How long before the Big Telecomm ‘Vonages’ Cubic?
Cubic Telecomm is a bright new startup with an incredible deal for people who travel– a cellphone that doesn’t cost you your firstborn to make international calls. They’re launching their product next month. According to the article in the NYTimes:
Now, most carriers offer special international plans: you pay more a month, you get slightly lower roaming rates. But even they can’t touch the appeal of Cubic’s cellphone. It makes calls to or from any of 214 countries — for 50 to 90 percent off what the big carriers would charge.
On this phone, a 20-minute call from the Bahamas costs $5.80 (that’s 90 percent off T-Mobile’s rate). The Cubic price from Russia is 49 cents a minute (90 percent lower than AT&T).
And there’s no monthly fee and no commitment for any of this. It works like a prepaid phone, where you put some money in your account and use it up as you talk.
Apparently this phone offers other pretty slick stuff, like the ability to add local phone numbers in other countries for people to use to call you, so they only pay the local fee. And the ability to use hotspots to make “free” calls. All except the hotspot feature can be used with any unlocked phone via the magic of a sim card. And all of Cubic’s magic is done by using the Internet.
Now, this is all a direct slap to Verizon and AT&T and T-Mobile. How much you wanna bet the behemoths are going to find a way to send Cubic scrambling for lawyers just like Vonage had to? After all, Cubic is using “their” pipes to “steal” revenue from them, just like Vonage did.
And when it happens (notice I said “when” and not “if”) it will once again point up the HUGE NEED for better Telecomm and Broadband policy. Again.
Technorati Tags: International Cellphone Calls, Roaming Charges, Telecomm Policy
