The Cubic Experience

Thanks to Pat Phelan, CEO and one of the minds behind MaxRoam and Cubic Telecom, I’m having the opportunity to test their new service out thanks to their bloggers relation program.

That said, I got a MaxRoam SIM card and a Pirelli dual-mode phone (DP-L10). The SIM is “linked” to two landline numbers, one italian and one of the US. If you bought the SIM when they launched the service, you couldn’t choose an Italian number for free, but now (starting from a few days ago) they just added this possibility.

First of all I have to say that they did more than what I expected. The Pirelli phone’s box is completely customized for Cubic Telecom and even the phone has the Cubic background and the boot animation completely Cubic-oriented.

The phone is light and easy to use. It reminds me the first Nokia phones with color display, even if the menu is more similar to old Ericsson’s phones than Nokia.

Configuration was easy and I can say that you don’t need to be an engineer to do that. The data about the Cubic SIP server was there already and I just had to make the phone “see” my home access point.

The sim recognized the Vodafone IT network after about 15 seconds. Then, after playing with the phone’s options, I’ve seen that according to the default behavior the phone tries to make a phone call through the Wifi connection first, if there’s any, then through the GSM one. But you can change this if you want.

I noticed that the strength of the Wifi signal was not that great according to the phone, even if my Mac showed the maximum strength. I think it’s a problem of the phone, since I’ve seen that Nokia phones, even if slightly better (I’m speaking of €700 phones against a €99 phone), have the same problem.

The first call was good. The phone used the Wifi network and the quality, even if the signal was not that great, was good. I tried again close to the access point and the quality improved. The user experience is the same of a traditional call. The difference comes when you use the GSM coverage. As soon as you dial the called number (you need always to type the country code, in the format 39 instead of 0039 or +39) you receive a call then the other party starts ringing. It basically works through a call back. The quality is superb.

Even if through the call back, the user experience is good. The only annoyance I found is when you receive an SMS during the call. My credit was 5 euros and any time I made a call I received an SMS informing that my Airtime was low, recommending to top up my credit. This SMS arrived during the call and it’s not that great to hear the phone vibrating while close to your ear. But it’s a telephone’s issue, the fact that you receives the SMS is good, of course.

The other problem, but Pat assured me that they are going to solve it soon, is that CLI (the caller number) is not always shown while under GSM coverage. It’s a matter of roaming and Pat told me that in many countries it’s already working fine.

You can manage your SIM from the MaxRoam website.

Available options are still basic, but I presume they will add more options pretty soon, for example the ability to see the details of calls made (that would make me feel better in terms of cost control).

I can top-up my credit, buy another incoming number to link to my SIM and manage all my numbers (additional numbers cost €2 / month. In addition I can see my numbers and my credit. This information is available from the phone as well.

In conclusion, the service is working fine and it’s far from being “vaporware” (as a reader of my blog commented a few weeks ago). It’s real and really promising. And, in addition, they make you save money NOW. Pat and Co are working hard to add many new features and some of them will surely hit the press quickly (I can assure you that some of them are really cool).

Good job guys, I look forward to getting more and more features soon.

cubic telecom, luca filigheddu, maxroam, pat phelan, pirelli dual mode phone