MAXroam goes live
27th of September 2007 by conor
After a big build-up of media attention peaking with an article in the New York Times, Cubic Telecom's MAXroam went live this morning. Using the great line of Travel Global, Pay Local, these guys are going for the jugular of the incumbent mobile operators and their roaming charges.
The core package is a MAXroam sim, €5 free calling credit and 1 free incoming number from USA, UK, France or Ireland for €29.99. Of course you can only use an unlocked phone with this SIM. I was able to get my phone unlocked by simply ringing Vodafone. If you have a Nokia N-Series this may take a few days as the request is actually forwarded to Nokia. Many mainstream phones can be done by the Cubic guys themselves. In fact, I unlocked an old 6230i for Roam4Free using one of many free sites on the web.
A sample of the costs is as follows. If you register an Irish number with them and then travel to France, receiving a call costs 21c and making one costs 33c. Irish people ringing you pay local charges. Add a French number and the costs to you are still the same but now your French contacts call using that number and pay only local rates. You can have numbers from up to 50 different countries on the one SIM or even 50 different numbers within one country (particularly useful for the USA).
I was one of the early users of Roam4Free V1. In that case you had a fixed Estonian number which gave you and your callers great discounts but it caused a big mind-set issue for callers and I gave up on it. The Cubic guys have promised a replacement SIM for all those V1 users. MAXroam is a major step forward and is a complete no-brainer for anyone who travels even semi-regularly. I'm eagerly awaiting mine in the post.
Comment posted by andy
at 10/3/2007 9:37:52 AM
who is the person with enough time on his hands to check blogs every few minutes?
Comment posted by andy
at 10/3/2007 9:36:37 AM
It appears you sent the first, and asked for a reply
So don't try and smear me as obsessive.
Comment posted by Pat Phelan
at 10/3/2007 9:31:00 AM
Andy
you have way too much time on your hand mate. 3 emails to me today, might be time to close this particular chapter
Conversation is closed, sorry
Comment posted by andy
at 10/3/2007 9:24:06 AM
and, for example, although there is discussion on his blog of a number of global SIMs, including one that is the same as Maxroam, when I posted a German one in response to a comment by a German, it was removed within a few minutes
by the way, my email was not abusive – I even pointed out to him that I had defended Maxroam on another forum against a load of made-up nonsense posted by a reseller of another product
Comment posted by andy
at 10/3/2007 9:18:24 AM
Just why is it that Mr Phelan emails me, soliciting a reply, then ignores it?
He's done this a couple of times now.
And then told the rest of the world that this was abuse by me.
Comment posted by Pat Phelan
at 10/1/2007 7:18:34 PM
Coughs loudly buts sincerely thanks Andy for that update
Any further work we schedule, we might notify Andy first to cut out the middleman.
Its wonderful to have such a fan of MAXroam keeping an eye on things for us, we may be even able to take a few hours off this week if Andy is available Saturday evening as the Police are playing Dublin.We have the tickets ,would be a shame to waste them ,how about it Andy?
Comment posted by andy
at 10/1/2007 7:12:42 PM
but a correction/rider has been added in the last hour or two
Comment posted by andy
at 10/1/2007 4:23:25 PM
looks like most of the tariffs went up by a third
Comment posted by andy
at 10/1/2007 9:30:38 AM
Conor, there's no need to make it ridiculous, hinting that only a minority of users will not benefit, when anyone roaming in Europe can get similar or better tariffs from the main networks.
As for Mr Phelan's remarks, why not devote time to getting your published tariffs correct, rather than spending your time on the internet resorting to personal insults on other people's behaviour?
Comment posted by Pat Phelan
at 10/1/2007 6:48:00 AM
ahhahh the lovely Andy pops up again
it might worth me offering him a job but it appears he is already busy being an armchair general.
Well that's four days of it now Andy on a full time basis and every bit of it raising the MAXroam profile
Keep up the good work buddy.