Cork company targets US troops with cost-saving SIM cards
Irish Examiner, 25 September, 2008

An American soldier getting a call from his family at home would normally be charged $20-$25 for three minutes. With our SIM he would be charged just $1.50,” said Pat Phelan, the company’s CEO.

Read complete story.

We have had thousands of inquiries from resellers and have signed up many, but the number one question is always:

“Can I have my own brand?”

Well now you can!

Let us take care of everything: world class website, personalized logo on all your sims, hosting on dedicated servers, free mail-server, 24/7 customer service and all launched in four weeks. All you need to launch your own global cellphone company is in this package; we do everything for you.

Apply here if you’re interested in starting your own-branded, MAXroam reseller business:

• Data Roaming – from 0.005/kb
• USA Roaming – from €0.39 per minute
• Auto Top Up – Never run out of credit, set a minimum level of credit and top up by a specified amount

These are two huge milestones for MAXroam and significant wins for our customers. The USA is the country most often visited by global cellular customers, and data is the last frontier for the rip-off operators.

In addition to extended services, the new MAXroam site offers customers:

• New, more user-friendly design
• Improved online store allowing you to buy more than one SIM per order
• New videos guides to help you use MAXroam better
• New blog
• More options for airtime amounts with 3DSecure and Verify By Visa I don’t see any issues
• Improved call billing

Full press release below.

* * *

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
08 September, 2008

CONTACT:

Pat Phelan President
Cell: +353-87-2049-121
USA (1) 714-820-3583
Email: pat.phelan@cubictelecom.com

MAXroam V2 Pummels Telcos with New Voice and Data Roaming Savings
A bigger and bolder MAXroam hurts the feelings and pockets of telcos

Cork, Ireland - On the one year anniversary of its Silicon Valley debut at TechCrunch 40, telecoms rebel MAXroam today launched new voice and data services to bring even more savings to businesses and consumers when they travel with their mobiles. The new rates drastically cut the cost of voice roaming in the USA, and new data roaming starts for as little as 0.005c/kb. A new website also allows even more granular control of a customer’s roaming preferences.

Since its launch last year, MAXroam has saved customers over $1million USD in global roaming charges. MAXroam rates provide a discount of up to 90% on USA roaming rates, with coverage now in 175 countries via seamless partnerships with 450 carriers. Today’s addition of low-cost data roaming in 75 countries marks a new foray into the world of discounted data.

Pat Phelan, MAXroam president, said: “It’s been a year since TechCrunch 40 and in that year we’ve signed up 100,000 customers and saved people over $1million USD in roaming fees. We’ve promised our customers that we’re going to keep fighting for lower charges and pass the savings on to them. In this release we’ve secured an even bigger win for customers on voice roaming with exceptional savings. And in a move unprecedented in the telecoms industry, we’re now bringing a robust challenge to the data roaming prices of telcos.”

Phelan added that as the emergence of MAXroam and other Telco 2.0 companies made life tough for the high street telcos, the telcos themselves dropped voice charges and shifted their focus to data roaming as their new cash cow. But MAXroam V2 means this cash cow is due for slaughter.

“Everyone now accepts that more and more of our telecoms usage will be data, and that eventually everything - including voice - will be sent over data streams. While the telcos are slowly reducing voice charges, they’re still excessively charging on data. Until now, there wasn’t much we could do about it. What MAXroam previously did for roaming monopolies with voice, we’re now doing with data. ”

To coincide with the launch of their new services and savings, MAXroam has also launched a new website at http://www.maxroam.com with improved user interface, even more granular control of a customer’s roaming preferences, and a full range of enhancements for MAXroam users.

# # #

MAXroam is a mobile and cellular phone SIM card that drastically reduces roaming charges for travellers. With MAXroam, your callers won’t even know you’re traveling. Simply forward your regular mobile number to your selected MAXroam number and start roaming.

• Seamlessly forward your existing number to your MAXroam number - contacts from home call you exactly as they normally do.
• Optionally give local callers your new local MAXroam number - they get easier calling and savings, too.
• Add up to 50 numbers to one SIM from 52 countries around the globe - your international contacts can now call a local number to reach you wherever you are in the world.

– ENDS –

Today we executed on a series of price reductions. The average savings to our customers are as follows:

• Cost of an SMS reduced by 10.69%
• Cost of calling voicemail reduced by 11.87%
• Cost of incoming call reduced by 11.87%
• Cost of outgoing call to a landline reduced by 11.67%
• Cost of outgoing call to a cell reduced by 12.00%

We have also had an extremely positive review from Salim Ismail one the industry’s top guys and founder of Confabb amongst others.

it@cork also gave us some great coverage including 3 national newspaper pieces.

This was published this week and I love the picture, three of my favourite things front and centre on my laptop, Wordpress, LeWeb and MAXroam.

Biggest sticker: MAXroam!

We have customers in 52 countries, alliances in Europe and the USA, operators breathing down our necks begging to go back to the good old days, and a fantastic team.

We were doing a rough estimates yesterday and we reckon we passed in early May a million dollars saved in roaming fees by our customers. This is a tremendous milestone for us and we are exceptionally proud of the fact that we have kept a million in our customers’ pocket and away from the fat cats of the telephony world.

Here’s hoping that the next nine months are as good and that we get to TC50 as guests this year.

“A unique solution that will save you a heap of money” is exactly right.

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. Why is Fixed line important? MAXroam only use fixed line numbers unlike other companies which use international mobile or premium UK mobile numbers. With mobile numbers, the people calling you have no knowledge of what it costs to dial the SIM and your friends are just subsidizing your roaming.

The new country list is being added to every day. These numbers begin at €1.05 per month and you can pick up (and drop) as many numbers as you like because the 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, you’ll see that we now offer a feature for all users to send SMS anywhere in the world from the backend for only 5c per message!

So what’s in the calendar for upcoming features?

We are working on USA roaming, global prepaid data, and SIM to SIM calls, more countries, more coverage, and free calls via web. We’re also looking to add a Hong Kong office to add to our Vancouver and Miami offices.

We’ve also completed a huge number of sales, and today we we shipped a huge order to Maplins UK today:

We are only at the beginning of the product and are working night and day to end the roaming rip off globally.