#mwc12 – Massive deal for Cubic opens up 680k global Wi-Fi hotspots

1 Mar 2012

In what could be Irish firm Cubic Telecom’s biggest deal yet the company has strook a deal with NASDAQ listed service provider iPass that will open Maxroam customers up to 680,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in 117 countries worldwide for voice and data roaming.

When we bumped into Cubic Telecom co-founder Pat Phelan at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona he seemed to be on cloud nine, now we know why.
iPass Open Mobile Exchange (iPass OMX), is a global Wi-Fi exchange community with the world’s largest commercial Wi-Fi network.

“By integrating iPass’ 680,000 hotspots onto the Cubic Telecom platform, we are expanding our capability of accessing multiple 3G and CDMA carrier technologies by now adding WiFi access all through one wallet and one point of contact — the Cubic Telecom SIM card,” said Barry Napier, Cubic CEO explained.

“Consumer appetite for mobile data services and always on connectivity has been increasing significantly, particularly for business travelers. By partnering with iPass we will be able to give our customers global access to Wi-Fi giving them even higher data speeds and availability without worrying about bill-shock and enormous fees,” Napier added.

The deal is the latest in a slew of deals for Cubic including deals to supply EasyJet travellers with MaxRoam SIM cards and a majer MVNO deal with Vodafone in the UK.

Read more on the Mobile World Congress 2012:

#mwc12 – Google’s Eric Schmidt – ‘Let’s connect the next 5bn people’

#mwc12 – Telefónica to launch ‘Wayra’ start-up incubators across Europe

#mwc12 – Nokia reveals smartphone with 41-megapixel camera

#mwc12 – Facebook reveals one ‘Ringmark’ to unite them all on mobile

#mwc12 – Microsoft working on sub-US$200 price point for Windows Phones

#mwc12 – Wireless sharing tech to debut alongside HTC One in April

#mwc12 – Telefónica and Mozilla pioneer smartphones built on HTML 5

#mwc12 – Sony unveils new Android UI with Xperia P and U smartphones

#mwc12 – Telefónica shows off download speeds of 100Mbps via LTE

#mwc12 – Samsung unveils new Galaxy Beam and Tab 2 series

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com