$19/month cell carrier Republic Wireless overwhelmed on release day | Hacker News Reader

$19/month cell carrier Republic Wireless overwhelmed on release day

republicwireless.com

71 pointsthechut61 comments

The support policy is interesting.

"If You need support after the Activation Date, You may send us an email at service@republicwireless.com. Unlike other communications companies, Republic Wireless actually will respond to You promptly, but You will be charged a support fee of $10.00." ...

also: "REPUBLIC WIRELESS RESERVES THE RIGHT TO IMMEDIATELY TERMINATE SERVICE AND, IN ADDITION TO ANY AND ALL OTHER APPLICABLE CHARGES UNDER THESE TERMS OF SERVICE, CHARGE A MINIMUM INAPPROPRIATE USE FEE OF $500 AND/OR CHARGE $0.05 PER MINUTE FOR ALL CALLS MADE DURING SUCH PERIODS OF PROHIBITED USE, WHICHEVER IS HIGHER, CHARGE $0.04 PER SMS FOR ALL SMS’ MADE DURING SUCH PERIODS OF PROHIBITED USE, AND CHARGE $0.09 PER MB OF DATA CONTENT FOR USAGE DURING SUCH PERIODS OF PROHIBITED USE, AS WELL AS ALL APPLICABLE AMOUNTS DUE PURSUANT TO THESE TERMS OF SERVICE AND THE SERVICE PLAN. (WE DO NOT REALLY WANT TO CHARGE YOU THESE FEES AND DO NOT EXPECT THAT YOU WILL DO ANYTHING THAT MAKES US THINK ABOUT IT. PLEASE BEHAVE.)"

looking at a copy posted at: http://a.slickdeals.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=747242&#... The TOS should be at http://www.republicwireless.com/legal/terms

EDIT: TOS are back online at http://www.republicwireless.com/legal/

"... will respond to You promptly, but You will be charged a support fee of $10.00." ...

How long until someone writes a script for kicks and giggles to generate support request emails on behalf of thousands of RW customers costing them each $10 a pop.

This "inappropriate use" thing seems to read a little sketchy. Especially because further down in the TOS in 18(b)(iv) they state it's a violation to "modify any software included in any Mobile Device(s)."

I know they probably won't fine you $500 or charge you exorbitantly if you root your phone. But under the terms here aren't you're basically agreeing that they can if they want?

The only way they can afford to offer this is because they are forcing people to use wifi when available. So I could see them cutting off service to people who root their phones. As to inappropriate use, they have articulated clear standards for fair use here: http://www.republicwireless.com/home/pdfs/FairUsePolicyNovem... but the standards are based on proprietary info, so you won't be able to double check stats.

In other words, they must reserve a very big hammer to protect themselves simply due to the type of business they are trying to start. Said hammer could be abused, but they cannot not have it.

Well, even if Republic isn't that great the fact that they got overwhelmed on release day is a strong signal to other entrepreneurs, executives, and investors that the public wants this badly.

Let's hope the market responds and competitors are attracted to this niche.

And hopefully find a better solution, more importantly.

Any complaints about their solution? It seems good from where I'm sitting, assuming Sprint has good coverage.

It is basically a hack that combines VoIP over WiFi with Sprint cellular service, the latter of which is limited as described in the TOS.

I'm not understanding what the complaint in that is, exactly. Is it that the Sprint/cellular side of the usage is limited while the wifi usage is not?

Yes, and while I can understand why, I hope others will find a better solution.

The AT&T base iPhone plan has 450 minutes, (vs. 550 cellular, unlimited wifi here) for $40 plus $5 for 250 texts plus $15 for 200 MB or $25 for 2 GB. That's a total of $60/month at minimum. I really don't see what the complaint is here.

they would have to implement a wifi network as ubiquitous as wireless coverage.

you consider that flawless?

they don't mention wifi coverage anywhere on their site.

All the articles I've seen about this provider say that the price is low because they expect to utilize WiFi for a significant proportion of calls, not supplied by Republic, but supplied by the cable or DSL provider, in my case AT&T UVerse.

The land-line equivalent of this is Magic-Jack, though Republic do at least offer CDMA, or will until they discover their customers are breaking their business model.

If that's the case, their business model is moot.

...i'm paying for only the 300Mb/month on sprint?

as with magicJack, this will only be consumed by the folks still paying AOL for internet.

I have magic jack but after I initially installed it I never used it. The service is terrible and I wouldn't be surprised if they had vacuum tube mainframes and tape drives running thier repeaters. Having said that, magic jack is extremely valuable for one thing: a number I can quickly forward to any phone I please. That's why I keep the phone number. Once I need a number for people to call I can have the magic jack number listed, and simply forward it to whatever number I'm using at the time(though it won't forward internationally).

This is how I use Google Voice.

