Kiledjian

There has been a lot of discussions about Chill Telecom and it’s young founder (Roujeh Ramadan). And much of the rhetoric has been negative some verging on distasteful. Wanted to present a fair and balanced view, I reached out to Mr Ramadan (who was in Israel) and had a pleasant conversation.

Too young to lead a company

Like many observers, I noticed that his Facebook page indicates he is 20 years old and he confirmed that he was 19. He explained that he started working for a large multinational internet company at the age of 16 (in Israel) then moved to the UK at 17 to join a major engineering organization.

He understands why people may be concerned about his age but assured me he is an experienced engineer with a strong technical background.

Failed IndieGoGo campaign


Many bloggers (myself included) quickly found a failed IndieGogo campaign for his other company’s car heads up display campaign (the Nuuk from Sirius Plus). Mr Ramadan acknowledges that the campaign didn’t go as planned but he assured me that Sirius Plus is a well funded organization with good support in Israel. He also mentioned that the company had a very successful show  in Tel Aviv recently where the product was the star of the show.

$$He acknowledged that his strengths lie in engineering and that he will need to hire business people to handle the non-technical aspects of his business (business development, marketing, communications, etc).$$

Why is the website so bad
 

A regular complaint is that the launch site is poorly designed and poorly copy-written with clear grammatical mistakes. Mr Ramadan acknowledged this gap and said he speaks 4 languages and his proficiency in writing marketing material is lacking. To compensate, he recently hired a specialist to revamp the website and ensure the content is appropriately written in local English.

He started the company only 8 days ago and didn’t expect the kind of media splash he received. He extended he would have a measured ramp up period but instead he has been thrust into the limelight.

Where is he?
 

Many blogs refer to his location tag on Facebook that says he is in the UK. Mr Ramadan confirmed that he has moved to Canada (as of 2 months ago) and intends to build the business based out of here. He setup shop in a technology incubator in Kitchener and believes that is the perfect environment to launch his company. He said the location is geared towards tech companies, he city offers highly trained resources and it is in proximity to Canada’s business center (Toronto).

The avalanche
 

He reiterated many times that the response was overwhelming and completely unexpected. He received 200,000 registrations on his website in the first week and secured $180,000 from early adopters.

He expected a soft launch where he could slowly build his website and marketing/PR material but the coverage was almost immediate and overwhelming.

The demand was so strong that 2 major Canadian carriers took notice and initiated partnership discussions. MR Ramadan will ultimately chose one of them to start the service but isn’t ruling out the possibility of having multiple back end network wholesalers (if the price and terms make sense).

The price
 

I asked Mr Ramadan about his confidence in being able to offer an unlimited everything plan with international roaming for $45 and he said the business case is solid.

He says he intends to copy the model of an Israeli provider that built a similar model and was sold 4 years later for several billion dollars. He says the model works.

As an example, he said he did not have a Canadian cell phone for the first 2 months he was here because his Israeli provider offers free international roaming within Canada.

His longer term vision is to become an well rounded telecommunications company offering television, home phone, home internet and mobile phone services.

Time frame
 

Mr Ramadan understands the excitement around his company and will try to bring the service to market as quickly as possible but the current launch timeline is sometime in 2017.

The team
 

The company was started 8 days ago but currently consists of 5 people (2 business specialists and 3 engineering specialists). They hired a web specialist today to update their website and web content.

The hope is to continue steadily increasing the team (which should reach 20 people in the next 4-5 months)

No Twitter?
 

I asked why they didn’t have a twitter account and was told the team is already overwhelmed with email and FB support. Mr Ramadan is not ruling out Twitter support in the future.

Conclusion
 

My conversation with Mr Ramadan was pleasant and felt genuine. He clearly intends for this to be a real business and only time will tell if he can get it off the ground. Truth be told, the Canadian wireless telecom market is in deep need of competition and we shouldn’t frighten brave newcomers.

I am not willing to bet the farm on this venture but am more inclined to  believe the team will try to make this venture work.

The content in this article was double checked with Mr Ramadan before publishing to ensure I properly captured his views and explanations. He did not influence the questions and did not ask me to re-write any sections.

Skyroam Global Hotspot review

technologyEdward Kiledjian
IMG_8765.JPG

Like most of you, I want to be connected all the time, even while travelling. Check out your carrier's data roaming charges and you'll quickly realize there needs to be a better option. This is where new services are popping up hopping to fill a void. 

