Job Discussion Forums

[almatythen]

The only website for mobile service I could find is KCell.
Anyone have a phone with this company?
Any suggestion on whether to bring my phone or just purchase one there?

[oxi]

Was ok last summer. My wife got a KCell pre-paid simcard, just for calling, for the month she was there with her non-iphone.

Our friends who took iphone 4s into Kaz also had no problems. I think they had to snip the simcards to the right size as they couldn't find the right ones.

As for post-paid deals with wifi and 3G - possible, but unsure of prices.

[buntingblue]

WILL your iPhone work in another country? Of course it will -- it will operate under so called "roaming charges".

Ask not whether your iPhone will work in another country, but rather, ask whether or not you'll be able to afford the roaming bill whenever you return to Russia (or wherever your permanent domicile is!).

Also, have a defibrillator machine nearby when you open the bill - it's a handy thing to have around when you're having a heart attack! ))

Solutition? Bring a cheap mobile phone with you and buy a SIM card for it in that country you're visiting. This will be much MUCH MUCH cheaper than skyrocketing your iPhone charges on roaming charges.

[Houston]

Is your iphone unlocked? If it's not, then you can't use it with another carrier's sim cards.

If it's unlocked, you can plug in a sim chip in pretty much whatever country you're in, and it will work.

[ComradeBL]

As Houston stated, as long as your iPhone/iPad/mobile is unlocked, you can insert any SIM card you purchase in KZ and have the device work on the local network.

From what I've seen, there are 4 major providers in KZ, but two seem to go hand in hand, meaning I think there are only 3. There is KCell, which you mentioned in a previous post, and Activ. These are the two providers that I think are hand-in-hand. A colleage of mine has a KCell wireless internet card but the SIM inside the modem says Activ.

The other two are BeeLine, a company based out of Russia, and Tele2, although Tele2 is fairly new, at least it's new where I live. Tele2 really hasn't caught on here, but I hear many talking of switching as they seem to think Tele2 has the best rates.

The way most mobile providers work is to charge a very low rate if you call someone who has the same company as you (BeeLine to BeeLine numbers) but charge a high rate to call a different provider (BeeLine to Activ). What most people do here is either carry two mobile phones, one with an Activ number and one with a BeeLine number, or they have a mobile that runs with two SIM cards inside the phone.

Years ago I lived in Saudi Arabia, and while there working for a "university" (that's another long story), I also did some short-term contract work where I acted as a mystery shopper. Most of the shops I did were for Sony-Erricson, who was studying the KSA market and how to improve their mobiles. Out of the hundreds of mobile shops I visited, the "Cadaliac" of mobiles, by far, was Nokia. The parts to fix were easy to obtain and everyone knew how to work on them. This seems to be the case here in KZ. You'll find LG, Samsung, and even the iPhone is making a big push, but the king is Nokia.

I wanted to get an iPhone and bring it here to KZ, but remembered my time in KSA and decided to go with the Nokia N900. It runs on both the Android and Naneo platforms. When I first got here, I went though airtime cards like Carter goes through liver pills. Now that I've got the wi-fi solved, I couldn't tell you the last time I put money on the phone (and I use BeeLine).

This is a bit long, but hope it helps.