Next week I will be at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and I will take my Maxroam SIM card with me. So outgoing calls to German landlines will cost only €0.38 per minute and incoming calls €0.25, instead of €0.58 and €0.28 which a usual German cell phone provider would charge me. Before last year's regulation these prices where even higher. In some countries I'd still have to pay €2.49 per minute for a local call while roaming. To be reachable in Barcelona I will forward my Berlin office number for free to the UK fixed line number that I have on my Maxroam SIM. I will either use my own ATA for that purpose or a new Maxroam feature.

An outgoing call with Maxroam is a litte bit different from a normal mobile phone call. It doesn't start directly. Instead you see several status messages running over your phone's display, like "calling", "requesting" and then again "calling", before you receive an incoming call with no number. That's Maxroams server calling you. A voice says "connecting, please wait" and contacts the callee. This entire callback system is based on USSD messages. That's a kind of free short messages in GSM networks, which can be sent only between the user's handset and the provider. USSD had been invented to let you check the amount of prepaid minutes on your SIM card for free. Nowadays it's often used as a 'trigger' to invoke independent calling services like Maxroam. Think of it like Jajah, but without the need to pay for mobile data usage for the communication with the server.

The Cubic phone, which can also be had from the company for usage with the Maxroam SIM and for VoIP over Wifi, is so packed with software that there is no space left to secure it with a PIN number. Maxroam's CEO Pat Phelan told me in an interview: "It’s very packed on the operating system and we have had to leave room for the two logging on GUI for the hotspots". In the last quarter the company had lots of backend work going on which now result in further improvements, as Pat Phelan told me in an email:


1. Live billing
We now have full live billing for all users on our backend, make a call, hang up and we instantly display it.

2. Add a local number
As of today we can add local FIXED line numbers to your MAXroam sim from 52 countries. (MAXroam only use fixed line numbers unlike other companies which use international mobile or premium UK mobile numbers where the average users have no knowledge of what it costs to dial the SIM and your friends are just subsidizing your roaming). This list is being added to every day. These numbers begin at €1.05 per month and you can pick up, drop as many as you like, minimum commitment is only a month.

3. Free Call forwarding
When you arrive in your destination sometimes you have access to a hotel room or an office number, we will now allow to forward all your MAXroam numbers totally free to fixed line numbers in a list of 48 countries so you are roaming for ZERO COST.

4. SMS only 5c
Once you log into your MAXroam account we will allow all users to send SMS anywhere in the world from the backend for only 5c per message.


But the most interesting announcement he already made in November, when I asked him in an interview for the German magazine ProFirma about Maxroam's prices compared to other companies like Sunsim, Globalsim or TouristMobile:

Our pricing is only at the beginning, most of these company are just resellers and I don’t mean this as an insult, we are building a global brand here, our aim within 1 year is 20c in and out in Europe and under 10c in the USA. Our next sims will be 128k Java with between 6 and 16 IMSI on each sim depending on your travel arrangements, so you arrive in India, we have an Indian IMSI on your SIM and you roam at discounted rates, we are not depending on other peoples roaming agreement and are at present travelling the planet signing independent roaming agreements.

Under €0.10 in and out? Now that would be a great price for USA, where Maxroam still charges €1.10 or more for incoming and outgoing calls. I can't wait to see these 6 and 16 IMSI SIM cards. That's like taking 16 cell phones with you, each one with a local card. So you don't have to pay for incoming calls.

Labels: Callback, Cubic Telecom, GlobalSIM, Maxroam, SMS, VoIP

                                      

Irishman Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom, is improving his product Maxroam. In the hype time around TechCrunch 40 competition in September 2007 we thought to see roaming prices around $0.20 in every country with this SIM card. That's not a reality yet, but not forgotten as a longer term aim. Now Cubic Telecom announced a cooperation with the folks at Global Roaming which offer a very similar SIM card, called Celtrek. The partnership will allow both companies to offer extended geographic coverage and data roaming on their existing products. Celtrek is stronger in the US market and Maxroam here in Europe.

Phoneboy Dameon Welch-Abemathy revealed an interesting detail in his post on The VoIP Weblog:

What wasn't announced in the press release, but slipped out on Pat's Jaiku stream was that the MAXroam service would soon be much cheaper in the US/Canada. Right now, it's prohibitively expensive, but Pat is saying by early 2008 the price should be about 12 cents (presuming Eurocents here). I'm not going to hold Pat to those rates, but if it's true, it does sound a fair bit better than the 1.18 Euros it now costs to receive and make calls within the USA.

