Zer01 Mobile (at zer01mobile.com) is scheduled to roll out their unique cell phone service in July of 2009. What’s different about it is that they use data for all the transmissions instead of regular wireless packets. They’ve announced unlimited plans for data, voice, and long distance for $80 a month. Unlimited international long distance to 41 countries can be added for another $10 a month.

There’s also business opportunity available through Buzzirk Mobile (buzzirkmobile.com but the site was down as of this writing). It looks like Buzzirk will be doing the retail and dealer side of things (details are sketchy because they haven’t gone live yet, so bear with me). They will use a 3×9 matrix and pay $10 a month for any customer you sign up.

I spoke with two people today about it, that’s what got me in the mood to do further research. A lot of people are very excited about it, because at $10 a month it could really add up since it’s a huge market and scales so well. There’s a couple of reason why I haven’t jumped on board, I’ll explain.

First, it’s a month to month plan, which is good, except you have to buy one of the HTC phones, or have a GSM WM6 phone to use it. Since most carriers subsidize their phones with the plan, or give them away free, people are used to that. Selling them at full price (one gentleman I spoke with today heard they’d be in the $150 to $500 range, and only the top end phones will be able to use all the features of the network).

If you do have to buy an HTC handset (the current WM6 phones are all very expensive like the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1), it will make be harder to sell. People aren’t used to paying full price, and some won’t switch if it means giving up their beloved IPhone. Also in a down economy, the upfront costs may be too much for some people, especially if you factor in the cost of the penalty in leaving their plan.

Some advantages here is the $80 a month fee isn’t subject to the 20 percent wireless tax that traditional wireless companies have to pay so there’s a savings. I’ve read articles of these companies trying to get that tax to apply to places like Vonage, but so far without success. I doubt Zer01 and Buzzirk are going to go unnoticed when they start to compete against the traditional providers charging that tax.

The supplier as I mentioned is HTC. The reason why you’ve probably never heard of them is many carriers rebrand their phones. In recent years they’ve decided to pursue marketing their own brand, they’ve been around a long time and if you go to their site you’ll recognize Palm and Compaq products they make for them. It wasn’t clear what the price of their handsets are, because all the products listed there are sold with plans which subsidize the cost.

Since unless you have a GSM WM6 phone already or unlocked Blackberry, you’ll be buying the HTC models, it still remains to be seen if they can keep up with demand. The Buzzirk distributors who’ve reached triple diamond will get their phones first, then down the ranks with retail customers at the end.
With no production numbers on availability it’s still a mystery, but HTC is no stranger to making a lot of phones, so I’m not too worried. Also Zer01 is a new company, and whether they can scale up to meet demand, and do it at the $80 a month price is still an unknown. There’s a LOT of features and truly unlimited data and voice, I just hope they’ve accurately estimated just how much bandwidth some people are capable of using without a limit.

With all that said, I hope Zer01 and Buzzirk succeed. Eventually the phones needed for this advanced network will come down in price and availability will increase. One potential negative is they state there’s no acceptable useage policy for Internet access, and I can’t see that lasting. Someone will figure a way to spam with their account sooner or later so I hope they get that worked out before something happens.

If they deliver, they’ll probably bring prices down on traditional carriers for them to compete. This is far from over, and I’ll be keeping an eye on both with updates as this plays out. If you work for Zer01 or Buzzirk, or a distributor with new information please leave a comment. If you’re a Buzzirk distributor please keep in mind their new policy of zero tolerance for writing copy or linking to your distributor site. I read recently that they will freeze your account for 24 hours if you do this, and if the material isn’t removed your account gets canceled (and your residual payments lost).
One distributor said with it being in prerelease there isn’t enough marketing materials, so people started writing their own, and Buzzirk came down hard because many weren’t responding to compliance notices. I think it’s a pretty heavy handed policy because if you don’t respond in 24 hours you lose your business. I personally would freeze an account for a week before doing something that drastic (people do take vacations). If the account is frozen they can’t sign anyone else up anyway, but that’s their current policy. Like I mentioned, if you have new information on either Zer01 or Buzzirk post it here.