Mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) have been having one hell of a time over the past year. The biggest burnout among them was Amp’d Mobile, which lost $360M before realizing its customers couldn’t pay their bills. While Helio rode high for quite some time, that company has also lost Earthlink as an investor, seen CEO Sky Dayton depart, and accumulated a deficit of $560M. Now Sonopia, an MVNO that enabled communities and organizations to set up their own branded mobile services (so-called “mini-MVNOs”), has also shut down after failing to gain traction. According to a former business development consultant, Sonopia’s “approach was too ‘involving’ and too ambitious, offering targeted services and campaigns for segmented groups…which often lacked skills in running even a marketing program, let alone a mobile service.” Apparently the inflexibility of Verizon, its parent carrier, and the over-zealous optimism of founder Juha Christensen also led the company to ruin. Sonopia is now in the TechCrunch DeadPool. → Read More
This idea may seem a bit bold at first, but with the right execution, it could end up being a smash hit. Sonopia has purchased minutes and service from Verizon and will now let you create a personalized MVNO. No need to deal with companies like Sprint or Helio anymore — now you’re the boss. You can build plans, add services, and have friends, groups, or whoever you want join in. Everything is controllable through a pretty-decent looking web interface, which is key in making this work if Sonopia has any kind of fighting chance against the big guys. I could see this being used for lots of community-based groups. High school football teams (Cougars Mobile anyone?), groups of senior citizens who just need a phone for emergency calls, or maybe a collective of gamers would be able to create their own service, up the price a bit, and make a profit to benefit their cause. Anyone game for CrunchGear Wireless? Official Site [via PhoneScoop] → Read More
TechCrunch just posted about a new mobile startup called Sonopia. Sonopia lets you create you own mobile social network on top of Verizon’s phone service for fun and profit. Anyone can create a network (called Sonopia) in a couple of minutes. The idea is that organizations will build there own branded networks, attract subscribers, and provide exclusive content relevant to their users (news, blogs). A percentage of each member’s monthly mobile bill goes directly to the organization. Subscribers can choose from a few different phones and calling plans along with additional MMS and WAP packages. For promotional purposes, networks can co-brand their own website to get people to sign up. No one has to sign up for a mobile plan to be a part of a Sonopia. Instead, they can sign up for just the web component, where you can keep track of the news and friends within your network. However, it all seems pretty pointless to use this service if the majority of your users aren’t using the main feature of the service, the mobile plan. There are plenty of well financed MVNOs currently slugging it out for you attention: Helio ($440 million), Amp’d ($260 million), and Boost. Helio, with its large marketing push this quarter, is considering it a triumph to be closing in on 100,000 users. Mobile is in the midst of ever dwindling margins, relying on large networks to bring in the serious cash. If the big guys are having trouble building revenue on top of large subscriber numbers, Sonopia’s decentralized approach seems to give too little an incentive for smaller organizations and subscribers to invest time and money in switching to a new network. → Read More
If you’ve ever wanted to have your own mobile phone network, now you can. Sonopia launched today, and it allows anyone to create their own virtual mobile phone network in a couple of minutes (which I promptly did). Sonopia uses Verizon to handle actual calls and data, and is effectively a reseller of their service. Users who set up a network for their affinity group (sports team, church, school, etc.) will receive 3-8% of the revenues generated from their customers (the percentage increases as the number of customers grows). Users can choose from a few different phones and calling plans and can co-brand their own website to get people to sign up. Almost as an afterthought, it seems, Sonopia tacked on social networking features to their site as well. Subscribers can add friends, create a profile, upload pictures and video from their phone, etc. I came away disappointed in my testing of the site. Design and flow of the signup process isn’t thought through properly, and there is very little information available on the site for people who are thinking of creating a network. As promised, it took me only a couple of minutes to create my own mobile network, but when I was done I had a lot of questions left unanswered. Small groups will be able to guilt/bully some of their members into switching from their existing carrier to Sonopia, but the site needs an overhaul before large number of people will feel comfortable with the service. The company was founded by Juha Christensen, a Symbian founder and the former head of Microsoft’s mobile division. The company has raised $9 million from venture firms ComVentures and Sevin Rosen. → Read More
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