Tucows branches out, enters mobile phone business.
Tucows, which owns one of the world’s largest domain registrars, officially launched mobile phone service Ting today.
In a press release, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss said:
“What people are forced to put up with from mobile service providers just doesn’t make sense. It’s too complicated, too opaque, too adversarial, too expensive and frankly too inhuman.”
Ting offers simplified phone plans where you can purchase talk, text, and mobile allotments. If you use less of your allotment during the month you get a credit. If you go over you pay for the extra usage but not at a penalty rate.
The simplified service reminds me a lot of what Tucows did with Hover, a simple domain registration service.
Steve Jones says
Interesting service, but you can’t transfer a current phone so kind of pointless. Having to buy a new phone to save on phone charges won’t be worth it to most people.
Bill Sweetman says
@ Steve, I recommend that you read the following and see if that changes your point of view:
http://ting.com/blog/i-have-to-buy-a-device/
Regards,
Bill
Steve Jones says
@ Bill
Good points for sure. You guys should have launched this before the holiday season considering that though – that’s kind of what I was getting at. A ton of people just bought new phones and entered new contracts.
Anyways, interesting service and a great deal. Hope it does really well for you guys!
Jp says
I’ve been living in Bali almost 2 years now and I’ve got to say Cell phone service in the US is insane. Here, everyone is mostly on prepaid allotments. You buy a sim card somehwere on the street. You can buy one most anywhere (at restaurants, convienence stores etc…) then when your allotment runs our you can go to just about any store on the street and they are selling refills.
Next are the charges per call. To put it simple, for me to call my friends & family in the US from Indonesia to the United States on my iPhone costs me about 2 cents a minute. For my friends and family to call me from the US to Indonesia on their cellphones costs them about $2.50 a minute. Talk about being grossly disproportionate. Where does all that money go?
Oh and by the way, all incoming calls and txt messages are free here, no matter where they originate from, even if your allotment is finished. They don’t punish people here for other people calling then.
Bill Sweetman says
Thanks, Steve. Ting plans to be around next holiday season. ;+)