Some people might think that looks odd, even a little amateurish. Would it not be likely to cause repetitive strain injury if carried out 100,000 times?

Or is Pat Phelan’s claim to have 100,000 customers a load of moonshine? Perhaps the number is nearer the more modest target he set himself in an interview earlier last year.

Global Roaming Distribution, the joint operation set up by Celtrek and Maxroam, seems to have been folded up, with a share deal rescissed, and 3 directors resigning in January. GRDB’s earlier accounts show that an order for $450,000 worth of SIM cards was not fulfilled.

Celtrek has changed its outward branding to Global Roaming, and has made adverse comments on the service of its erstwhile suppliers, which Maxroam shared, and which continues to provide for other trade customers.

Maxroam seem to be having some difficulties transferring the existing credit balance and DID numbers to the new SIM cards, which has so far taken a month or so. Surely it should have relatively easy to back up the call records before the end of the old deal?

And the new published call tariffs are mostly higher than on the old SIM, and multiples higher in Europe than the Eurotariff the regulators worked so hard for.

Why indeed? And given your history of such comments on termination fees, why switch to a mobile number from the Belgian network Base?

And how much would it cost to replace 100,000 SIM cards?

And how long to forward the old DIDs? Or is it difficult to persuade your previous supplier to allow them to be ported?

United Mobile raised $15 million earlier this year, so you would expect to see some interesting product improvements, or customer growth out of them. They do data too, with really good rates in Europe from $2.20/MB.

ekit has its new travel journal which uses the SIM to track your movement and seems to work with FireEagle from Yahoo too.

MaxRoam’s main differentiator is the big range of local numbers you can attach to the SIM, although having to send text messages to a different number in Israel limits the value of that.

Like you said Om, it’s a tough gig.

Tying in with travel web sites is a great way to scale things, but I think tying in with conferences that draw an international audience, and corporate travel providers might also be fruitful.

Thanks for the correction. I fixed that. I know Pat is going to get this right. He knows what he is doing.

@Shai,

It might be worth checking out. I have not checked out just yet. Sometime today perhaps.

Small typo, sir:

“Phelan thinks he will get their by selling MAXroam”