Andy Abramson explains:

While their pricing isn't lower than buying local SIM cards, they do save you money if you are going from country to country, and you avoid a lot of unused minutes. They also give you the benefit of one number so friends and family can find you, making it a great gift for the student you know whose going to take a trip overseas.

Yes that's right. The pricing isn't lower than local SIM cards, but it's super convenient for frequent travellers to always have the same number on their SIM and don't have to worry too much for roaming prices. I am already playing around with a Cubic Phone from Pirelli and a Maxroam SIM card. The sound quality is fantastic while roaming on the German Vodafone network. I have a UK fixed line number for Maxroam and could also add a German number. They all would ring in whichever country I am.

The only thing that holds me back is that for Germany they only offer numbers from Hanover while I live in funky Berlin. He Pat, didn't they tell you that Hanover has the fame of being Germany's most boring city? So boring that in the 80ies and early 90ies Punks regularily gathered from all over the country to mix it up at least one time a year in their famous Chaos Days. So when I roam I will simply forward my existing Berlin number to the Maxroam UK number. As a Voipchecker I know how to do that for free, this I can save the €4.50 per month for a German Maxroam number.

Anyway, here is Cubic Telecom's press release:

Cubic Telecom and Global Roaming align forces
Alliance will focus on joint opportunities

CORK, Ireland – 30 November, 2007 – Cubic Telecom dba MAXroam and Global Roaming Inc. dba CelTrek have today announced a strategic alliance combining their marketing reach and technical know-how into a single partnership.

The partnership will allow both companies to offer extended geographic coverage and data roaming on their existing products. This is a substantial step forward for both companies in their goal to provide a single global communication platform that brings an end to the monopolistic behavior of the large cellular operators.

Pat Phelan said “I am delighted that Global Roaming has decided to partner with Cubic and I look forward to a world where anyone can call anyone at anytime without worrying about the cost.”

Florian Seroussi, CEO of Global Roaming Inc. said “This alliance gives us an opportunity to get a footprint in Europe in order to spread our ambition of offering low-cost roaming to consumers everywhere.”

Through the partnership both companies are currently actively engaged in joint proposals to large US and European enterprises and announcements on these are imminent.

ABOUT Cubic Telecom
Based in Cork, Ireland, with offices in Vancouver, Canada, Cubic Telecom is an innovative global communications company focused on introducing simple, high quality and high value telecommunications services. Its core target market is aggrieved customers across the globe who don’t understand why they can’t get value for money when making international calls while roaming.

ABOUT Global Roaming Inc.
Global Roaming, Inc, is a privately held Nevada corporation, with offices in Miami, Florida. The parent company has over 350 GSM network operator agreements covering more than 165 countries and all continents.

For further information, please contact:

Media Contact
USA
Giovanni Rodriguez,
The Conversation Group
M: +1 650 279 8415
giovanni@theconversationgroup.com

Europe
Patrick Smith, Sonus PR
T: +44 (0)20 7851 4890
M: +44 (0)7734 600553
patrick.smith@sonuspr.com

Company Contact
Cubic Telecom Limited
Pat Phelan, CEO
+353 21 425 0657
info@cubictelecom.com

Cubic Telecom Limited
Unit 1, Webworks
Eglington Street
Cork
Ireland

www.maxroam.com

Company Contact
Global Roaming Inc.
Jenny Callicott, COO
+1 305 249 3121
jenny@celtrek.com

Global Roaming Inc.
1021 Ives Dairy Road
Miami
FL, 33179
USA

www.celtrek.com

Labels: Celtrek, Cubic Telecom, Maxroam, Mobile, Roam4Free, Roaming

                                      

Please don't think that I am obsessed with Cubic Telecom's Maxroam. But one more thing has to be added. CEO Pat Phelan says that his company made a big mistake this week. I guess that refers to the wrong prices they communicated to their customers. Cubic Telecom sold more than 1,000 SIM cards in the first weekend of pre-sale, says their public relations agency. But now even the New York Times had to apologize to their readers for a very positive article about Maxroam that suddendly appeared wrong in great parts:

This review got an awful lot of people excited.

There's only one problem: those were the wrong rates. The Cubic phone still saves you money, but not as much as I wrote.
...

The company's Web site hadn't yet gone public. I asked its chief executive several times if I could see the Web site in his beta form, but he never did give me access.