No offense, but in voip terms you are "the folks that still pays AOL"

I have numbers from companies that are more reliable and offer more value than this. And use gvoice for my spam numbers

Not really. I have the number for 5 years and I don't have to pay a dime for it again until the renewal. Plus once it forwards the call it goes off their switchboard so I don't have a problem with the miserable call quality magic jack is famous for. Who knows if I'll renew(or if the company will even be in business) when the time comes but until then I've got a number anyone can call effectively for free.

You're paying 1/3 of an equivalent cellular plan on AT&T and Verizon. You don't have to be a luddite to see that as attractive.

Did you read the site at all? It's a low end sprint plan + free seamless wifi calling. Universal wifi is in no way required.

While I want to agree, it may just been they were wholly underprepared for even a moderate amount of customers.

If they prepared for, say, 1200, and got 3700, they were overwhelmed, but it doesn't necessarily indicate there's that much of a market. We don't know enough about their infrastrucure or estimates to know if this really signals an insatiable demand.

I think it probably does, but I've been wrong at reading signals like this before.

The buying public sees $19/month first and foremost, and the majority of consumers will look no further. Cheap sells, but it's a short term play.

Once the consumer gets the product home, they start using it. I've done a lot of telecom work, including rolling out large scale VoIP deployments for publicly traded companies. VoIP is great when it's well engineered. When you slap it on "any old network", it sucks. Horribly.

Users of this phone are going to experience horrible call quality at some point. VoIP calls over a home wireless network with zero QoS makes this a question of "when", not "if". The first time someone sends an email with a large attachment or Dropbox uploads a large file while someone is on their Republic phone, the house of cards will come crashing down. Don't believe me? Run a continuous ping to google.com and upload a large file on cable or DSL.

So, the message to entrepreneurs, executives, and investors is that consumers want a cheaper cell phone plan...

I can think of only one response: duh!

This is a prime example of an "execution counts" scenario. If Republic is successful, it will be because they solved some very difficult technical problems like automatically switching to the cellular network when network conditions degrade. I don't know of anyone doing that though. It would seem they have to solve this problem somehow. What happens if you're on a WiFi call and you leave the network area? If they pull it off, major kudos to them.

Other VoIP companies with large deployments face similar issues. Vonage (last time I used them) prefers that you use their router as your primary, because it has QoS rules built in. Comcast's VoIP solution works fantastically because their network is really well engineered for VoIP.

If Republic's plan is to simply hand a phone to users and hop on to their WiFi network, I'd anticipate catastrophic return rates and customer dissatisfaction.

Then again, people are cheap. Republic may find that there is a viable community of cost conscious consumers who will tolerate the occasional bad call in exchange for a low, low price.

I don't think I agree that VOIP on home IP networks will suck. I have 15 Mb with Cox. I can't see it being overwhelmed unless I have a torrent running. We have control over our home networks. I am paying $80 for 2 lines for only voice. I would love to save $40 a month.

Seems like an interesting concept. Still, when it comes to mobile contracts I'm happy I'm not living in the US. Even though this seems to be quite a good deal, it has quite a strict fair use policy. [1] Here in the UK I pay £10 ($16) a month for 250 minutes, unlimited texts and unlimited data. No contract, free texts and calls to people on the same network.

[1] "the company suggests that 550 minutes, 150 texts, and 300 MB of data would be close to the limit" - http://www.informationweek.com/news/mobility/smart_phones/23...

If the order page ever does go live remember to use the coupon code "welcome19" to get the phone for $99 instead of $199.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/31/republic-wireless-an-androi...

There's a brief description. What I've always wondered about this technology (without looking too much into it) is can I start a phone call on my home Wifi, unplug the router, and have the phone atomagically switch over to the Cellular network without losing the call? Because that seem like it would be difficult. And I don't really know if I want a service where I can't move around freely while on a call.

I don't specifically know anything about this implementation, but T-Mobile had the T-Mobile @ Home program, which allowed you to place cellular calls over WiFi without using minutes.

In that scenario, I was able to start a call on my WiFi and leave the house which seamlessly transferred over to cellular. Aside from the obvious, it's not _really_ much different than a cell tower handoff, and most people don't even realize that's happening all the time as you drive around.

T-Mobile now calls that service 'Wi-Fi Calling', and provides it on certain Android phones via software by Kineto Wireless. However, unlike the original UMA solution that T-Mobile BlackBerrys had, the Android software does not support handoffs between Wi-Fi and cellular, and it will drop your call.

Can someone explain to me why this is such great news? Is $19/month especially cheap for American carriers or are they offering some kind of special feature?

Their phones use WiFi where available and, as I understand it, offer unlimited calls, texts and data - which is apparently a good deal for $19/month.

It's several things but to your question on average people pay upwards of 50 dollars for phone service this is significantly cheaper.

It's extraordinarily cheap, especially for an "unlimited" plan. For comparison: Republic Wireless uses Sprint's network, and Sprint's "unlimited" plan costs $99/month. (In theory, Republic gets away with this by using wifi rather than the cell network whenever possible. We'll see if it works.)

