Skip to main content

Knowroaming

Many months ago, a Canadian company announced that they had a gizmo that would cut your roaming charges (both voice and data) by between 80% and 90%.  Granted since then the big boys (Bell/Rogers etc) were forced to be more reasonable, mainly because they were concerned that ATT was about to come in and add real competition.

Anyway, the Knowroaming system rates are higher than owning a "local" phone, but then when you travel you don't want to have number of sim cards where you remembered to pay you monthly bill (it can add up).  Well the Knowroaming device arrived a few days ago, just in time for a week of finance conference in Mexico City, where being reached in real time is essential.  There's a physical part (which is a sticker you install on your sim card), and software that is installed on your phone.

Now my potential Mexican clients have a local number to call, all my current client can call me on my usual number and I have relatively inexpensive data in Mexico -- 30c a MB which is about three times what the locals pay.  I also have a US and a UK number and can acquire other country number for a reasonable fee.

So I installed this little device and off to the races with the software installation!

The installation  process was less than intuitive, especially since some things can only be done on the road, and I got up this morning to catch my flight at 4:30 AM... its been a long day.  Turns out there's an complex (but elegant) way of installing the software and a quick and "nerd" way -- frankly, the nerd way is easier.  But now I'm at the race.  and my phone works.

I think I am one of the first one to have this device installed, they shipped it priority when I said I was leaving for a week in mid March (started shipping at the very end of February).  This is really a breakthrough, also because all my usage is pre-paid no insane phone bills in a few weeks when I get back home.  I've loaded $50 for the week, the guys say that with reasonable data usage and limited international calling (by me) it should be more than enough.

A game changer.  Check them out www.knowroaming.com

P.S.  The Knowroaming system is now in its second day on the road, last night I was able to check my emails (not on wifi) and make some calls (ok so I am lying there a bit).  But bottom line since I've pre-paid a $50 credit, and I've only used up $2.00 I feel safe with the idea that I will not have a huge bill.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more