Y’know, I was just wondering what happened to those Zer01 guys, who were to offer unlimited voice and data for $70/month, then just mysteriously fell off the map. As it turns out, they were busy getting their asses sued by Global Verge, the company which was handling Zer01’s marketing, in Clark County, Nevada. Although Global Verge isn’t exactly the classiest crowd themselves, their case against Zer01 revolved around “breach of contract, tortious interference with contractual relations, and long-term profit losses”. Apparently Global Verge had put $170,000 into the company when things first got started, and clearly had a lot more to gain in the future. Zer01 never left the ground and have nowhere near $43 million to pay, so Global Verge is sniffing around what few assets Zer01 might have left, including patents.
For those just tuning in, Zer01 was going to be a new wireless service provider that relied on some kind of VoIP network, and adamantly avoided the MVNO label. You could bring your own unlocked GSM handset to get service, or pick up one of their own Windows Mobile HTC handsets. Calls were funneled through some custom application, but it’s hard to say how it all worked in the back-end. The idea of $70/month for all-you-can-eat voice and data was certainly a nice pull, but didn’t pass even the most cursory inspection of the terms.
Zer01 has been a fishy proposition from the get-go. The corporate relationships involved with the enterprise were dubious at best, with the words “pyramid scheme” and “fraud” peppered liberally throughout descriptions. Global Verge’s CEO was on probation, Zer01 claimed to own spectrum, but had no proof of it, sales associated were getting phones instead of money… It was all a mess. Getting sued seems like the very least that could have happened to Zer01, and I’m actually glad that they did before people actually started giving Zer01 their credit card numbers.
[via ComputerWorld]