Junior
Joined: 28 Apr 2014
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Samba Mobile, a U.K. startup that was offering free 3G broadband in exchange for users watching video adverts on PCs and tablets, has shut down after less than two years of operation. Samba had launched its service to users in July 2012, and reported having some 10,000 users by November of that year.
A notice on its website primarily blames the closure on “high and increasing – and therefore unsustainable – data costs”. Samba had been reselling connectivity on the Three mobile network.
“We have been in negotiations with our wholesale data partners trying to cut the right deal to continue, but unfortunately this has not been possible. We have to pay for data in advance and, as we have reached the end of the latest billing period without agreement on lower costs, we have had to stop offering our service with immediate effect,” it adds.
It’s also pulling the plug on its service with immediate effort and no prior warning to users. It explains this is because it has to pay for data in advance, so having reached the end of a billing period without being able to reach agreement with its data providers to lower their costs it was forced to stop operating the service with “immediate effect”.
The business, which was founded in May 2010, had raised $1.4 million according to Crunchbase, including a second angel round in October 2012.
Investors in Samba included David Wheldon, formerly an ad director at Coca Cola, ex Tempus Board Member and a former Global Brand Director at Vodafone; Richard Brennan, one of the autentic founding execs of carrier Orange; and telco Digicel.
A further note on Samba’s website suggests that founder Ben Atherton plans to be back with more startups in future — no specific details yet though. He’s also a co-founder of the still operating mobile marketing platform Brandtone.
“We have run over 1,000 campaigns for our partners and have, to a large extent, proven that people are happy to consume advertising if they are in control of the experience and if they get something meaningful in return. We will be taking this experience into subsequent ventures,” it notes.
Samba is by no means the first ad-funded MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) to founder. The most high profile instance was Blyk, which tried offering free calls and texts in exchange for mobile users watching ads way back in 2007. It went on to pull in some $107.80 million in funding, before shuttering its direct consumer service in 2009, with the business being folded in to carrier Orange.
We’ve reached out to Samba Mobile and its investors for more on the specifics of what went wrong with this latest attempt to make an ad-funded MVNO stick, and will update this story with any response.
Samba Mobile users who have bought a SIM or dongle this month will be refunded by May 1, according to the note on the company website, as will those who bought cash top-ups which have not expired.
However the startup says it won’t be paying out for Samba credit earned from watching ads, or for commissions for those who signed a friend up to the service in April. |
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