Thursday, September 27, 2007

Maxroam went live

UPDATE:
On tuesday, October 2nd 2007, Maxroam has fixed their rate calculator. It doesn't say anymore that you can call to wherever in the world for just €0.35 when roaming in Germany. Now different prices apply for each country.




Cubic Telecom's Maxroam went live today and I really like the prices for this international SIM card. Making a call to wherever in the world costs €0.35 if you are in Germany. There is no difference between countries. The entire world costs the same €0.35. Receiving calls costs in most cases nearly the same like making them. CEO Pat Phelan says:
Well we want to give back value, we wont pinch on pennies, We will give you the best quality voice services possible, we wont be the absolute rock bottom prices.
Well I hope so, because I don't understand why calls from the USA cost €1.18. Why this big difference?

But still that's much cheaper than the up to $3.65 which AT&T would charge, as you can learn from this insightful article "A Cellphone Without Borders" in today's New York Times. Now I am very courious to get to know Cubic Telecom's Wifi VoIP prices.


NOTE:
Please read also my update blog post "Cubic Telecom's Maxroam stirs up emotions".

9 comments:

  1. For recieving calls with a german landline number GlobalSIM is a much better deal.

    You pay 9,99 euro per month for 200 minutes; that comes to 5 cents a minute versus 25. MAXroam is 500% more expensive. You can get landline number from 40 other countries and pay only 9,9 cents per minute for incoming.

    My big hope is that the big operators look at this and bring down the termination charges for call to mobile area codes in europe . Many asian countries such as thailand and japan have been realigning rates so that there is no distiction in carges for calls to landlines versus cell phones.

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  2. I agree with the comment above - in the lack of full disclosure of tariffs, it is naive to assume that all destinations will be 35 cents a minute.

    Given some of Maxroam/Cubic's remarks about other products on the market, it's disappointing to see that this is little if any cheaper

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  3. Markus
    Many thanks for the nice post
    Whilst I wont discuss other companies and dont understand people saying that we have knocked other companies, quite the opposite in fact, I will answer with one of my favourite words COVERAGE, 50 countries what's the point of 50 countries, MAXroam offers ultra competitive GLOBAL roaming and let me tell you and I will give this to you exclusively here.
    we will have 15-20c USA roaming in next quarter, we will have MAXroam TO MAXroam regardless of country for under 20c in under 5 months, full triggering of call without the callback and global data roaming in under 6 months,this is not the end of a product this is just the beginning.We intend to change the mobile infrastructure and bring the customer back to the centre.we could launch UK mobile sims with just a flight to the Isle Of Man but we don't want to be just a reseller, you know my personal experience of this business if I thought UK,Lichtenstein, Estonia was a better model I would have just become a reseller and resold the best model possible.
    I also note that you commentors are anonymous whilst my phone is on the front page of my blog.
    We really appreciate all your feedback.
    thanks

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  4. Not knocking other products???

    How about this - "50 countries what's the point of 50 countries "

    - errrm, sorry, but there don't appear to be any candidates for this smear.

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  5. "if you cant see sims mentioned in these responses that only work in 50 countries then I must be seeing something wrong. "
    _

    I think so, as none of those mentioned - with numbers from Isle of Man, Jersey, Liechtenstein, Estonia - have so few countries where they work.

    So we don't need this misinformation, please.

    But perhaps you'd care to compare your SIM with the one that it is most obviously alike, namely Celtrek?


    The excuses about incomplete tariff info look a bit weak, given that there was more on your website a while ago.

    We can see that Markus has assumed that all destinations called from Germany would be the same price; that appears not apply everywhere.

    Calls from Australia were shown yesterday on the Maxroam site as 33 euro cents a minute. The Cubic Telecom FAQ page specifies 71 US cents from Australia to USA (although the calculation also has errors)

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  6. Rather strange. As remarked above, outgoing calls to satellite phones are the same price as any other destination.

    But all incoming and outgoing calls roaming on Thuraya are €3.70 a minute.

    It's rather odd that someone as respected as Mr David Pogue used this product in USA without checking the tariff. He thought 15 cents a little expensive, but didn't see that it actually costs over a dollar. Why doesn't Maxroam supply an alternate SIM for use there?

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  7. Pat: "we will have 15-20c USA roaming in next quarter, we will have MAXroam TO MAXroam regardless of country for under 20c in under 5 months, "

    on Pat's blog: "... we are working to create one global solution. "
    __

    Are you working to resolve the rather high tariffs across much of the Middle East and some Northern African countries, where calls between 2 Maxroam SIMs would cost $6 a minute?

    I was talking a bit earlier to a friend who had been waiting to see Maxroam.

    In Europe, all his firm have O2 UK with free incoming and 25 pence a minute outgoing to all of Europe. So calls between 2 of them both roaming would cost about double on Maxroam, and landline DIDs just don't enter the picture.

    Apparently his firm is in the petroleum industry, hence the interest in the Middle East.

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  8. I see that most of the tariffs have gone up by about a third (but not for from the USA)

    eg 25 to 34 cents, 35 to 47

    but still the same rates to all destinations, per roamed country

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  9. Even if the rates had gone up, 47c Germany to Cuba is decent value!

    Truth is... the rates haven't actually gone up! Just that the US$ datasheet was loaded instead of the € one. To make matters doubly confusing though, the € symbol appears next to the price (which is shown in $).

    Anyhow guys. This is obviously all still a building site! The rate calculator is obviously miles off in more ways than one! Let everything settle down, and then we get the picture. In the mean time, it would be nice if Pat would answer some questions such as how much will it be to call sat phones, and how does one send SMS to the SIM? Does that require a separate number or can it be sent to the geographic numbers?

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