So I sent him a list of sample calls I wanted his per-minute prices for. He returned the list with his prices filled in. They were incredibly low, around one-tenth the price you'd pay T-Mobile or AT&T.

But when his Web site (maxroam.com) finally went live, the same day my review appeared, readers immediately started sending me e-mail—sometimes very angry e-mail—letting me know that the Cubic prices online did not match the examples in my story.
...

At first, I thought that he must have been quoting me prices in Euro cents rather than American cents. That would explain about half the discrepancy.

But no, the prices online don't match what he quoted me, even in Euros. (Furthermore, the list I'd sent him included the T-Mobile and AT&T prices for all those sample calls in dollars. I assumed he'd know I wanted a comparison of apples to apples.)

So I wrote him just after the first reader complaints came in. "This has been set up too quickly this morning," he wrote back. "Pricing model will be fixed for tomorrow AM. Just an error from a rushing web designer, sorry."

Whew. Crisis averted.

Except the next day, there was no change to the prices. I wrote him again. This time, he replied: "This error was totally down to an error or miscommunication by our company. We have, however, decided to completely honor this error and update our prices accordingly. These new rates will be lodged today. We apologize for this and error and would like to thank you for bringing it to our attention."

Crisis averted?

Well, sort of. As far as I could tell, he planned to post the super-low prices he'd originally quoted me—but only for the country examples I'd supplied! Those were no longer representative samples; they were artificial samples to match my review.

And besides: he never did, in fact, change those prices (Bahamas, Russia, Greece, Iraq, and so on). They're still higher than what he originally told me.

That's not good, even for a startup company. It shouldn't have happened. Still Cubic Telecom has great features. New York Times' David Pogue lists them:

One of them, for example, lets you choose up to 50 phone numbers for your single phone, in cities all over the world. The idea is that your friends in other countries can now call you for the price of what, for them, is a local call. The Cubic phone is also a Wi-Fi phone, meaning that you can make unlimited calls around the world for a flat monthly fee when you're in Wi-Fi hot spots. And finally, Cubic's higher prices are still much better than most cellphones' international roaming rates. On average, then, it looks like the Cubic card saves you between 25 and 75 percent off the big carriers' rates. Not 90 percent, as I reported.

Journalists don't like it to be fooled. It makes them look stupid to their readers. Cubic Telecom's Sean O'Mahony has more explanations:

We've had lots of great comments from customers and we've made quite a few mistakes as well.

The biggest one was our rate sheet. A couple of times we posted the wrong one so people were confused about whether it was in euros or dollars. We also garnered the attention of David Pogue over at the NY Times who corrected his original piece. Of course Andy Abramson was onto the bandwagon immediately.

I say it's been a funny week because you'd think from all the comments from the "intelligentsia" that we were out to fool people. Our rates are public. They are good and they are honest. If you can find a better deal somewhere else then by all means buy that service.

Hat tips to Andy Abramson for reading that much media that he found the New York Times' correction. See also David Pogue's update article "Cubic Telecom Kerfluffle: The Final Chapter?" from October 6, 2007!

Labels: Cubic Telecom, Maxroam, Mobile, Roaming

                                      

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.

---

After Maxroam went live last week and sold 573 SIM cards on the first day, a big discussion broke out that you could also follow in the comments to my blog. People couldn't believe that when roaming in Germany you can call to wherever in the world for just €0.35. It sounds too good to be true. An anonymous poster even said:

Pat. If you are reading this please fix your rate calculator. If its correct than I will sign up but I promise you that you are going to lose a lot of money from me since I will be calling cuba for several hours a day and I know that there is no way you can cover the termination charges if you charge me based on the website. I work in the telecom industry and know what is and is not real. Please get of the correct rates.

But today the Maxroam rate calculator still says the same: €0.35 to wherever. I cannot verify the real rates either since I don't have a Maxroam SIM yet. Another poster, who calls himself Satphoneguy, commented last night:

I called and spoke to Pat Phelan on the phone today. There is definatly a bug in the rate calculator. He is working on it. For now I would not trust any of the rates to be accurate.

Soon we shall know what the actual rates look like.

I am not really sure if that comment is trustworthy, since Maxroam has to deal with "nasty comments over the last few days from corners seemingly jealous of maybe a tiny bit of growth for this fledgling company". That's how Cubic Telecom's CEO Pat Phelan calls it. He even put up a "new living room policy" to deal with annoying comments on his blog, not allowing them anymore.

