An Associated Press report centered on an Israeli startup who claims to curb bill shock, or the event when travelers abroad are getting charged with unexpected roaming charges in hundreds of dollars by using their mobile phones.
The idea of Cell Buddy is that it will be turning a smartphone into a local unit to avoid those charges. The report said travelers could chose the type of calling and data plans for their mobile phones with carriers in about a dozen countries all over the world. Mobile phone users on Cell Buddy will only be billed with the local rates as oppose to the charges that their mobile carriers at home usually impose.
The service will be starting next year, AP said in its report. To be able to avail Cell Buddy, customers could use a universal SIM card provided by the startup. Once inserted in the smartphone, the phone will launch a Cell Buddy app upon reaching one's destination, wherein the app begins its search for local carriers and presents them for comparison. Mobile phone users on Cell Buddy are assigned local phone numbers and still could continue to use their original numbers using the same SIM card at regular prices.
AP pointed out, however, that the technology of Cell Buddy could only be used on unlocked phones. This means that users who are tied in to service provider contracts could not be able to use the technology. To use the service, Cell Buddy collects a per day fee of $5 or an annual fee of $60 for those frequent travelers.
Cell Buddy's founder and chief executive officer Ofir Paz said, "Mobile communications is the biggest industry in the world, with 6.8 billion users and annual turnover of $1.5 trillion. The biggest problem in the industry is roaming, when you travel abroad. If the average cellular customer in the world pays $0.50 per day for local use, when traveling abroad it costs $10 per day - twenty times more. Roaming is a $70-billion per year industry."
Paz is a known veteran player in the technology industry in Israel. He made InspireMD, a medical-device firm InspireMD, and made it public. Paz also sold his Peach Networks to Microsoft. For his third company, unnamed private investors, aside from him, had invested around $2 million in the startup, and will be starting another fundraising round soon.
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