If you want a USB modem that will provide mobile broadband access in the US, you’ll usually have to sign up for a 2 year contract and commit to paying $60 per month for up to 5GB of data transfers. Or, you can sign up for a new DataJack modem which costs about $100 up front and $40 per month thereafter for unlimited data. Oh yeah, and there’s no contract, so you could use the service for a month or two, cancel it, and then sign up again half a year later.
On paper, DataJack has me second guessing my recent decision to pick up a CLEAR WiMAX modem. That’s especially true since while my mobile WiMAX modem works great, the home modem isn’t as fast as the DSL service I was hoping to replace, so I’m thinking of canceling the home service which means I’d end up paying as much as $45/month for WiMAX service that only works in a handful of cities when I could be paying $40/month for 3G service that is available nationwide.
But this time I think I’ll try not to be the early adopter and wait to see how well the service works for others before signing up.
via Chip Chick
Before anybody gets too excited, do yourself a favor and click the “About Us” on the bottom of the page, then Google on the parent company.
Did that, nothing weird noted. Am I missing something?
No? Then you’re the perfect candidate to sign up! 🙂
Holy cow… someone was invoking PT Barnum a couple of blog posts back. Make that a double scoop, pleeze.
Succinctly, yes. Quite a bit. Even if you don’t know anything about OTC-traded companies, at least check on Quamtel, then WQN.
From the ToS and coverage map it looks like they’re a Verizon reseller. I’ll have to confirm that though.
Could you please cite your sources? I’ve done searches on WQN, Attomic Guppy Inc, and Quamtel and come up with nothing that would justify the level of derision you have for this company.
They were a card reseller, specializing in international calls. They’re silver rated with the BBB, which isn’t great, but… They’re not listed as crammers or slammers. And their VoIP offering, from what I can tell, isn’t beloved but isn’t hated either. It looks like they’re buying service off of Verizon and reselling it, at a reduced rate, like a number of companies have already done in the cell side of the industry. What do you know that I can’t find? Please share.
Conducting due diligence would require more than simple Google searches, but we’ll just go with Google 101 and fortify it with some common sense and see what we get: DataJack’s OTC symbol is QUMI.OB. You can read their first and only 10Q here: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/091116/qumi.ob10-q.html WQN is a VOIP reseller…”A substantial portion of WQN’s revenue is derived from the sale of prepaid service to customers calling from the United States to India.” For the 3-month period ending 9/30/09, their gross rev is roughly $500K, compared to roughly $900K for prev year period. They have a net loss of about $1.5 million. Some of this is due to one-time expenses of forming a new company (Quamtel), and some is due to “increased competition.” There are more financial nuggets if one wants to read further. Suffice it to say, they are an OTC company, they aren’t making money, and now they’ve just formed… Read more »
Correct, before that date they were Atomic Guppy Inc, which merged with WQN, to form the new holding company which owns DataJack Inc. I’m following all that, and everything you’ve stated, I saw doing Google Searches. If you look at Atomic Guppy, they’re actually increasing there share price quite a bit. They are currently at 2.64 per share. The last major purchase transaction on the OTC:BB before the merger, and the 10 to 1 reverse split was at twenty cents a share, which works out to a current share value of two dollars even. The last major sales they’ve had were in job lots of five hundred thousand (fifty thousand of the current shares) by what appears to be an individual person, who sold at twenty five cents per share ($2.50 post split), at what was the hight light of Atomic Guppy Inc’s final year (Q3 09), when the company… Read more »
In online quibbles, I fully understand it’s easy to take the other’s words out of context. Still, I have to ask you to not put words in my mouth. No where did I say that this outfit is a fraud, nor that their business model isn’t credible. You don’t have to know much about business or business models to understand that a company that just pop up pretty much overnight, with a track record of losing money, isn’t one to rely on for something as critical as your communication needs, not when you’re paying $140 up front, and $40/month. That, and any modicum of common sense should tell you that reselling “unlimited 3G data” for substantially less than the telco, at a time when the telcos’ 3G networks themselves are straining under the load of just the smartphones’ 5GB/month requirement alone. That USB modem is to be hooked up to… Read more »
How about the VoIP brands? Did you find anything about those, like Voip Inc closing down with debts in millions, then WQN somehow emerging? Your Verizon guess would be unlikely against that context.
Any word if this is really unlimited, or more of the telco 5 gb that somehow passes for “unlimited.”
Why don’t you call the toll-free number and ask?
While you’re at it, ask them where the bandwidth comes from?
🙂
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If you look at their coverage map, it matches T-Mobile’ss exactly.
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This is a GSM service…not Verizon, people. They refer to EDGE in the FAQs and, if you look at the map, the only actual 3G coverage is Yellow… not much at all, just like AT&T. Also, since it says “The Data Jack rides the Fastest Growing AWS 3G Broadband Network” That means it is on AT&Ts network. AWS = AT&T. Datajack is promising a lot when they say you can do VOIP, and video confrencing and anything else. Yes, you CAN do it..but how good will it sound? Big difference.
The USB data modem appears to be the Option Icon 452:
http://www.option.com/en/products/products/usb-modems/icon452/
The 452 is available from a few USA resellers for more than $150,
so the Datajack.com offer of $99 for the hardware looks attractive.
It also appears that you can try the service for 14 days with minimal
risk:
“If you are not happy with your DataJack for any reason, you can return it within 14 days of purchase. To receive a full refund for the equipment (minus a $15.00 restocking fee), the DataJack must be in the original package and must not be damaged.”
Lucky post 13. Written by one of the founders of the very first communications reseller in the USA. (Yeah, before that, I had an honest job.) 😉 Just a couple of points come through to me from the viewpoint of past experience… * I would not buy stock in the company, even if they gave it to me. 😉 * It is possible to make a honest and ethical business in this field, but these people’s past behavior does not inspire any great confidence here. * You can’t tell if they have a practical business plan from the outside numbers. Sometimes you can’t tell that looking at the internal, financial planning, spreadsheet back in the office. 😉 These people’s track record suggest _not_, but you can’t tell from here. The public service pricings have no connection with reality – Saying: “These are selling the same thing for less than Those”… Read more »
Thats a native TMobile coverage map.