Zer01 - Mobile VoIP Finally a Reality ?

Startup Zer01 are claiming to launch a mobile VoIP service in April at the CITA trade show.

Unlike nomadic VoIP services like Fring, PennyTel, Truphone etc (which are WiFi based), Zer01 are aiming to offer a truly mobile service having forged relationships with AT&T and t-mobile in the US. These roaming arrangements enable them to use their data networks to tunnel back into the Zer01 VoIP based infrastructure for calls. It's in essence a data-only SIM using IP for the voice backhaul.

Quote:

Zer01 CEO Ben Piilani said the company has developed proprietary algorithms and defragmentation engines to handle latency issues and ensure that the VoIP has a high quality of service, even over an EDGE or GPRS connection. While there are already mobile VoIP applications from Fring and Skype, the difference is that Zer01 is providing the data itself, Piilani said. "We look at ourselves as a new carrier, and this is definitely a disruptive technology," Piilani told InformationWeek.

It launches on Windows Mobile, with Blackberry, iPhone, Nokia and Android devices to follow. On the iPhone, Piilani mentioned that this will only work on "jailbroken" devices but I think he means to say "SIM unlocked" as this is a SIM based service (with the promise of unlimited data).

It's certainly the first VoIP based SIM service that I've seen. Start of a trend ?

There's some high level info on the business model at play:-

Quote:

Piilani said the company will be able to generate profits even with a price tag that's about $30 lower than its nearest competitor.

As an unlimited data service they also intend to encourage "tethering" of the data SIM phone to laptops using short-range wireless technologies like BlueTooth.

More info at Information Week:-

http://www.informationweek.com/news/tel ... =215900218

... and Engadget:-

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/13/zer0 ... ip-to-the/

With mobile data becoming ever more important this could prove to be a smart move. They'll need to be well-funded though - MVNO's are hitting the wall and entering bankuptcy left right and center at the moment. The GSM World is not a poor mans sport.

Reply from andyk on Mar 14, 2009 - 04:53 PM

Hmmm, at $70 a month, I'm not so sure about the one headline about bringing VoIP to the masses.

It doesn't look cheap against US main network monthly contracts with unlimited minutes and texts and internet for $70 to 100 a month, especially taking into account no handset subsidy either

Amongst the range of comments below one article, I like the one that says give us unlimited internet for $40, and we can organise our own VoIP.

But compared to here, even that seems expensive. I haven't tried, but I think something could be done here for £5 or £10 a month. Or £20 a month gets a load of minutes, texts and unlimited internet, even a decent phone too if it's a retentions deal

Reply from jamesbody3 on Mar 23, 2009 - 03:58 PM

USD are not the only thing that users of Zer01 will have to expend to get this service to work - in order to run a viable service it will be necessary to keep the GSM/3G radio modules 'lit up' constantly.

With the current generation of handsets this is likely to reduce the battery life considerably.

VoIP over 3G data is NOT a clever tactic to employ with todays handsets!

Sounds like a clunker of a service to me!

Reply from dean on Mar 31, 2009 - 05:00 PM

Quote:

battery life

That's not only a solvable problem (quite easily actually), but user expectations of battery life have been significantly driven down by the iPhone.

Nowadays, a day is considered acceptable. My Blackberry Bold lasts about 6 days, but t-mobile/RIM would not lose me as a customer if that dropped to 1 or 2 days if in return I got an always-on always-lit data channel (as far as I perceived it for push notifications and inbound calls).

Reply from dean on Apr 01, 2009 - 08:27 PM

Interestingly, I've found out that Pervasip are powering the voice service through their "VoX" product. The data network is therefore supplied by Pervasip, leaving Zer01 to purely concentrate on their sales channel. This is absolutely the right way to approach VoIP - sales, sales, sales, and not technology, technology, technology.

Quote:

"Our commitment to VoX is a fraction of the number of wholesale lines we expect to deliver. With over 100 distributors already committed to over 500,000 lines in the first year, we could easily exceed 1 million lines in year one, and we are targeting 5 million lines by the end of the second year. With the technology in place and the distribution channel secured, it's now about execution. We are a stable and profitable private company with no debt, and with VoX as a partner, I'm confident that our marketing effort will be successful.

http://www.pervasip.com/1E207D12DC59411 ... 4F8C941EB7

I just have a funny feeling this is one to watch. The approach Zer01 are taking is spot on, I believe and it's a private company with independent funding and the sales channels set up.

As Ben Piilani, CEO, states in the above quote, it's all now in the execution.

I have to say, the fact that their website is currently offline is not a good start though.

