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A few months ago the UK-based mobile VoIP operator Truphone bought Sim4Travel, a company which provides an international sim card to cut costs of international roaming.

Today they sent me an email with a promotional offer by which I can get a free SIM card by paying for 10 pounds of talk time credit on it.

I have to say that their offer looks really interesting and their rates very cheap. The good point is that I don’t pay to receive calls in over 50 countries so I can even keep that SIM in my mobile phone even while I am in my country without having to pay when someone calls me.

Together with the SIM you get a +44 number (unlike MaxRoam, no other country codes unfortunately) and most outbound calls cost about 0,25p (pounds).

Unfortunately, for certain use cases, there are solutions much cheaper. For example, going back to my tests while I was in Palo Alto, a solution involving a local T-Mobile SIM and Rebtel or Jajah Direct are still MUCH cheaper.

Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, maxroam, Mobile, sim4travel, truphone, Voice 2.0, VoIP

I read today that UK-based mobile VoIP operator Truphone just acquired Sim4Travel, a MVNO which provides a global roaming solution to save costs for international roaming thanks to their SIM card.

According to the announcement, it will take months to integrate Sim4Travel technology into Truphone and we still have to wait for the availability of a Truphone SIM card, but it will surely be a completion of their current service, much limited right now since it works on Wifi-enabled devices only. This is the missing thing. I’m trying to figure out what iPhone + Truphone SIM card could mean, since Truphone has been the first company to get VoIP working natively on the iPhone.

When I talked to James Body from Truphone during my latest trip to the US, he told me that major announcements were in their pipeline. This is definitely one of those, even if I am a little bit surprised that a major competitor of Sim4Travel, MaxRoam, from friend and irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan, is not involved in such deal.

I know Pat and Truphone had many opportunities to talk each other so I’m a little bit surprised about that. I look forward to Pat’s comments on this deal even because I bet Pat’s strategic vision surely helped Truphone indirectly, since MaxRoam had a great visibility during the last months.

Another guess? I also bet that new fresh money hit Truphone’s bank account too. Will they also announce a new round of financing soon?

Technorati Tags: acquisition, luca filigheddu, maxroam, sim4travel, truphone