Maxroam nominated for four TechCrunch Europe Awards

22 Oct 2010

Cork entrepreneur Pat Phelan’s Maxroam, which provides global travellers with low-cost SIM solutions, has been nominated in a number of categories at the prestigious Europas – the TechCrunch Europe Awards.

The company has been nominated for the Best Hardware or Gadget Startup 2010. Maxroam has also been nominated for Best Mobile | Startup and Best European Web Application at the Awards.Interestingly the voting engine powering the Europas is based on another Irish firm’s technology, that of Polldaddy which was bought three years ago by WordPress. Maxroam’s founder Pat Phelan has also been nominated for the Best Startup Founder/ Co-founder category.

Established by Pat Phelan Maxroam, a low-cost roaming SIM card provider, enables mobile phone users to make low-cost calls anywhere in the world and the company has struck deals in a number of verticals that enable users to make calls on land, at sea and in the air.

Indicative of the direction the company is taking, its MAXRoam division last year forged a €10m partnership with global maritime charity Mission to Seafarers to provide voice and data packages to 1.7 million seafarers at the 250 Mission to Seafarer ports around the world.

In a recent deal Ryanair’s 73 million passengers can now also significantly cut the cost of making and receiving calls, text/SMS messages or mobile data by buying a Maxroam SIM card.

In another first the company launched the first low-cost roaming solution for the Apple iPhone 4, which allows users to access the internet, make calls and send SMS messages anywhere in Europe.

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

editorial@siliconrepublic.com