The Skyroam Global WIFI Hotspot is a $125 solution that promises unlimited global data roaming in 60+ countries for an affordable flat fee of $10 per day for unlimited use (the company says the per day rate will drop to $8 before the end of summer) They aded 14 new countries in the last 6 weeks including Philippines, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovakia.

I've had my unit for several weeks now and I wanted to travel test it a couple of times before writing this review. 

The idea behind SkyRoam’s global WIFI hotspot is fantastic but I experienced some issues that may cause you to reconsider.

Life With and without Skyroam

A traveller without Skyroam's hotpost has to:

  • SIM unlock his phone through the carrier
  • Find a local sim card in the destination country
  • Insert the new SIM card and make sure you don't lose your original one
  • Reconfigure the APN setting of your device and voila

With Skyroam, you :

  • turn on the Skyroam device
  • start a day pass
  • connect to the Skyroam Global WIFI hotspot (with as many as 5 devices)

So obviously the process is a lot easier but using Skyroam means you have to carry another device. You have to charge another device. Since you are using WIFI, your original number is still active and you can connect multiple devices to the glorious internet.

The Unit

The Skyroam Global WIFI Hotspot is made by a Chinese company and is not one of the traditional WIFI hotspots we have come to expect from our carriers. It is a thick hunk of plastic (4.2x2.3x0.8") and weighs in a 4.9 ounces. The size of the device allows them to use a bigger battery and probably keep production costs down.

When you remove the orange back cap, you see a 2,900mAH battery, a SIM card slot but no SIM card. Yes it is a GSM based device (850,900,1700,1800,1900,2100) with theoretical speeds of up to HSPA+ 42Mbps down but... In Canada and the US, I never experienced speeds faster than 4Mbps

The device works using a virtual SIM technology. The company has banks of SIM cards stored in locations around the world that allow your device to pick a free one for the country you are in (over the air) and get connected fairly quickly.  The Skyroam Global WIFI hotspot has a built in GPS which allows it to identify its location. The advantage of this technology is that you benefit immediately from new Skyroam partnerships without having to mail sim cards or carry a pocket full of SIM cards and swap as you move around. This virtual SIM technology is extremely unique and it really set's them apart from the competitors in this space. 

The only caveat is demand may outpace supply. During discussions, the company confirmed that they over-provision in country SIM cards, there have been 3 occasions (in the span of 3 weeks) where I have been unable to secure a network connect (with a network connection failed message). It seems the demand for Canadian and US service grew faster than they could add capacity which meant I had no network access (the longest "failure to connect" lasted almost a full day).

I trust the company when they say this is an isolated incident but it is still frustrating to be on the road with no connectivity.

The Skyroam Global WIFI Hotspot Experience

So you buy the $125 unit and it comes pre-loaded with 5 (24 hour each) day passes. Each additional day pass costs $10 but they are running a promo right now that drops the per day price to $8 when you buy multi-use packs of passes. 

As a comparison, XCOM Global (the 800lb gorilla in global WIFI connectivity) offers unlimited daypasses for $15 a day. Skyroam offers coverage in 60+ countries while XCOM Global's coverage is double that but certain regions will require region specific hardware where Skyroam works with the same unit everywhere. Skyroam seems to have prioritized the countries with high US traveller volume so the countries you will likely visit are already covered by the Skyroam service.

To buy passes or change your info, you can connect to the device itself and visit a.skyroam.com or use any browser and go to http://service.skyroam.com/ Regardless of which account access method you choose, you will realize it is slow. Very painfully slow.  I have a 50Mbps down fiber optic internet connection at home and it still took several minutes for the service webpage just to open.  [update: I have seen a marked improvement in their back end servers during the last week]

Once you have your day-passes, you travel to your destination country, start the device, give it a couple of minutes to locate you and then you will be prompted to start a day pass. Once you start a day pass, it connects to the local partner and starts beaming wonderful connectivity to your WIFI devices. I tested it in Canada and the US and worked good most of the time. 

In Canada they use Telus (I figured this out by comparing connectivity in various locations against devices from Telus, Rogers, Bell and Videotron). Anywhere Telus has good HSPA or HSPA+ reception, you get good Skyroam connection.

In the US they seem to use AT&T. I did a 7 hour drive from Montreal to Wellsboro Pennsylvania through NY State. My iPhone was connected to Tmobile (using the Roam Mobility service) and my MotoX to the Skyroam hotpot. For good measure, I also borrowed an AT&T Android device for testing. This is how I know its an AT&T partner. It seems many segments of the road had good TMobile coverage but horrible horrible AT&T coverage which meant my Skyroam Global WIFI hotspot kept losing its connection to the non existent network or when it connected service was slow.

