Pat Phelan: Bits, bytes and telecomsMobile, Roaming and Social Media

This is a real serious one for us: Maplins with almost 250 stores in the UK and Ireland, a million hits a month to its website, and turnover approaching £200 million have signed an agreement with MAXroam to stock its SIMS online and in their stores nationwide.

Well done to Tony Frattaroli our VP of sales who did a tremendous amount of work on this one.

World’s First Borderless SIM Launches to Eliminate Extortionate Roaming Charges

MAXroam available on the High Street in Maplin Stores

CORK, Ireland – 13th December, 2007 – Cubic Telecom today announced the launch of MAXroam, a new mobile roaming product that allows anyone to reduce their mobile phone bill by as much as 80 per cent while traveling abroad. MAXroam is the world’s first universal SIM and is being launched to consumers in the UK and Ireland through Maplin’s network of high street stores, as well as via the Maplin product directory and online at their website

MAXroam was launched to offer consumers the best country-to-country phone rates anywhere. The service dramatically reduces costs for both the callers and the recipients of roaming phone calls, by using local, in-country numbers, effectively making all global calls local calls.

The MAXroam SIM can be used in any standard GSM mobile phone, and there is nothing to download and no applications to install. Customers are given a local number in their home country and another local number in the country they are traveling to. You can either forward your calls or leave a message telling your callers you are traveling, informing them of your new number. MAXroam can currently be used in over 160 countries around the world.

The deal with Maplin will make the MAXroam SIM available on the high street in time for Christmas and means that anyone who regularly travels abroad – for business or pleasure – could find the money-saving SIM in their Christmas stocking.

Once purchased the SIM is easy to register and users can add as many as 50 different numbers to the SIM – choosing local numbers from a choice of more than 40 countries, or creating additional numbers for you to give to different groups of friends or business colleagues – all for a small monthly fee. The phone is then used on a ‘pay as you go’ basis, with credit top-ups easily added through users’ account page on the MAXroam website.

“The launch of MAXroam is putting an end to one of the most extortionate practices in the telecoms industry – roaming charges. From today, customers in the UK and Ireland can benefit from affordable international calls while traveling abroad” said Cubic CEO and co-founder Pat Phelan.

“We are living in a world where more and more people need to make phone calls across borders. Our mantra is ‘all global calls should be local calls’, and we have built a product that can do that. MAXroam benefits both holidaymakers and business travelers alike, both of whom can now make or receive calls abroad confident in the knowledge that their calls are only being charged at rates comparable to local rates,” Phelan added.

Availability

MAXRoam, which operates on any unlocked GSM phone, can be purchased for €29.99 (including €5 calling credit) and is available from Maplin stores across the country.
Ends

ABOUT Cubic Telecom
Based in Cork, Ireland, with offices in Vancouver, Canada, Cubic Telecom is an innovative global communications company focused on introducing simple, high quality and high value telecommunications services. Its core target market is aggrieved customers across the globe who don’t understand why they can’t get value for money when making international calls while roaming. Cubic Telecom was founded in 2005 by renowned telecommunications entrepreneur and blogger Pat Phelan. Pat wants a world in which anyone can pick up their mobile phone wherever they are and call anyone in any country for as long as they like without worrying about the price. Cubic Telecom is working towards free speech.
www.cubictelecom.com

For further information, please contact:

Media Contact
Patrick Smith, Sonus PR
t:+44 (0)20 7851 4890
m: +44 (0)7734 600553
patrick.smith@sonuspr.com

Company Contact
Cubic Telecom Limited
Pat Phelan, CEO
t: +353 21 425 0657
info@cubictelecom.com
Cubic Telecom Limited
Unit 1, Webworks
Eglinton Street
Cork
Ireland
www.cubictelecom.com
Pat Phelan’s Blog: blog.roam4free.ie