More on this around the web:-

Quote:

A consumer will only need to wait an estimated five minutes to allow us to update their phone's SIM card to connect to our network," said Zer01 Communications’ CEO Ben Piilani.

http://www.phoneplusmag.com/articles/82 ... -plan.html

Quote:

"The only piece of the carrier's infrastructure at this point that we're using is the last mile," Piilani said. They get access to the pipes through roaming interconnect agreements, he said. The company's business model will let Zer01 avoid the financial challenges that sunk MVNOs like Amp'd Mobile, Disney Mobile and ESPN mobile, Piilani said.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2343743,00.asp

Reply from andyk on Jul 23, 2009 - 11:44 AM

Well, it seems this product did not launch as predicted or advertised on 1st April

By about the 3rd April, the launch date was being set at 1st July

That was then, but is it here now?

errrm ...

I'm just reading about the multi-level marketing schemes, and rather sycophantic outbursts written by actual or potential partners or resellers, Global Verge and Buzzirk and Unified Technologies and god knows who else, some of whom perhaps don't clearly understand the product, and starting to wonder what it is actually about

It might merely be a hidden callback service, was speculation by someone who I'd trust as switched on, and it didn't exactly get a denial by someone from one of the companies, though the tone was more like no comment on our proprietary system

Does anyone know who is in the know about this?



Well, according to recent articles, the technical nature of how or whether this works isn't exactly clear. Is it too good to be true, they ask? The numbers look odd to me - Global Verge proposes to charge its agents $70 to join, then $40 a month in back-office fees.

Ok, sounds a bit expensive ...

Hmmm, but as well as that, the CEO of Global Verge, one Mark Petschel, is said to be currently on probation after pleading guilty to securities fraud. And seems to have had some previous business difficulties

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/ ... o_be_true_


That was earlier this week


Now (in the last 12 hours or so), an update article says that the parent company of Zer01 has stripped its website in the last couple of days (since the report earlier in the week), and

Quote:

Ben Piilani, CEO of Zer01 and its parent company Unified Technologies Group (UTG), said that he first met Petschel in May and only recently found out about his criminal record. As a result, Piilani said that Petschel was stepping down from his role at the head of Global Verge. However, documents online suggest that their companies were connected in the past.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/168872/a ... k=rss_news


Tell you what, it will be interesting to see how this product emerges, but don't hold your breath waiting


Was I unfair describing some of these people as sycophantic? Judge for yourself, in the thread I found earlier this morning, which prompted me to look a bit further

http://cellphoneforums.net/general-serv ... -voip.html

Reply from dean on Jul 23, 2009 - 11:48 AM

Yes, current rumour is that there may be rather less to this than appeared. It certainly seems very confused.

A shame, as it was clearly a game changing proposition. It's possible it was just vapourware.

Quote:

Tell you what, it will be interesting to see how this product emerges, but don't hold your breath waiting

From what I hear, it will not be emerging.

Reply from andyk on Jul 23, 2009 - 12:08 PM

Thing is, it's entirely practicable to make VoIP calls using 3g or EDGE data, and really quite a bit cheaper than that.

Many mobile networks now have internet add-ons to ordinary contracts and prepaid deals, as well as burgeoning separate mobile broadband deals of typically 10 to 15 pounds or euros per month, though some are even cheaper. Some SIMs don't seem to worry about which they are used in.

Some networks may be blocking VoIP, some may not. And as well as phones with their own integral SIP possibilities, there are various client programs which can be tried ...

So mobile VoIP is here anyway, albeit without a retail wrapper all the way round.

But if you want to make hundreds of minutes of calls, with a good proportion of them to mobiles, the price of an ordinary contract bundle tends to mean why mess about with VoIP

Reply from satphoneguy on Jul 23, 2009 - 02:20 PM

for me the most suspiccous part of this has always been the promise of 'unlimited data without any caps or FUP's' although that may be possible at that price if it was only at GPRS/EDGE speeds and 3G was disabled.

Reply from andyk on Jul 23, 2009 - 05:08 PM

It gets worse:

According to Andy Abramson:

http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch ... -real.html

Quote:

Reading through what Nancy has written puts CTIA and it's entire awards process under a microscope as ZER01 was a CTIA award winner...

Actually, it's possible not only that Nancy has done some excellent research, but that AA has still been duped by some nifty use of words.

Here's the CTIA webpage that announces their awards

http://www.ctiawireless.com/media/news_ ... newsID=206

Quote:

Taking this year’s Best in Show award is Top Global for its 3G UFO Personal Hotspot, which provides instant mobile access to the Internet. The winner of this prestigious award was determined by more than 40,000 combined online and text votes submitted by CTIA show attendees and wireless industry professionals. iLoopMobile and OpenMarket provided text-voting capabilities for this year’s program. “It’s a privilege to win this award and we appreciate the support of the people who voted for us,” said Alan Zhen Spammer, president and CTO of Top Global. “We spent a lot of effort developing this cutting edge product using Gobi™ technology from Qualcomm, which allowed us to design one product for the global marketplace.”

