As I was sat with the Truphone guys, someone said quite loudly, “this Truphone reception is terrible”.
I looked up and smiled as I saw Irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan standing there. I took the opportunity to get a quick over view of Cubic Telecom and Max Roam.
Hi Pat I said, “are you and Truphone competitors”?
Pat: No, in short. They provide a service and we provide a platform.
Bena: So you enable anyone to create voice or low cost voice products and services and re-brand them as there own.
Pat: Exactly we have about 9 deployments and we enable cheaper calling abroad for anyone that wants it.
Bena: I haven’t met an MVNE for ages – how is business!
Pat: Grand. There are few competitors in this space. Yes. Sim4Travel is one of them (Truphone owned) but the market is vast and people like to save money when calling abroad.
Bena: So, how do you do it?
Pat: We have a pool or bank of phone numbers and you can align them to your SIM. It is all localised so you have a local number to where you are.
This means that when you are abroad you pay local and not global rates. The SIM goes by the number on the phone and always has the best or cheapest number attached to it.
Bena: Does this mean I need to be registered globally to get a phone number locally?
Pat: Not at all. We have the phone numbers and you can use them and this way you pay only for local calls when abroad and avoid heft roaming charges.
Bena: Its a shame you don’t support data.
Pat: We do!
Bena: How?
Pat: You just have to implement our settings.
Bena: Oh!
What we think?
I decided to set up Max Roam at the hotel and I realised that this is a Callback service. So, you make the call locally to the number you want. Then you get a call back and that will connect you to the best number locally.
This is important because there are local and national rates in the US -which can also be hefty for travellers. So the best local rates are used in the back end of Max Roam to make the call savings.
OK, with my new SIM4Travel and MaxRoam cards I will be doing a test between both of them on usability and cost.
