Mobile Carrier To Sell Service for $19/mo; Android Handsets For $99 Until Nov 27

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/disruptive-mobile-carrier-republic-wireless-to-sell-handsets-for-99-until-november-27/

by aaronbrethorst • 15 years ago

148 58 15 years ago

techcrunch.com

devicenull3• 15 years ago

This isn't terribly amazing. I paid $130 for my Android phone, and pay $25/month through Virgin Mobile.

unlimited12• 15 years ago

Is your $25/mo plan unlimited? Is Virgin Mobile's coverage as good as Sprint's (the network this will fall back to)?

What's amazing here is they are offering a Voip phone with a $19/mo plan (cheaper than, say Vonage at $25) plus fallback to a large mobile network. That is a pretty good price point.

idiot16• 15 years ago

virgin mobile is sprint. the network is the same. as is boost mobile. also, you're an idiot.

sumukh1• 15 years ago

The $25 plan from Virgin Mobile offers 300 minutes of talktime.

jordan0day• 15 years ago

Virgin mobile uses Sprint's network.

ard0r• 15 years ago

I have the same $25/month plan, but they upped it to $30/month ($35?) for new subscribers. Still best deal on a smartphone/data plan.

If this uses Sprint's network as well, then I suppose it comes down to minutes/MBs. I don't use enough of either so for me the math is simple: $19 < $25.

peterwwillis5• 15 years ago

I have that too. The speed sucks dick but it's cheap.

Thoughts:

  1. I really hope it knows to just use cell while driving instead of trying to connect to random passing APs.
  2. Am I the only person in America constantly surrounded by secured/non-free Wifi?
  3. Why wouldn't I just pay less for my phone and $10 more a month for Virgin Mobile?

parfe• 15 years ago

I think the idea is that you spend most of your time at home, work, or school. Places which you generally have full access to the wifi network.

LilValleyBigEgo7• 15 years ago

Virgin's coverage is ass.

otoburb• 15 years ago

Indirectly answering your point #3 above, this would appeal to inter-country travellers. More specifically, there is probably a sizeable segment of customers who travel back and forth between Canada and the US where this would be a hit.

At $19/month, it's also cheap enough to be a work/travel phone that is assigned to you. Although there is a growing trend for IT-consumerization and multi-SIMs, there are still plenty of people who prefer to keep physically separate personal and work mobile devices. This could easily appeal to them and organizations.

For a smaller (but very lucrative segment) of roaming subscribers, being able to use a single phone number accessible over WiFi no matter what country you're in is a compelling value prop; no more need to worry about data/voice add-on packages.

It's like being able to take your voip line with you on your phone, accessible through one number. Surprisingly, nobody else can offer that right now. The closest we've got is FaceTime (cellular network for voice; free voice calling if you're on wifi and reaching out to another iOS device), and even that doesn't quite provide the same convenience.

And with declining voice revenues, carriers are fighting a losing battle knowing their margins are being squeezed. They are deathly afraid of voip cannabilizing their voice revenues.

This is a good move by Sprint. I wonder if they have any equity in Republic Wireless.

devicenull3• 15 years ago

I haven't had any issues with the speed recently. Maybe that's because I'm in an area with pretty good Sprint service. There were significant network issues back when they first introduced the Optimius V, but those seem pretty well fixed by now.

angryasian• 15 years ago

same here and my speeds are excellent. I rarely have any complaints. I use GrooveIP for free GV voip, and the phones have great dev communities around them. I'm running cm 7.1 on my phone and for $100 phone it performs better than my old 3GS.

my biggest concerns would be-

Would loading custom roms effect their application/script?

Is it compatible with google voice?

memset2• 15 years ago

Just to capitalize on some of the VM love: if you have an android phone, you should give my Minutes Checker app a whirl! (It is free. And open source too. And very very useful.) https://market.android.com/details?id=com.jaygoel.virginminu...

LilValleyBigEgo7• 15 years ago

Thank you for not spamming anymore.

ryankshaw• 15 years ago

I use it, and thank you, good app!

jonah• 15 years ago

I wonder if they have any kind of soft/hard limits on how many minutes / how much data you can actually consume over the cellular network.

