Maxroam Totally Rocks (a review)
June 18th, 2008
On my second last trip to Ireland, Pat Phelan, one of my favorite bloggers, bounced into the speaker’s dinner, handed me a SIM card and bounced right out again. Pat runs MaxRoam, a disruptive new telecoms play. On my recent trip, I put it through its paces.
WHAT IT DOES
MaxRoam helps avoid international roaming charges. Simple.
HOW
They put multiple numbers (all land lines) on the same SIM card. For instance, I have numbers for the U.S, Ireland, UK and Germany. If any of those numbers is called, my phone rings, wherever I am. I pay the local 25 cents (or whatever) charged by the local carrier. It costs 3 euros per month per number and you prepay the service. The SIM costs 25 euros. (Disclosure: because I’m an honorary Cork man, Pat gave me the SIM for free with a bit of credit to play with).
THE PROS
- being landlines, it’s cheap for people to call you
- you can get a new number right from the website and it works instantly (amazing)
- you can forward (for free) any of your numbers to a local landline OR a local mobile and nobody pays. Outside North America, this is monstrously cost-saving as the caller usually pays (a fortune). Here, Maxroam swallows the costs.
- 5 cent SMS worldwide (I didn’t test this)
THE CONS
- you can’t put your current number onto it (but you can forward your number to it)
- forwarding usually works, but occasionally it took 2-3 tries when I used it
- lots of numbers to think about
- you need a totally unlocked phone (I used an old Nokia)
- not the greatest website in the world (but who cares, it works)
OVERALL
After a bit of fiddling to get used to it, I’m hooked. I totally loved the service – can’t imagine traveling without it. Being able to forward a 212 number to a UK mobile and talking for hours for no charge internationally on a mobile was fabulous. I worked out I saved about $185 in my two week trip. The cost for my two weeks of rather frequent calling was about 14 euros. I’m hoping he adds a data service soon.
I think Pat is onto something really huge here. The addressable market for international roaming is monstrous, and creating an MVNO is a very interesting way of attacking it. I wish I could invest (Pat?, nudge wink?). More coverage on VentureBeat and TechCrunch.
Pat, by the way, is also behind Twitterfone.
Entry Filed under: Internet & Technology
7 Comments Add your own
1. Nice few days for MAXroam&hellip | June 19th, 2008 at 8:49 am
[...] have also had an extremely positive review from Salim Ismail one the industry’s top guys and founder of Confabb amongst [...]
2. Moazzam | June 26th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
I am using a maxroam SIM with a free UK number. I am having no troubles at all. Its so great. the website claims that it can work in so many countries. In terms of roaming coverage I believe that maxroam SIM has almost all countires covered on the planet.
3. Mobile Advertising | December 8th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
MaxRoam sounds really great. I travel a lot and it would be nice to use my 212 number too.
4. Per Östlund | December 16th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
About a year ago, I purchased a US Maxroam number with a really nice ring to it (please excuse the unintended pun) , the number is (area code) 929-0100.
Since I am based in Sweden but have a significant portion of the business in the U.S. Since it is a great advantage for US customers to call a local number than international to make contact, this number has been put on business cards and has been spread and communicated to many customers and other important business contacts. Having a cellphone with a local US number has been of particular value when I have been on longer business trips in the US.
Since we made such an investment in communicating the number, I even contacted Maxroam and asked them to verify that we would keep this number and got such assurances in writing from the customer services representative Sean Halpin.
But in November this number, without any previous warning, suddenly ceased to work and only after a fairly long time Maxroam got back to me and told me that the “number provider” had decided to take this particular number back and that there was nothing they could do about it. They also pointed to one of the clauses in their user contract with states that they have the right to replace subscriber numbers without any reason. One month after taking the number away from me I was presented with a random list of numbers, none of the with the slightest “ring” to it (see above).
I write this blog entry because I want to warn other users, particularly business users that your Maxroam subscriber numbers are only temporary and might be replaced at any time without Maxroam having to give you any warning or reason for this.
To me, this is totally unacceptable and today I am considering legal action for the damage caused – I would also like to argue that today, the cellphone number is a very important asset and a part of the identity, both for individuals and for businesses!
5. ouch | May 1st, 2009 at 12:23 am
There are no landline numbers available at all.
2 months into a so-called upgrade, with a Belgian SIM card, Maxroam still refuse to say when they exoect to have this and other disabled features working
6. grrrr | August 15th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I too am feeling a bit frustrated with Maxroam. I think they used to be good, but I don’t know what’s going on these days…
I purchased a SIM card, but when I went to try to add a “local” USA number onto my SIM on their website (so I can forward my US cellphone to my world phone while I am traveling), I had no luck. I sent tech support a message and was told they were getting some more numbers in 48 hours. 48 hours later, USA has mysteriously been removed from their website for potential countries to buy a local number from. I tried numerous other countries and those wouldn’t go through either.
I talked to one guy at Tech Support who couldn’t tell me anything. I talked to a second guy a bit later, and he said it’s a glitch they’ve been running into with the website. Reading all the complaints online recently makes me think it’s not a “website glitch”, but rather a “company glitch”. I just don’t know how long we should wait to see if their glitch gets fixed vs. getting a SIM from another company… Sucks, as Maxroam does offer fantastic prices.
7. Alice | November 13th, 2009 at 7:17 am
I have bought Maxroam two days ago and I have to say I already regrets it. The sim card itself is 15€, I paid 20€ got 5€ airtime as they call and with this 5€ I had honestly only 8 minutes calls. 0,58€ per min from Germany to UK, is that 80% saving. I need to understand. I feel stolen and I needed to share it.
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