Skyroam is dependent on the quality of the in-country service provider. If they have bad connectivity, Skyroam get’s bad connectivity.

Each Skyroam Global Wifi Hotspot supports up to 5 connected devices and this worked very well. All of the WIFI settings are hardcoded into the device but can be changed using their IOS app. You get WPA2 security with a pre determined password over a 2.4 Ghz connection. This isn't a major problem but as a security conscious geek, I would like to have more WIFI setting controls. 

The device is made of plastic and doesn't feel premium. But I didn't experience any hardware issues. The USB connector was solid and worked well (for charging) and the device looked great even while being tossed into my bag for close to a month. 

Their site is plastered with large colorful fonts proclaiming unlimited data but it's unlimited with a big caveat. The first 100 MB of daily use  are truly unlimited and you get all the speed the local carrier makes available via HSPA+. After the first 100MB, you are throttled to 2G speeds. Most modern mapping applications (Waze, Google Maps and Apple Maps) will have  problems working when in 2G mode (256kbps). You should be able to get emails and send text messages (Apple Messages, Hangouts and Whatsapp). I know SkyRoam is considering various bandwidth cap options so I'm hopeful well get something better than the 100 MB cap.

With modern devices and data hungry apps, the 100 MB cap can be relatively easy to hit unless you make a conscious effort to conserve capacity and connect to other WIFI options when available (restaurants, hotels, etc).

Several times during testing I received a message that the device failed to connect to the network (after a day pass was activated). This means I could not use data yet my day pass was still ticking away in the background. This happens because everytime you restart the device, it tries to reserve a temporary SIM from their inventory, if none are available, you can’t connect.

I ran specific tests for the battery and typically I had 6-7 hours of use unless I was in an area with spotty connectivity which seems to drain the battery faster. 

I performed speed tests in various Canadian and US cities and the fastest speed I had was 4 Mbps. In most cases, it was around 2 Mbps. I know many users complained online that their connection was slow but slow is relative. It is slow when you compare it to my 30Mbps down LTE connection but remember this isn't an LTE capable device because there are too many global 4G standards for one device. HSPA+ is relatively standard worldwide which is why they chose it as the wireless tech.

Conclusion

If you are a fairly technical person (able to change your device's APN settings) and travel internationally then you may be better served by buying a local SIM card in your destination country or using KnowRoaming (link).

If you are fairly technical and travel only in the US then your best options are ReadySIM for prepaid SIM card (link) , RoamMobility for reusable refillable SIM cards (link) or YourKarma if you only need pay per use non expiring data (link).

Where does Skyroam come in? It is the ideal solution for the less technical traveller, the tech savvy traveller that doesn't want to fiddle with device settings or the traveller that plans to visit multiple countries. 

I am hopeful that the company will rethink the small 100MB daily unthrottled limit. 

I do think frequent travellers should buy this and through it in their laptop bags. The cost is reasonable, the service is acceptable and overall the solution is robust and easy to use.

Google may offer free international roaming

technologyEdward Kiledjian
Image by Moyan Brenn used under Creative Commons License

Image by Moyan Brenn used under Creative Commons License

We have been hearing rumors that Google will be launching its own MVNO ( mobile virtual network operator) in the US. Now The Telegraph (link) is reporting that one of the goal's of this new (unannounced) MVNO will be free international roaming. 

The report claims that Google is talking to Hong Kong based Hutchison Whampoa (a diversified holding company). Hutchison Telecom Hong Kong Holdings'  customers already roam in many countries roaming-charge free (with the appropriate data plan).

Wherever you travel, stay connected by 3 roaming service. Make and receive voice call, SMS, video call and data roaming in one of our roaming countries/regions. Our 4G LTE / 3G and GSM roaming services are available in over 300 countries and regions globally.
— Three.com.hk

During a Bloomberg interview at Mobile World Congress, Sundar Pichai, Google's Grand Poobah of mobile confirmed that it has ambitions of improving connectivity via an MVNO. All the rumors point to a Nexus 6 exclusive service at launch because they will likely do some kind of WIFI prefered service (where available) to save on data charges and therefore will need to develop very good handoff technology between WIFI and global cell phone networks.

If this is something that actually becomes available to a worldwide audience then this is the kind of tech that would make me leave the iPhone for Android.