If, at the end of each year, I was to identify the top 10 most disruptive solutions that merit your attention, MaxRoam would be at the top of my list every year running. I was turned on to MaxRoam last year when I went to Ireland for Mashup Camp (speaking of which, the next Mashup Camp in Silicon Valley starts on Nov. 17). If you live in the U.S. and travel internationally, then you know that AT&T and T-Mobile rape you blind on voice roaming charges. MaxRoam simply obliterates those fees while offering a few great value-added benefits at the same time.I'll spare you the gory details of everything MaxRoam, a service offering from Cubic Telecom, does. When I used to work for ZDNet, I did an exhaustive writeup of what it does, how it does it, and some of the value-added services that MaxRoam offers. See If Skype was disruptive to telcos, then Cubic Telecom is their nightmare (and good for you). For example, the ability to hand out local phone numbers to the people you do business with in other countries in such a way that when they call you, it always rings through to your phone no matter where you are. This saves them ("them" could be your customers) a lot of money, too (in addition to the money you're saving by using the MaxRoam service in the first place). Or, the practically seamless way you can make Wi-Fi calls.

MaxRoam is apparently a big hit with Europeans who travel internationally, Yes, it shatters roaming charges for U.S. residents traveling abroad. But my understanding is that if you're a European resident traveling to the U.S., you might as well empty your bank account if you plan on making or receiving calls (without MaxRoam in your pocket) while on the road. So, as disruptive as MaxRoam is to the American carrier confab, it's apparently even more so to the European operators (some of those exorbitant charges are no doubt related to what the U.S. carriers charge for roaming and call termination).

When I last checked-in with MaxRoam CEO Pat Phelan earlier this summer, things hadn't changed too much. MaxRoam still had some of its startup clunkiness to it. For example, when placing a call from a phone equipped with a MaxRoam SIM, the service must terminate the connection and ring you back to complete the call. Given the amount of money you save, you get used to it.

Another downside to the service is that it didn't offer data roaming. It's really easy to wipe out your savings with international data roaming. Unlike with voice calls where you have some idea of how long you've been on the phone, it's really impossible to guess how much data is whipping back and forth between your handset and the wireless network. Not only that, some travelers just start using their data services (e-mail, SMS) never once stopping to think, "Oh crap, is all this data going to cost me a fortune?" When I first used MaxRoam, I noticed the absence of data support and wrote:

OK, so you're sold on how Cubic Telecom has revolutionized voice. But what about data? The Web is full of horror stories -- bills involving thousands of dollars -- where American travelers used their handsets in Europe to access the Web and e-mail only to find later how data roaming can really drive their bills through the roof.

When discussing handsets, data primarily comes in two flavors: SMS and everything else (Web, e-mail, etc.). Cubic Telecom's service supports SMS. According to Phelan, SMS only works with the phone's primary number (in other words, not one of the other 49 numbers that you can assign to the phone after) and receiving SMS messages is free. Sending SMS messages involves a charge of .30 Euros per SMS and there's no additional charge associated with sending an SMS to a number that's foreign to whatever your primary number is.

As for the Web, e-mail, and other data, Cubic Telecom doesn't yet support roaming. But, according to Phelan, once Cubic Telecom achieves its MVNO status (which it expects to do by April 2008), it will be able to offer the same sort of steep discounts it currently offers for voice roaming. Phelan anticipates that the savings will be in the territory of 70%, saying that the charges will be roughly 1 euro per MB for Europeans roaming in Europe.

According to an email from Phelan, that day has come (he's rolling out MaxRoam's data roaming plans at the TechCrunch50 event this week).

According to Phelan's blog post:

Today we have launched MaxRoam V2... The new services drastically cut the cost of voice roaming costs in the USA but now also bring data roaming for as little as 0.005c/kb..... Phelan outlined that when MaxRoam and other Telco 2.0 companies made life tough for the telcos and their voice charges, the telcos themselves shifted their focus to data roaming as their new cash cow. But MaxRoam V2 means this cash cow is due for slaughter.

Slaughter is a big word. But, so far, given the way Phelan has delivered on voice, I have no doubt about him keeping his promise. Cubic Telecom ranks up there in the top 10 companies that I'd invest in if I had the money to invest (and could do it from an ethical point of view since I also cover them). Given the extent to which Cubic Telecom disrupts the status quo, given the amount of money that eBay orginally paid for Skype, and given that this business actually has a business model, it's only a matter of time before one of the Internet giants with designs on finally turning the telco market on its ear moves in.