Reasons To Hesitate On Zer01's Unlimited Mobile Offer

alphadogg writes with an excerpt from Network World that might save you some money: "Imagine downloading a two-hour HD movie in three minutes to your new cell phone, then plugging the phone into your TV to watch the film. Make unlimited phone calls, surf online as much as you like and send unlimited text messaging for $70 a month, without a contract. Sign up to sell the same service to other people and get $10 a month for each person you sell to. That's what a group of related companies including Zer01 Mobile, Buzzirk, Global Verge and Unified Technologies Group are promoting heavily online and at industry trade shows. The offer is attractive enough to garner coverage in top business and technology publications, at least one positive review from an analyst and even a 'best in show' award from a magazine at the CTIA wireless industry trade show earlier this year. Does it all sound too good to be true? If so, that's because it probably is. What little information is available about the services is technically inconsistent, and doesn't match up with public records."

Comments

Too good to be true?

[Anonymous Coward]

They had me at pyramid scheme.

Oh come on people

[Dunbal]

Surely email has taught us that we can absolutely trust anything offered for sale by someone u51Ng 1337 sp34k! Shame on you.

The laws of physics called

[Com2Kid]

They want to speak with someone over at Zer01, something about "exceeding sane limitations of the electromagnetic spectrum".

An HD movie in 3 minutes? Even if they are calling "480p" HD, there is no way in hell that is transfering wirelessly in 3 minutes to a cellular device.

Trying to sign everyone up as a sales associate just proves it is a scam.

Re:The laws of physics called

[Minwee]

An HD movie in 3 minutes? Even if they are calling "480p" HD, there is no way in hell that is transfering wirelessly in 3 minutes to a cellular device.

Sure you can. I do that all the time. You just need to do away with some of your preconceptions.

Watch this. On the left I have a phone. It's a standard, off the shelf model, the same kind you can pick up just about anywhere pretty cheaply as long as you're willing to sign in blood.

On the right, a microSD card packed with about eight gigabytes of hard core, er, family friendly and perfectly legal video. Again, just a standard card you could buy from a store. Well, one that carried SD cards. Perhaps you shop smart, shop SD Mart.

Start the timer. In less than two seconds I can pick up the card with one hand, move it across the desk and plug it in to the phone. That's eight gigabytes of transfer in two seconds or 32Gb/s. All without using any wires, just fingers and those little metal contact thingies on the card. That's almost as much bandwidth as a station wagon filled with DLTs.

There you go. 32Gb/s of wireless transmission. Just remember not to divulge any of the details I have shown you to the investors until after you get their money.

Full stop

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA

One key player in the network of companies is Mark Petschel. He's the CEO of Global Verge, the multilevel marketing firm...

Whenever MLM (multi-level-marketing) rears its ugly head, that's a good sign for me to avoid company like the plague.

Re:Full stop

[e9th]

When a company's CEO is on probation for security fraud, that's not a good sign either.

MLM

[MBCook]

Sign up to sell the same service to other people and get $10 a month for each person you sell to.

That makes it multi-level-marketing (read: "legal pyramid scheme"), which should be an instant clue to anyone to avoid it.

Also, reading the article, it's a $70 initial fee to do the MLM part, and $40 monthly fee, which means if you sign up 5 people, it will take 7 months to break even.

You can probably make money faster by picking up loose change.

It's funny, and a bit disturbing...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

How, on the one hand, society makes it ever harder to escape your past(even shit entry level jobs can come with background and credit checks, never mind trying to get cleared, or the whole sex offender registry thing) while, somehow, certain people just seem to float right through, skipping from one scam to another, seemingly impervious.

I wonder how it works. Is it the charm that sociopaths are known for that allows certain people to do it? Are the rules different in certain areas? Are most of the barriers actually illusory/psychological? Why doesn't an attempt to legally incorporate a new business include a "do any of your officers have a background in crime, particularly white collar crime?" check?

Ars Technica was a little skeptical too

[e9th]

Last March, Ars Technica wrote:

Zer01 says it can offer unlimited cell calls (via VoIP) and cell data through a unique relationship with AT&T. AT&T isn't talking, and the particulars of the deal fly in the face of similar virtual mobile network operator deals past and present.

Movie in 3 minutes? No problem...!

[Joce640k]

You can have a two hour movie at 1080p resolution in 1Mb of data if you're not too fussy about image quality.

 

Resolution is one thing, bitrate is something else.

Re:Movie in 3 minutes? No problem...!

[CecilPL]

Here's an example - Star Wars EpIV in 10MB. I'm pretty sure you could compress this below a meg.

And you can make it 1080p if you increase your font size!