Cellphone Plan Home Business

As someone who has a wireless home business, naturally I have been watching the Buzzirk Mobile / GlobalVerge fiasco since about early June. In case you haven’t heard about it, it was a company that was supposed to deliver some new tethering technology that would allow you to use your cell phone as an internet appliance along with your computer. It would have been like a combined cell phone and netbook service all in one. At least that was my understanding.

What happened? It failed to even get off the ground after thousands had signed on. That’s the short story. If you want the blow by blow, check out the Len Clements Podcast page; particularly the podcast dated 8/11/09 which has most of the post mortem information.

This is a perfect example of a network marketing company that created a lot of brief success through buzz. Unfortunately the buzz was not backed up by any actual product; in fact there was ‘buzz’ early on that there were problems with delivering the product and in the end; that turned out to be the case. And the whole thing faded away to gray. This left a lot of burned distributors who were going on nothing but trust.

Folks, if you are going to join a network marketing business, make sure you do your due diligence. If you are unclear on how to select a good network marketing opportunity, check out my free eBook here. I’m not saying some trust isn’t involved, but don’t jump into something based entirely on trust. Otherwise, it may end up being fiction like Buzzirk Mobile.

It’s the attack of the NetBooks! Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of commercials on TV by both AT&T and Verizon for their netbook products. This is an interesting development because it merges the concept of cellular phone plans with a computer and internet access. In Verizon’s case, it uses their own proprietary Mobile Broadband for internet access with a two year plan.

The two year plans are priced by megabytes per month. There are two price levels. 250 Meg for $40 per month and 5 Gigs for $60 per month. It is calculated by combining both upload and download volumes according to the agent I spoke with. That would make the 250 meg per month rather skimpy especially if you are downloading any large files, like photos and videos. Still this is very interesting since it uses a plan with a computer. The concept of Netbooks has been around for a few years now, but now these two companies have put it to use.

Can it replace someone’s internet access completely? Not sure but if you want to see how much you download each month, check your “Temporary Internet Files” in Windows. You might be surprised how much you download without knowing it. Every time you open a previously unvisited web site, it will cache some files. So I can see that 250 meg plan not being good for anyone except a light internet user.

For now, my Lightyear Wireless phone provides my “pocket internet access and I’ll stick with that.