Mobile Network Comparison

We hope you enjoyed reading the first half of our interview with OVIVO Founder Dariush Zand. We’ve got the second part ready for you now which will cover the tariffs currently available, the amount of adverts you can expect to watch and thoughts for the future of the mobile industry and mobile internet in general.

When do you launch and how can users get started with you?

We launched on April 16th! Visitors to www.ovivomobile.com can sign up for £5.00 and they will receive their SIM card in 2 business days direct to their home address. They will receive that £5.00 as credit in their account for any call charges made outside of their free allowance.

We have two simple tariffs: Ovivo for Smartphones – 200 Any Network Minutes, 200 Texts, 512MB, Free Ovivo to Ovivo Calls and Texts. And then, Ovivo for Tablets and Mobile Broadband – 1GB Free Mobile Internet. You receive this free allowance EACH MONTH with NO MINIMUM To-up required!

Outside of the bundle charges are the cheapest in the UK – 6p per minute (standard rate calls and mobiles), text and megabyte. If you bring your mobile number to Ovivo, you will also receive a £5.00 bonus and through our Ovivo Rewards Facebook Application, you can recommend the service to your friends and earn reward points when they sign up. These can be exchanged for free credit, but we will be looking to offer special promotions in the future.

What sort of ratio of advert-viewing-to-free-service can we expect?

At present, you will see an ad break when browsing as soon as you accumulate 2MB of Data Usage or after 15 Minutes, whichever happens first. However, we don’t serve up these adverts if (for example) you are in the middle of a transaction on a website. We try to minimise the customer intrusion. We are of course fine tuning the experience as we go, but the key point is that as time goes by, the advertising will become more and more relevant, targeted and therefore of value to our customers.

What do you think the impact of 4G and the exponential rise of smartphones is going to be on data pricing and where do you see the network in five years?

Very interesting question! As a consumer myself, I welcome 4G/LTE and the general evolution of networks. As a former Technologist, the technology behind LTE will address a lot of the challenges networks face as a result of the Smartphone explosion (capacity constraints, battery consumption as a result of handing over between 3G and 2G, rollout constraints, etc.). From a commercial perspective, the opportunities are endless with 4G allowing carriers and MVNOs to deliver much more media rich advertising and applications that add even more value to the customer experience. It will take time though for its rollout but likely we will continue to see as a result, the steady decline of data pricing from a wholesale perspective, which in turn will allow Ovivo to continue providing lots of free usage each month and monetise our service through Mobile Advertising and Value Added Applications. Looking historically, the average spend of a mobile phone user hasn’t changed much in 20 years…the speed of the network has, the capabilities of the phone and the usage has sky-rocketed. This trend will continue.

So there you are – hopefully that answered some of your questions about OVIVO. However, we really want to get together with Dariush to ask him a bit more about the network so if you have any questions of your own, please post them in the comments section so we can ask OVIVO for you.

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Last week we came across a rather novel new network called OVIVO. Just like Samba Mobile (who we recently interviewed), they claim to offer completely free mobile internet. However, they also go one step further by offering completely free calls and texts too.

How do they manage this you ask? Well, they are an advert-supported network. So, basically, they get paid to show you targeted ads and use this money to pay off your phone bill for you. Does it work? Well, that remains to be seen but they claim to offer you 200 minutes, 200 texts and 500 MB of data every month without you having to pay a penny. If you’re interested and want to know a little bit more, read on as we ask some questions to Dariush Zand, CEO and Founder of OVIVO Mobile.

Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today, first of all can you explain a little more about the genesis of the company and the ideas behind it?

We started Ovivo in September 2011, although I personally have been in the Telecommunications business since 1995 in broad range of roles and companies (sales, Marketing, Technology, Operators, Equipment Manufacturers, etc.). The key driver behind the business was to Innovate and drive change…a move away from the existing billing paradigm of carriers worldwide. We learned from studies such as this that a substantial amount of customers’ bundles are unused and with contract durations of over 18 months, the model does not favour the consumer. However changing this model and moving to a more Internet orientated model of providing service requires a careful, yet exciting approach. Hence Ovivo was born, to drive this change and achieve what to date the industry has viewed as not being possible. Our company identity and logo reflects this – an Ibis, carrying a Rhino on its head is achieving what most thought to believe as impossible! Not any more.

What can users expect from the adverts they have to view and how are you choosing advertisers?