From my desk in Berlin I am not yet able to verify what's true and what's not in Maxroam's rates and the commentators criticism. So I beg your pardon if perhaps I copied wrong prices from Maxroam's website. But one thing is for sure: Cubic Telecom is working day and night to complete the product. Pat Phelan even made an exclusive announcement on my blog:

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

So these are the "15 to 20 cents" prices we read about in the articles around TC40. Stay tuned for more to come! I will try hard to get more verified information and to write soon a review of Maxroam.

Labels: Cubic Telecom, Maxroam, Mobile, Roam4Free, Roaming

                                      

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".

Labels: Cubic Telecom, Maxroam, Mobile, VoIP

                                      

Now it's nearly a week since Cubic Telecom presented their new product Maxroam at TechCrunch 40 (TC40), but still they don't reveal their real prices which should be found here. Still Maxroam says "Rates published soon" while Cubic Telecom's website consists only of a place holder and former price examples have dissappeared.

Sure, they claim that GSM calls are up to 80 per cent cheaper than the roaming rates offered by existing mobile service providers. But that's a usual claim which you can also hear from competing companies such as United Mobile. I would like to compare the prices by myself.

At least Alec Saunders got some numbers from Cubic Telecom's CEO Pat Phelan when they talked one day after TC40:

Calls from one Cubic subscriber to another are free when used in a hotspot. They also come with a MaxRoam SIM with 5 euros of credit. That's the kicker, frankly. The MaxRoam LD rates will make anyone turn their head sharply… for instance, calls in Canada cost .0063 euros. In the US, .0131 euros. In the UK… .011 euros. In addition, you can get a local number wherever you're going, so that when you travel others can call you cheaply as well.

Sounds great, but for which kind of calls do these costs apply? I guess that's just the WiFI rates since the San Francisco Chronicle writes:

You just slip the MAXRoam SIM into your unlocked GSM phone when you travel and then when you make phone calls abroad, it comes out to about 15 cents per minute, thanks to global roaming agreements that Cubic has worked out with operators around the world.

15 Cent is a great price, whether in euro or in dollar, and undercuts for instance United Mobile with its funny mobile numbers from Liechtenstein or Jersey by nearly 50 per cent. Only I would like to see where this rate applies. And why does VentureBeat write that Maxroam "will provide cell phone users with a SIM card that enables global calling for rates between 20 and 30 cents a minute in more than 160 countries"? That's a price difference of up to 100 per cent in two articles from the same day.

Still it's a great idea that Maxroam works also in Wifi hotspots where you don't have to pay two digit cent prices per minutes, but probably about one cent to most countries. Also these prices are not yet published, but I guess that's what Alec Saunders wrote about. The Wifi prices are of course great, but they have to be compared to the Wifi offers from Wifimobile and Truphone. Truphone calls to 40 countries are free until the end of the year, at Wifimobile you get the same for a flat rate price of $15.99 €11.99 Ł7.99 per month. In both cases you can use your existing cell phone number as caller ID, unless you are from the US or the UK, and don't have to bear the shame of these weird Liechtenstein, Iceland, Jersey, Estonia or the Isle of Man numbers. Wifimobile's new calltrough numbers in 11 countries even let you place calls outside a Wifi area.

Which brings me to Cubic Telecom's most interesting feature to slash roaming costs: Consumers get a single phone number, but can create multiple permanent local numbers for themselves - up to 50 - anywhere around the globe. All calls are forwarded to their Cubic Mobile phone, no matter where the calls originate, at the best rates for the callers. That's a cool idea, but Cubic Telecom is not the first to offer it. Local numbers for global SIMs are the new trend, I wrote two months ago. The German company GlobalSIM started already in july to give local fixed line numbers from 43 countries to their SIM card customers.

Like Nokia, whose Executive VP & General Manager of Multimedia Anssi Vanjoki recently said that they "copy with pride" from the iPhone, Cubic Telecom has taken all these available features and squashed them into one product. That's a real accomplishment. They even took an existing phone and and made media like FierceVoip or the San Francisco Chronicle call it the "Cubic Mobile Phone". Although it's the known Pirelli DualPhone DP-L10 which the German VoIP provider Sipgate already sells since january.

But now, dear Pat, I would really like to know the prices per minute.

Labels: Apple, Cubic Telecom, GlobalSIM, iPhone, Maxroam, Nokia, Pirelli, Roam4Free, Roaming, Truphone, United Mobile, Wifimobile