Olive Mobile solves a problem I didn’t know exists

Sometimes a product catches you unawares. Olive Telecom has announced a mobile device called Wiz, that comes with three SIM cards. My first reaction was “why would you need three SIM cards in one phone?”. Then I noticed where the phone is for: India.

Why does that make a difference?

It’s easy to forget that mobile networks aren’t as complete in other countries as they are in Western markets. Particularly in Europe – mobile infrastructure is amazing in Western Europe, in a way that even the USA can’t match.

While the mobile telecoms infrastructure of India has grown an unbelievable amount in the last few years, a person traveling across the country can find themselves needing to access several different networks – and operators don’t play together as well in India as they do elsewhere. Price wars are intense, and punishing rates for cross network calls are common.

And so we end up with a device like the Olive, which would look crazy in other countries but is perfectly sensible for the business traveller in India. It has three slots for SIM cards – two for GSM and one for CDMA. So you can sign up with three different networks across two different architectures. Not only does that let you keep your number of handsets down to a minimum, but it also gives you cheaper calls and SMS as you’re likely to be able to make phone calls to numbers on the appropriate network.

What we think?

I love the application of the three SIMs as a way to combat against unscrupulous operator behaviour. But the Wiz is actually a pretty decent phone on top of that – it’s a full QWERTY device with email, social networking and instant messaging built right in there. It even comes with space for 4GB of memory and a 2MP camera… not bad for €100 for the device, unsubsidised.