- no mention of Zer01 at all. (But they are on a previous page there about a shortlist)

But according to the top right of the Zer01 website

"Zer01 Wins Best of Show!"
"Zer01 chosen one of CTIA's top five products of the year in it's category went on to win LAPTOP's Best Product of the year overall."
"Best Overall Product: Zer01 Mobile"
"Best of CTIA Wireless 2009"


This needs to be dissected a bit more carefully than Mr A did

In fact, Zer01 didn't even win an award in Laptop magazine's awards either.

No, an article reviewing the show chose the product as a favourite, but that doesn't mean the product is an award winner from either CTIA, or Laptop magazine itself either. In fact, the actual article is about as authoritative as me going to a car show and saying I liked the look of the new Mini/Audi/Citroen; it might be my car of the year, but it doesn't mean it won Car Of The Year

Though it could be a coincidence, some people might think that the words and logos were rather cleverly arranged so as pass off a wrong impression. Some might be rather more expressive, even expletive. The web page where I saw this discussed invites its readers to find a 3-letter synonym for untruth.

Reply from dean on Jul 23, 2009 - 07:51 PM

An interview with Ben Pillani (CEO):-

http://blog.laptopmag.com/zer01-mobile- ... llegations

This could just be genius marketing at work of course. There's no such thing as bad publicity (as long as it's backed up with a product).

Reply from andyk on Jul 23, 2009 - 08:43 PM

Quote:

Do you have a response to those who argue that AT&T and T-Mobile have said they don’t have a partnership with you? How could a nationwide footprint be possible without a partnership with one of them? T-Mobile didn’t deny it, they said they can’t make a comment. If you were to contact the carriers I’m sure they would give you the “we can’t make a comment,” [[answer]]. I’m not saying we don’t have a partnership. I’m just saying we aren’t going to comment on who our partners are and what relationships they have.

So T-mobile didn't deny it, but no comment he reckons. So does the failure to say the same about AT&T imply they did actually deny it?

Someone seems to have noticed a certain something about coverage maps.

http://blog.stevex.net/
http://www.wireless.att.com/coverageviewer/
http://www.zer01mobile.com/coverage.php


How come a self-made billionaire can sign a deal with a Tier One cellular carrier, as this operation describes it in the words of their other partner Pervasip, after 6 years of secretly investing $30 billion in separate capacity, according to others, and still be bound by non-disclosure even after the date it was supposed to have launched? And why is a copyright map on there? What sort of blundered PR is that?

It would have been more plausible before some of the people trying to recruit resellers made totally unsupportable claims, like downloading a complete 2 hour movie in 4 minutes, or access to a choice of 1000 HDTV channels

Reply from andyk on Aug 14, 2009 - 09:08 AM

The saga is still evolving, with Nancy Gohring producing more detail

http://www.cio.com/article/499354/Zer01 ... omyId=1436

The magazine rescinded its award, but Zer01 is still trumpeting it

It's bordering on surreal, and would be funny if it wasn't so serious. I like this bit.

Now there are more leadership changes. A month after saying they had been put in charge, some other Global Verge executives said last week that they have been dismissed. Each has a history of working with marketing companies that have come under fire for questionable practices.

In recent weeks the executives had delivered sometimes conflicting reasons for why the service has yet to launch. One now says he doubts that sales people will receive commissions or that the service will launch at all.

This isn't promising:

Global Verge recently offered associates the opportunity to quit the program due to the delays. In an online forum and in the comments left after other stories, several people said they have opted out and their credit cards continue to be charged.

THe 4 page article ends:

While the discussion about Global Verge on sites like scam.com continues, fewer people who say they are claiming to be sales associates in the program seem to be defending it. Those still paying into the program are likely awaiting the Monday deadline when they are supposed to start getting their commission checks. But the skeptics are awaiting the same date to hear a new reason for why those checks won't be issued

I'd recommend thst thread on scam.com as an evening's hilariously funny entertainment

Reply from andyk on Sep 07, 2009 - 12:41 PM

The saga is still making space to go down further downhill.

All published the day before my last post, so perhaps before searchbots had caught up, it seems that Zer01 dissolved the relationship with Buzzirk and GlobalVerge, and they were all blaming each other and the press


http://www.mlmhelpdesk.com/2009/08/13/b ... -wireless/

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/200908 ... 5865.shtml

https://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/ ... s-new.html

Reply from dean on Sep 07, 2009 - 01:59 PM

Oh dear...

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