Its not "unlimited" cellular, there is a fair use policy, this article indicates: "Republic's fair-use limits are 550 minutes, 150 text messages, and 300MB when on a cellular connection" - http://www.mobileburn.com/17420/news/republic-wireless-launc...

They're not really clear, but supposedly it's unlimited as long as, say, 50% of your mintues/texts/data are done through wifi.

The price floor is about $39/mo.

You can go cheaper if you never use your phone with some of the prepaid setups, but at that point you're talking a handful of calls a month, no data, and a couple SMS.

Oddly enough, you can get an unlimited plan on the Sprint network through Virgin Mobile for $55 a month.

$35

Only if you have limited minutes.

Or you can compare it to Virgin Mobile USA, which is owned by Sprint. They have a $35/mo plan with 350 minutes + unlimited data + unlimited texts. Probably a better choice for most, considering who Republic seems to have a lot of little gotchas.

http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-...

It's cheap for unlimited talk, but it's not that great for data. It sounds like they are assuming most people will be using the phone in range of wifi. So if you compare it to plans with unlimited data, it's not incredible. I'm paying $25 a month (though they are charging $35 to new customers) to virgin mobile for unlimited data and 300 anytime minutes. The phone is a little overpriced too. Lg optimus phones are going for around 130 right now.

Though the technology sounds interesting if it works. I don't know of any way that I could seamlessly change from wifi to cellular service with virgin mobile while making a call.

I'm not particularly interested in this for my phone. I'm not sure why -- I think I'm still more comfortable with the idea of having an "unlimited" resource for talking.

This, however, would be a stellar model for iPad use. If I had a tier-2 tablet offering, I'd be tripping all over myself to get it in front of these guys, especially with the Sprint network underneath it having credible 4G in big cities.

Most tablets already has support for handing off between Wi-Fi and 3G already.

The site is overloaded. It appears they weren't able to design their site to scale quickly under high load. I wonder were they are hosting.

  ==========[ republicwireless.com ]==========
  Web Hosting:
    (Amazon.com)
        107.20.252.178
  
  DNS Hosting:
    (awsdns-18.net)
        ns-660.awsdns-18.net.
    (awsdns-07.org)
        ns-1081.awsdns-07.org.
    (awsdns-58.co.uk)
        ns-2007.awsdns-58.co.uk.
    (awsdns-33.com)
        ns-271.awsdns-33.com.

  Email Hosting:
    (Google (Postini))
        10 bandwidth.com.s9a1.psmtp.com.
        20 bandwidth.com.s9a2.psmtp.com.
        30 bandwidth.com.s9b1.psmtp.com.
        40 bandwidth.com.s9b2.psmtp.com.

  Domain Registrar:
    (Network Solutions)
  
  SSL Issuer:
    (Network Solutions L.L.C.)
        Common Name: *.republicwireless.com

How did you generate this report? Used some tool, or formatted it yourself?

I used a tool that I wrote for myself, it turns out that it's way more handy than I thought it would be! https://github.com/jpf/domain-profiler/

Considering they haven't even finished launching yet, and their business is cell phones, I hardly begrudge them a website that can't handle huge traffic spikes.

> It appears they weren't able to design their site to scale quickly under high load.

Or just that they did not optimize for that.

Anyone consider the idea that maybe they put up the current message as a ploy to perpetuate the image that demand was overwhelming? Seems to be a solid strategy for drumming up more publicity.

Seems to be somewhat possible considering their other marketing materials.

The actual order page has been activated again -

https://www.republicwireless.com/checkout/

Remember to use promo code "welcome19" as mentioned in this thread to get the phone for $99 as opposed to $199.

Looks like they're finally up - just got my order in. Not sure if it corresponds to anything, but my order number is just below 1500.

How good is the VoIP? I've used VoIP phones and their services were spotty. The main drawback is the silence erasure.

The site (www.republicwireless.com) seems to be working again now, but now they are promising shipping in 30-60 days.

I can't seem to find an answer to whether or not I'm able to transfer my current number to Republic. Anyone?

During the signup/checkout process they ask if you're porting a number to republic, so I'm assuming they support it (or will in the near future).

Even if you place an order, it looks like the wait time is 30-60 days...

Does anyone know what phone they are shipping with this?

Some info on the phone I found on some site: <================================================>

In order to use Republic's $19 per month plan, you must purchase its specially modified LG Optimus smartphone. A clone of the Optimus S available from Sprint, Republic's Optimus includes software that manages the switch from Wi-Fi to cellular networks automatically. The software permanently runs in the background, so it is likely to have an impact on battery life when compared with a normal Optimus smartphone. The Republic Optimus costs $199 without any contract commitment.

You can get the phone for $99 if you use the promo code listed here (before 11/27): http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/07/republic-wireless-officiall...

has anyone been able to get an order in yet?

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