Theoretically, couldn't one could not join WiFi any networks and use Sprint most or all the time?

dvdhsu• 15 years ago

They'll probably try to make it so that WiFi must always be on. Then again, it'll have to be locked on the device, so it wouldn't be very hard to get pass it once the phone was rooted (the devices will run Android [according to the article]).

Then, they would probably check to see who was using the majority of minutes/data on Sprint, and then have a talk with them (or throttle their data).

I'm curious as to what they would do with people who sign up and don't live in cities. If you live in rural areas, it's doubtful you'll have WiFi the majority of places you go. They would probably end up losing money on rural subscribers, then try to make profits from urban subscribers.

There might be a problem with a strategy like that though, because it doesn't seem their profit margins would be too high. I'm not sure how much it costs them to buy data in bulk from Sprint, but doing unlimited data for $19 isn't going to result in amazing profit margins. I'm also assuming that they won't be buying voice minutes, because if these devices can use multiple networks, the only way to keep a single phone number would be using VoIP. Of course, there's no way they would be buying text messages, because text messages can easily be sent over e-mail.

LilValleyBigEgo7• 15 years ago

> I'm curious as to what they would do with people who sign up and don't live in cities.

I'm guessing they'll offer it in one or two cities, call it a revolution, fail to generate revenue and fade quietly into tax write-off oblivion.

jakejake• 15 years ago

From their "What's the Catch" Page 550 minutes, 150 texts, and 300 MB of data using the cell (non wifi) network is what they refer to as their "fair use threshold" and they say that you will get a few warnings to use less cell data and more wifi. If you continue to go over, your plan will be cancelled. Or in their more polite phrasing "they'll help you find a traditional cell provider that is better suited for your needs"

tryitnow• 15 years ago

I hope this is just the beginning of a larger trend. I will check them out and I definitely wish them the best of luck. This is a market that desperately needs disruption.

Does anyone know of any comparable deals like this?

trotsky2• 15 years ago

In the US, Virgin Mobile (Sprint MVNO) offers 300 minutes/2.5gb/unlimited for $35 (used to be $25) and T-mobile offers 100 minutes/5gb/unlimited for $30.

LilValleyBigEgo7• 15 years ago

Well they're not really disrupting anything, they're reselling Sprint, so they're actually helping Big Carrier.

yuhong• 15 years ago

Yea, they just tackled on Wi-Fi onto it. Thinking about it, I wonder if (maybe together with Tucows etc.) they could lobby the FCC and Congress to solve the problem, for example. Of course, it would not be that simple, but...

LilValleyBigEgo7• 15 years ago

That phone is the LG Optimus.

colinsidoti3• 15 years ago

At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

I imagine we'll see an incentive program soon..."Refer 5 friends and this month's bill is free." If you refer the 5 friends you talk to most, the company will save much more than $19.

VoIP is cool, but traditional phone calls and text messages are not always ideal. I think innovation on the communication channels themselves would go a long way for this company. Think http://voxer.com

Facebook is in a particularly good position to pull this off correctly. They already have a "cool" factor, and if they could come up with a communication tool that people really like, so much that you're jealous your friend has it but you don't, the people will come. Blackberry pulled this off for years with BBM, but lost its "cool" somewhat recently.

gcb3• 15 years ago

> At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

that's a pretty bold statement. Care to elaborate?

Seems pretty expensive when i pay exactly that to AT&T to have 6mbps at my home. we're talking about 1mbps maximum here right?

colinsidoti3• 15 years ago

Unlimited Voice and SMS to other carriers is expensive. Look at Twilio's pricing or Skype's pricing, or any other voip provider. Text and calling to your own network is essentially free, but off network gets expensive. Granted, I don't know how big of a cut these voip providers take, but I can't imagine it's that high.

Put it together with usage data, you quickly get over $19: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-m...

