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The cohort Venn diagram is world travelers who can’t afford a global service? People who can pay for a flight but would rather watch an ad than pay for service

The cohort Venn diagram is world travelers who can’t afford a global service? People who can pay for a flight but would rather watch an ad than pay for service? And the value of that ad inventory of people unwilling to pay is? I’m all for the effort, and I am fond of business models that more directly convey the revenue from ads to customers, but I have some concerns for this business. It all could fade pretty quickly.

logifail 3y ago
> The cohort Venn diagram is world travelers who can’t afford a global service? People who can pay for a flight but would rather watch an ad than pay for service? At this point I laughed, as I don't have global service, yet have flown round the world in the last fortnight. > And the value of that ad inventory of people unwilling to pay is? Yeah, I'm never going to click on your ads. Don't build a business model on me!
- chaboud 3y ago
  Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s nonzero. I just don’t know if it’s enough to overcome the tonnage cost (bulk rate for IOT/B2B cellular), and the business development challenges for global cellular and advertising are no joke when we’re down to a freemium-ad-supported revenue model. Striking at the eSIM moment is a slick move, though. This would likely have been a hard non-starter in the physical SIM era (which still applies in some cases).
  - logifail 3y ago
    > Striking at the eSIM moment is a slick move, though I bought two data eSIMs to cover my trip - each one only covered one specific country. To my frugal mind it wasn't worth paying the extra to upgrade to a 'global' data eSIM just to cover the handful of additional places I was in transit through (and turned out I had ready access to free wifi in those places anyway).
  - jerbear4328 3y ago
    Isn't physical SIM cards like what TextNow is doing? https://www.textnow.com/wireless https://www.textnow.com/wireless You can buy a SIM for $5 and get a free phone number that you can only use in their app, which has ads. I know plenty of people who that service could be very useful for, $5 one-time for unlimited text/talk, if inconvenient. I do think that using Firsty and Google Voice together could accomplish the same thing for free, except Firsty's unlock-for-an-hour model means you can't receive messages when you haven't watched an ad in the last hour, so maybe TextNow still has some use.
lakpan 3y ago
That would be me. I can change country with $60, it doesn’t mean I’m willing to pay $10/MB. I usually can get internet service for $10 or $20/month locally. If I haven’t sorted out an eSIM before landing, it means I’ll be without internet until I go through customs. Airport WiFi isn’t at all a guarantee. What happens if I really need internet? e.g. some overzealous immigration officer really wants to see my hotel reservation or my return flight ticket. I’d love to have a service that guarantees I have at least messaging in 60 (ad) seconds.
- chaboud 3y ago
  That seems like a bit of a strawman, honestly. The era of $10/MB international roaming faded back in ~2015, effectively crunching the demand for global roaming WiFi hotspot rental. Current pricing is somewhere around $10/day for 5-10GB for that model. For US customers, T-Mobile US went to included global roaming at EDGE speeds (email, messaging), and Verizon is at the other end with $10/Day for 2GB at high speed (dropping to “3G” speeds after that). Any business jumping into this space has to contend with that pressure and assailability, possibly relying on less-lucrative advertising bases of users outside of North America, Western Europe, etc. That doesn’t make it impossible, but I’d certainly be interested in the upper and lower estimates for the business potential. It just strikes me as a business where the network operators are really well-positioned to extract potential value while optimizing for the defense of their position. And when it comes time to re-negotiate terms, if this business is successful, network operators in regions with insufficient competition will be able to put the squeeze on, possibly forcing unworkable costs or loss of customer trust. I hope this works out for them, for the reason that I also think that basic connectivity should be available to all, always, but those are the business concerns that immediately come to mind.

logifail 3y ago

> The cohort Venn diagram is world travelers who can’t afford a global service? People who can pay for a flight but would rather watch an ad than pay for service? At this point I laughed, as I don't have global service, yet have flown round the world in the last fortnight. > And the value of that ad inventory of people unwilling to pay is? Yeah, I'm never going to click on your ads. Don't build a business model on me!

chaboud 3y ago
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s nonzero. I just don’t know if it’s enough to overcome the tonnage cost (bulk rate for IOT/B2B cellular), and the business development challenges for global cellular and advertising are no joke when we’re down to a freemium-ad-supported revenue model. Striking at the eSIM moment is a slick move, though. This would likely have been a hard non-starter in the physical SIM era (which still applies in some cases).
- logifail 3y ago
  > Striking at the eSIM moment is a slick move, though I bought two data eSIMs to cover my trip - each one only covered one specific country. To my frugal mind it wasn't worth paying the extra to upgrade to a 'global' data eSIM just to cover the handful of additional places I was in transit through (and turned out I had ready access to free wifi in those places anyway).
- jerbear4328 3y ago
  Isn't physical SIM cards like what TextNow is doing? https://www.textnow.com/wireless https://www.textnow.com/wireless You can buy a SIM for $5 and get a free phone number that you can only use in their app, which has ads. I know plenty of people who that service could be very useful for, $5 one-time for unlimited text/talk, if inconvenient. I do think that using Firsty and Google Voice together could accomplish the same thing for free, except Firsty's unlock-for-an-hour model means you can't receive messages when you haven't watched an ad in the last hour, so maybe TextNow still has some use.

lakpan 3y ago

That would be me. I can change country with $60, it doesn’t mean I’m willing to pay $10/MB. I usually can get internet service for $10 or $20/month locally. If I haven’t sorted out an eSIM before landing, it means I’ll be without internet until I go through customs. Airport WiFi isn’t at all a guarantee. What happens if I really need internet? e.g. some overzealous immigration officer really wants to see my hotel reservation or my return flight ticket. I’d love to have a service that guarantees I have at least messaging in 60 (ad) seconds.

chaboud 3y ago
That seems like a bit of a strawman, honestly. The era of $10/MB international roaming faded back in ~2015, effectively crunching the demand for global roaming WiFi hotspot rental. Current pricing is somewhere around $10/day for 5-10GB for that model. For US customers, T-Mobile US went to included global roaming at EDGE speeds (email, messaging), and Verizon is at the other end with $10/Day for 2GB at high speed (dropping to “3G” speeds after that). Any business jumping into this space has to contend with that pressure and assailability, possibly relying on less-lucrative advertising bases of users outside of North America, Western Europe, etc. That doesn’t make it impossible, but I’d certainly be interested in the upper and lower estimates for the business potential. It just strikes me as a business where the network operators are really well-positioned to extract potential value while optimizing for the defense of their position. And when it comes time to re-negotiate terms, if this business is successful, network operators in regions with insufficient competition will be able to put the squeeze on, possibly forcing unworkable costs or loss of customer trust. I hope this works out for them, for the reason that I also think that basic connectivity should be available to all, always, but those are the business concerns that immediately come to mind.