Initially we are working with key Advertising Network Partners (Google, Bliss Media, Inmobi, Adfonic and Linking Mobile) to place relevant advertising for our target segments. As we grow, we will augment this with dedicated advertising campaigns and seek to deliver true added value to a highly consumable, yet cost conscious segment, the student market. Where we go from there, will include much more targeted profiling (Hyper local in some cases) and relevant to add value to customers and entice click through and conversions.

The MVNO market is incredibly competitive and saturated – apart from your pricing plan, how else are you going to distinguish yourselves and get the word out?

You’re quite right, it is a very saturated market with (at last count) 60+ MVNOs in the UK alone! Price is always a key differentiator, but we hope to attract our initial customers through the innovative nature of our brand, service and promise. With over 2.5m students in the UK, we have a substantial market opportunity to prove our model, drive further innovation and roll it out to the broader market.

This revenue model has been attempted many times before in other markets – why do you think it will work better now and in this particular niche?

We’ve been referred to as “The Ghost of Blyk” and “Blyk 2.0” on a number of occasions! I personally welcome the reference as Blyk were pioneers trying to do something in an industry where the market simply wasn’t ready, the value chain did not exist and the technology wasn’t available. Thanks to the Smartphone revolution, the Advertising Ecosystem and extensibility created by pioneers such as Google and Bliss, the Technology advancements of our Partners such as Moben International and the fact that we are now seeing the take-off or Mobile Advertising, the time is right for the Ad-funded MVNO. Why in this particular student Niche segment? Very simply, because we need to prove our model with the Consumers of tomorrow, where even though they may have cash constraints, they are perceived as extremely lucrative by brands looking to win their custom and raise awareness of their brand at an early point of their consumer lives.

What is your target market? How has adoption been so far and do you have growth forecasts?

Students today, extending through to general Smartphone users (those who want and buy the latest gadgets) and Visitors to the UK. Initial take-up and interest has been very promising, however, I can’t disclose actual figures or our growth forecasts at this stage as it is commercially confidential.

Hope that answered some of your questions. Check back in a few days the second part of the interview with Dariush. In the meantime, please subscribe to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter so you’ll know when to check back.

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Welcome back to the second part of our exclusive interview with Samba Mobile founder and CEO Ben Atherton. Last time we went over several details about the rather unique business model and now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty – how to get started, what exactly you have to do to get free mobile broadband and his vision of the future the telecommunications sector.

One of our readers, Joe, has already found out some details about the adverts and how they translate into credit/mobile data. He says that after watching six adverts, the average length was about one and a half minutes. The shortest was 38 seconds and the longest just over two minutes. On average you will earn 3.5 MB of data usage per advert watched which works out at about 2.3 MB of data for watching each minute of advertisement. So it sounds rather reasonable if you just want to use it for light browsing.

And now, with no further ado, the rest of the interview:

When do you launch and how can users get started with Samba?

We have already launched for iPad. Just go to to our site and order your micro sim card (£4.99 + £2.50 p&P). NB we make no money on the SIM as we don’t subsidise like the big networks.

Takes 5 minutes and then we despatch next day. No more cost, everything from then on is free.

You can earn credit immediately on the website.

If you are a laptop/tablet user – you can pre-register for a dongle at www.sambamobile.com

What sort of ratio of advert-viewing-to-free-service can we expect?

From the trial users watched an average of 103 ads per month, or 3 a day (90 seconds a day). We have some longer content now so that could be 2 mins per day.

Lots of people have asked whether there are any upfront costs at all – is this the case?

Yes of course, see above. We have to cover our sim and dongle costs, and p&p. We aren’t like the networks, who subsidise this because they know they can expect a further £300-400+ from you over the lifetime of your contract.

What do you think the impact of 4G and the exponential rise of smartphones is going to be on data pricing and where do you see the network in five years?

It’s a very good question. Cisco thinks that “Mobile-connected tablets will generate almost as much traffic in 2016 as the entire global mobile network in 2012”.

They also see video driving huge amounts of this traffic. So we see Samba as a service whose ‘time has come’ .

Re pricing, the operators, in our view, will exponentially build capacity, and users (on all devices) will grow both traffic as well as more users coming onto the network. So overall data traffic will explode.

But overall ARPU, will not grow directly in relation to traffic – the history of mobile voice, text and fixed broadband show that – and people’s disposable income wont grow in direct relation to traffic either – so by definition the cost of data per unit (MB, G, EXA) will have to drop.

But it wont be radical and it wont be overnight – so data will be a valuable commodity for some time to come.

We hoped you enjoyed that and found it useful. Do you have any other questions you’d like to ask about Samba? Let us know and we’ll do our best to answer them or even put them to the CEO in another interview.

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