Edit: Just want to point out, I'm not saying this is a bad bet to make. They can attract a ton of consumers with a super low cost, and if those consumers do most of their communication in-network, eventually they'll be in the green.

jmjerlecki• 15 years ago

You are dead on about Facebook. Imagine if the conversation shifts from whats your phone number to whats your identity. A persons phone number is becoming increasingly less important.

toisanji• 15 years ago

the monthly deal sounds great, but I'd like to know what phones we are allowed to use on the service. Is it going to be a low end barely useable phone or a nice smart phone?

cpr• 15 years ago

As @jkincaid points out, this is a Bandwidth.com company.

Bandwidth.com has built up a whole country-wide internet backbone system of their own to carry VOIP traffic (they carry Google Voice, for example), with lots of connectivity to the local area terminal points (I forget the jargon for that).

We're really happy with Phonebooth.com (another Bandwidth initiative), who provide unlimited VOIP service (with a full virtual business PBX) to North America at $20/user/month. (And who apparently don't charge for calls to Europe (at least Ireland), as I found out recently.) It's perfect for our little 4-man distributed company; we each have a VOIP phone on our desks and can pretend we're all in the same office with extensions, etc.

Bandwidth.com seems like a company to watch...

GigabyteCoin2• 15 years ago

I think I am going to get one just for the few trips I make to the USA every year (Canadian). I have an address in the USA so I doubt it would be a problem.

This could be just the thing I have been looking for to check my emails and servers (religiously) at a decent cost compared to hotel and internet cafe prices. Not to mention the added convenience value. Some places charge almost $19/day for short term access so paying $140/year would be a steal.

GigabyteCoin2• 15 years ago

The idea I had originally went out the door when I read about their "Cellular Usage Index" aka "their solution to their freeloader problem".

Basically if you use more than "$19 worth" of cellular service per month... they boot you off of their networks.

jkincaid2• 15 years ago

RepublicWireless.com just went live with all the details. Here's the catch (they're quite transparent about it):

The phone monitors how much data you're sending over Wifi vs cellular, and if you're using a disproportionate amount of cell data compared to the rest of the community, they can boot you.

"The best way to know how you're doing is by checking out your Cellular Usage Index (CUI). If it's too high, we'll let you know and give you tips to bring it down. You have plenty of time. But meanwhile, you still pay a flat fee of $19/month no matter what."

derefr• 15 years ago

> if you're using a disproportionate amount of cell data compared to the rest of the community, they can boot you.

Sounds like a simple prisoner's dilemma, with the "selfish" incentive driving people to lower the total consumption. Of course, the prisoner's dilemma only has the optima it does because of a lack of shared information; people can cooperate when they can strategize in some out-of-band way.

For this service, the "cooperation" strategy would entail everyone conspiring to drive the average up, so that the service provides more to everyone without anyone in particular having a "disproportionate" usage.

nikcub• 15 years ago

This is the future, and it is time that it happen. I was talking about this to a friend on the weekend - that cell phone companies are enjoying the last years of being able to confuse consumers to profit.

Deciding on a cell phone provider should be no different to internet providers - pay $20, $30 a month for a connection (unlimited) and that is that.

TheClassic• 15 years ago

Any idea how much bandwidth this sort of voip uses? I'm wondering if it'll affect PC online FPS gaming or netflix streaming.

reacocard• 15 years ago

From http://republicwireless.com/how:

  I have DSL at home.  Will it work on that or will I have to upgrade to
  something faster?

  You need about 80kbps both ways to hold a call. The more bandwidth the better
  for improved call quality. Don’t forget that streaming video or downloading
  large files all use bandwidth, so your mileage may vary if you are trying to
  make or receive calls and watch Netflix at the same time.

Sounds like it's more likely that your gaming or Netflix would adversely affect the phone than the other way around, though a router with QoS should fix that easily enough.

gcb3• 15 years ago

ha! an LG phone. no thanks.

still interested on the plan if they provide an android image I can use with their wifi network.

Mobile Carrier To Sell Service for $19/mo; Android Handsets For $99 Until Nov 27

Related Stories