the fall of united mobile

[pg-tel]

does anyone here know why united mobile didnt do well or did they have bad coverage or bad customers?

[weekilter]

Originally Posted by pg-tel

does anyone here know why united mobile didnt do well or did they have bad coverage or bad customers?

My guess is that they just weren't making any money or enough money or were losing money.

[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).

[inquisitor]

They went bust due to some people globetrotting instead of observing financial control over the company, which ended in a financial gap of some € 15m, that could not be closed in the course of the global financial crisis. Besides management failures the business suffered from the impact of EU roaming tariffs regulation and the asymmetric usage of too many subscribers (the cheap or even free incoming calls should have been cross-subsidized by the income from outgoing calls, which requires a symmetric calling volume).

[Bossman]

Most of the reasons above also apply to majority of the current global sims. There just is not the market to support all of them. So, we should expect several if them to face the same faith. For example - there is Telna mobile, that has been temporarily down for a few months. That's the way it begins...temporarily down, then permanently down!

[pg-tel]

so what would be the perfict gloabal sim? if they all charge for incoming, people would look for alternatives.I see alot of companies these days...I think truphone might be the one that would mark a headway if they finally make thier sims how they want it to be....

[MATHA531]

In my opinion, and it's only an opinion, there were several factors and they were all covered. One has to be the introduction of the intra eu rates...it really took away a good portion of the market. Yes it was a tad cheaper to use an international card than your own local card, but the differences began disappearing. If it wasn't costing you all that much to roam in Europe, why would you need the extra card (and I think the other companies have seen a great deal of their subscriber bases erode because of that).

Secondly was location. I don't undersand how these things work, but as the prices for making calls to their number increased through the roof, people were not calling the number nor would you want to give a friend your UM number +423 knowing the cost to caller would pay. During the last year or two of its existance, UM recognized the problem with its attempt to start both a +44 service and a +1 dual numnber. They were simply too late to the table for these things where others got a step on them.

Thirdly are the cheapskapes (like myself admitedly). It was great having free reception of calls throughout all of Europe just about, especially at a time when the add on rate of AT&T for calls to a +423 mobile was 1¢/minute and while their call out rates weren't terrible, comparatively, using call back services cut these rates even further which mean by far too little income for them.