United Mobile raises round, offers cheap international calls from your mobile

January 22, 2008 | Eric Eldon | Comments | |

picture-5.pngUnited Mobile provides SIM cards for mobile phones. The cards allow you to call or make mobile data connections cheaply, anywhere in the world from your cell phone. The company’s secret sauce is deals with more than 300 partners worldwide, so its users can roam across these partner networks at low rates.

Zurich, Switzerland-based United Mobile says its service is especially useful for Americans who travel abroad. If you exchange your standard SIM card for a UM SIM card, you can make and receive calls using your phone for up to 80 percent less than you would be otherwise charged by your US carrier, it claims.

SIM stands for Subscriber Identity Module, and a SIM card is a removable chip that contains personal data about you, such as your address book, and allows a carrier to match your identity with the mobile phone you’re using. It comes with GSM-standard phones.

The least expensive chip costs $29, with more expensive options. The company uses uses seven different calling tariff-zones. Whichever zone you’re in, you a flat rate for incoming calls and a flat rate for outgoing calls.

Check out the US pricing charts pdf for more.

United Mobile has raised $15 million from Accel Partners. Previous investors include angels Morten Lund, one of Skype’s founding investors, Thomas Geitner, the former global chief technology officer of Vodafone, and Robert Zacconi, CEO of King.com.

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About the Author, Eric Eldon

Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.

  • Eric: the roaming revenue does not go to your native home operator, approximately 80% of it is retained by the foreign operator. Overcharging foreigners is a premuim segment for telecom operators worldwide.

    And SIM card is not a disc, it is a chip. Its most important function is to identify user in GSM networks - it exchanges codes with the operator's IT core system that allows to uniquely identify the handset user. It is very secure.
  • Yuri, my understanding is that a nicely profitable chunk of international roaming rates does go to a US users' home carrier.

    I carelessly used the term disk. I've fixed.
  • Ben Houck
    I have owned a United Mobile (formerly known as Global Riiing)sim for many years and never had any problems. I used their customer service once (in English, but they are obviously multilingual) and found them to be more than competent. I am about to purchase another Sim for a fmily member in fact. The best part is free incoming calls in Europe. We pair it with a cheap int'l long distance plan in the US and talk for hours. One correction, the cheapest sim card is 29 EUROS and the price in dollars is $39.90.