The website of Alex Kinch, live from London
Posts tagged Pat Phelan
MAXroam’s A1GP team win World Cup
May 6th
Team MAXroam Ireland principal Mark Gallagher, Pat Phelan CEO MAXroam and World Champion Adam Carroll
MAXRoam, the global roaming SIM card and official partner of Ireland’s A1GP Team were delighted to watch Ireland’s Adam Caroll win the A1GP World Cup of Motorsport™ this weekend. Sponsors of the team MAXRoam and BPI Telecom were there at Brands Hatch to see Team Ireland clinch the title and they used MAXRoam data technology to update people around the world on what was happening.
Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom, the creators of MAXRoam, used his mobile phone and QIK video streaming (a partner of MAXRoam) over the MAXRoam data network to record his and the crowd and crew’s reaction as Carroll came first during a tense and nail-biting finish.
Said Phelan “Being so close to the team and watching Adam do so well was an enormous rush and it was great to see the live reactions from Irish people around the world show up on my phone too as I streamed the reactions at the track. Adam is now a superstar and deservedly so and we’re proud of him and Team Ireland for working so hard to achieve this.”
Carroll, a 26-year-old from Portadown, claimed a double pole-position on Saturday and continued on Sunday with an incredible one-two finish in both Sprint and Feature races to win the world championship.
The MAXroam road test day two
Apr 18th
Rather later than planned, here’s day two of the MAXroam road test. It’s a rather short update as I was rushing around the country that day, but with a trip to Jersey planned for first thing the next morning I wanted to at least try and get things working before I left for the airport.
If you’ve read my previous posts here and most recently here, you’ll know I’d got as far as trying to activate my MAXroam SIM. True to his word, CEO Pat Phelan got his tech team on the case, and first thing the next morning Platform Manager Chris Kennedy registered my SIM for activation. So, back to the registration process I went.
I entered the number of the SIM into the registration screen, setup my details and, well, it worked. Sort of. As you may know, MAXroam gives you a default GSM voice and SMS number (in this latest incarnation, it’s a Belgian +32 number) – and the option to add other local voice numbers in various cities around the world. However, when I first registered I just had a blank space where the Belgian number should be, and trying to add a local number threw a rather bizarre website error.
With the hours getting fewer and fewer until a rather early start to get to London City airport in the morning, I thought I’d have another try tomorrow and see if I could get things working. Stay tuned for the next update!
The MAXroam road test day one
Apr 15th
MAXroam packaging
If you haven’t already read this post, let me bring you up to speed. CEO Pat Phelan over at MAXroam sent me one of his new version five SIMs to play with. Here’s how I got on, from registration to making a call, during five days – and a few thousand miles of travelling – last week.
So the package arrived, and I finally got my hands on it. Due to a slight co-ordination/space-time continuum issue (you know the sort) it took me a couple of weeks to actually get a hold of the package, but last Monday evening I opened the envelope, took out the contents, and armed with a BlackBerry, my trusty MacBook Pro and a nice cup of tea (milk and two sugars please, if you’re offering) I sat down to try out the service.
Now I don’t know about you, but there’s been many a time when I’ve believed I’m too clever to read the instructions. It usually happens with technology, and occasionally IKEA furniture. However this time I thought I’d go through the five easy steps printed on the inside of the packaging. And rather pretty packaging it is too – as you can probably see from the couple of photos taken with my trusty Nokia E71. Anyway, back to the instructions.
1. Buy your MAXroam SIM here and simply register it online at maxroam.com
MAXroam packaging
A little strange to find the packaging of a product I just bought asking me to buy it, but not to worry. Flipping over the back of the packaging I found another set of instructions – ableit slightly different, that started with registration – so I figured I’d follow those instead.
2. Go to www.maxroam.com and click register my SIM
So far so good.
3. Enter the number on your SIM and follow the instructions
“I can manage this”, I thought rather proudly – so I typed in the long number into the website. And bam – it broke. ‘This SIM has not been registered by staff to allow activation. Please contact Customer Support.’ Hmm, it’s nearly 8pm on a Monday night, wonder if I can get this fixed tonight? Rather than try the usual customer service approach, I emailed Pat. Within 10 minutes, I got a response asking for a different number from the SIM card. Sent that over, and within minutes Pat replied again saying it’d be sorted in the morning.
More tomorrow..
The MAXroam road test
Apr 14th
A few weeks ago I had a brief email exchange with Pat Phelan, CEO of Cubic Telecom – the Irish entrepeneurs behind MAXroam. I’ve been following their progress for a while, and have been eagerly awaiting the launch of the new version of the platform.
Fast forward to last week, and Pat had very kindly sent me a SIM to try. Due to my lack of time it’d been sitting unopened in a non-descript brown envelope for a few weeks, but with a week packed with travel ahead of me I thought I’d give it a whirl.
Now that I’ve had a chance to recover from my busy week last week, I figured it was time to write about my experiences with MAXroam. Whilst it wasn’t the most exhaustive test in the world, I thought it’d be interesting to share my experiences.
More coming tomorrow..
MAXroam ink MVNO deal with Qik
Apr 14th
Cubic Telecom, the people behind popular travel SIM MVNO MAXroam, have just announced a deal with live 
mobile streaming video service Qik, which should help Qik users save money whilst they’re travelling.
Following on from a recent deal with travel social network service Dopplr, the deal with Qik will give their users the opportunity to purchase Qik-branded SIM cards enabling them to stream video live from all corners of the planet – without coming home to an astronomical phone bill. The Qik SIM also provides massive savings on voice calls, email, web browsing and texting while they travel. Under the tagline “Go mobile, not broke,” Qik is offering its users a simple, inexpensive way to share live video no matter where they are.
“Travellers can now share their world journeys with videos, photos, text, and calls from their mobile device without it costing the earth.” said Pat Phelan, Cubic Telecom CEO “We’ve heard of the horror stories of travelers returning from a trip abroad to cell phone bills in the thousands of euros. The Qik SIM eliminates this worry for our customers.”
“We are excited to partner with Cubic Telecom to offer Qik SIM cards to our users,” said Ramu Sunkara, Qik CEO. “With the Qik pre-paid SIM cards, Qikkers across the world can now share their moments when they are traveling without having to worry about voice or data roaming costs. It’s like sending a live video postcard to your friends and family from wherever you are.”
The QIK offering is available now at http://qik.com/roam
The best way to Twitter on the move
Apr 5th
Irish Telecoms and mobile entrepreneur Pat Phelan has posted a useful round-up of his favourite Twitter clients for the BlackBerry, Android, Symbian and iPhone smart phones.
What’s Pat’s picks? I won’t spoil the fun – head over to Pat’s blog to find out.
Recent Comments