the fall of united mobile

[pg-tel]

i thought their prices were one of the cheapest at the time?

[PhotoJim]

Originally Posted by pg-tel

i thought their prices were one of the cheapest at the time?

Which means they had less money to cover their costs.

[GadgetKen]

United Mobile/Riiing and UM+ coverage was fairly extensive, and the prices were good in many but not all countries.

My guess on why they folded (and this is purely supposition)

1. With roaming price caps passed in the EU, their European rates were still attractive for people visiting from outside Europe, but not as much for people who live in Europe.

2. The economy weakened and people traveled less abroad for business or pleasure, meaning less revenue for UM.

3. UM rates were good in many countries but not in all. Roaming rates were considerably cheaper with an easily obtained local sim card in some countries like the US, Canada, or Bermuda. In some countries, it would have been cheaper to use a satphone than the UM card.

4. Competition from VOIP (e.g. Skype) or double callback schemes (using free UM incoming with another callback service ) reduced revenue.

5. More advanced and polished services were offered by competitors (e.g. Ekit SimpleCalling, and many others mentioned in this forum) including dual IMSI sim chips that allow cheap phone calls in North America and elsewhere by choosing one of two providers (usually US or UK) on sim card boot-up.

6. Problems with incoming calls being blocked by some telecom carriers to Liechtenstein mobiles (what UM originally used) and high termination rates to their replacement UM+ card (think it was Jersey in the UK Channel Islands) also did not help their financial viability.

Was I sorry to see UM go? Sure, I had a Riiing/UM and then a UM+ card. Let me make relatively inexpensive calls from the non-US Caribbean and the UK. Saved me hundreds of $US over a postpaid plan or using a hotel room phone at stratospheric rates.

Was UM perfect? No, it had many glitches like calls that did not ringback properly, did not connect the two parties properly or had imperfect audio quality (maybe 8 or 9 calls out of 10 worked flawlessly, the others were rather annoying). Also some billing problems like the time I was calling from the UK to the US and they charged me the much higher Russia to US rates (I called and complained, so they credited the difference back to my account).