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West and South Asia From Turkey to Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Ladakh and Bangladesh
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  #1  
Old 19 Nov 2009
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Unhappy cell phones in Iran
In Iran at the moment, and having issues with the mobile phone service.

I can *usually* not send SMS (text messages) to international numbers.
I can *never* receive SMS/texts sent from people in other countries (have tried UK & Greece, multiple networks)

Got an IranCell SIM here, that otherwise seems to work ok.

Anyone have experience with resolving this? Local shops seem to be clueless and resort to switching back and forth between different IranCell SMS centers (not surprisingly to no avail), while IranCell customer service is as helpful and efficient as any other mobile phone operator... i.e. impossible to deal with.

Any clues?

Alexandros
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Old 19 Nov 2009
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I don't think that there's anything you can do with the Iranian SIM. International SIMcards work as expected - most of the time. When I was there in September I could make/receive international calls and text messages, but of course whilst paying premium roaming charges. If it makes you feel any better, you could be in Xinjiang/China, where there are neither international calls (mobile, landline, fax - doesn't matter), nor any internet whatsoever. So it could be a lot worse ;-) Speaking of internet blocks in Iran, send me a PM if you need a way to get around them.
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Old 19 Nov 2009
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Alternatively you could continue on your route and buy a SIM as soon as you get to Pakistan. You won't find any place on earth where you can abroad for so little money than there ;-)
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Old 27 Nov 2009
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirakor View Post
I don't think that there's anything you can do with the Iranian SIM. International SIMcards work as expected - most of the time. When I was there in September I could make/receive international calls and text messages, but of course whilst paying premium roaming charges. If it makes you feel any better, you could be in Xinjiang/China, where there are neither international calls (mobile, landline, fax - doesn't matter), nor any internet whatsoever. So it could be a lot worse ;-) Speaking of internet blocks in Iran, send me a PM if you need a way to get around them.
Interesting... my experience is not quite the same. UK SIMs do *not* work at all, Greek SIMs the same, my Turkish TurkCell SIM the same... I tried all my SIMs and they're rejected, one by one, by all networks in range.

Apparently there is another alternative for a pay-as-you-go solution in Iran, which is *not* IranCell and it works much better. Everyone I talk to here cringes when they hear the word "IranCell" - it's known for horrible quality and I even have problems with local SMS/phone connections.

So just stay away from it and invest a bit more ($20 vs $7) to buy another pay-as-you-go SIM. Sorry can't remember the name of the company at the moment.

-A
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Old 30 Nov 2009
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Ok, then I'll have to rephrase my statement above to "German SIM cards work as expected - most of the time", as that's what I was using at the time.

I agree with steering clear of IranCell. I was quoted about $25 for a SIM of the 'other' company also known as a 9xx number. Sorry, hazy memory ...

One more thing: for local calls (within Iran) I ended up using the card payphones. Dirt cheap, and available virtually anywhere.
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