I have been expecting an ad-supported, free services MVNO. Indeed, a bit late, but I just heard of Xero Mobile.
Well, Goggle saves the day and I find this interesting collection of tid-bits from Om Malik (link below).
In short: if it’s too good to be true, it is. There’s a whiff of the scumbags from Gizmodo involved with this. Hoo boy, seems like some VCs were scammed again.
Link: GigaOM : Xero or Zero Mobile?.
Back in February, Andy had pointed me to yet another MVNO, called Xero Mobile. Well, now Mike over at Tech Dirt has dug up some serious dirt on these guys.
Apparently some of the guys running this company worked at Gizmondo, a company that was going to be famous for its gaming device, and instead became infamous for a its CEO Stefan Eriksson totaling a million dollar Ferrari. (Sigh, if only cars could pick their drivers…)
Thanks Peter B again for the tip-off on Xero, which led me to Om.
Xero’s offerings look great. Count me in. I wouldn’t mind getting a cool phone for cheap or what i heard free.
This is Gizmondo II, another pump and dump to extract money from investors. The guys behind the scenes, Carl Freer and Stefan Erikson are doing their best to stay out of jail, but Eriksson can’t post his 5 million in bail (besides, immigration has a hold on him) and Freer is out on 20,000 bail. It looks like they will do time.
It’s been reported that all of the Xero Mobile employees have fled the office. The landlord came in on Friday to find them packing. They left no forwarding address. Gone public on Monday and ran out on Friday. Is this a record? This is a better story than Gizmondo, oh wait, this IS the Gizmondo story. I guess we won’t see many “students” posting how great Xero is after they have done their “research”. Any one at Desi TV left in the building? HA ha ha ha ha. LMFAO!