Go on, start your own Mobile Phone brand

Sonopia lets you start your own mobile phone company.

One of the winners of this years Etel launch pad was the FlatPlanet Phone company. The proposition was simple. They will give you everything you need to start your own phone company as a platform you can buy into for about 200 bucks. You can issue numbers, send bills, basically do everything that a phone company does. (Except human tech support - that is a gnarly problem that we will overlook in this gleefully techno-utopic post). The proposition was simple and Om Malik (who scooped it first) and the rest of the team loved it. Not so much for the technology but for the the fact it was empowering. One of the fundamental ideologies of Etel is to strive for telecoms networks as open platforms for product development and innovation. You know all that Web 2.0 serving the long tail stuff that we love around here at OReilly. This is one step in the right direction.

A very slick mobile version of that proposition has just been launched called Sonopia. It's been started by a former Symbian founder and it looks really intriguing. The proposition is similar to the one we've just described, they will supply the phones, the numbers even custom premium data services Yes you you can be the MVNO. You just supply the customers and the marketing.

Few of us have social networks (or ego's) large enough to sustain a living from this. There are however those on MySpace who may do. More realistically start-ups, rising rock bands, cult brands, alumni society's, professional grpups and most likely charities / non-profit's could profit from this. Also there is probably a clever spark out there who'll make something profitable from this. As far as I can see there is nothing to lose.

The margins are currently low, you make about 5% of the total profit, but then again you didn't layout a good many billion dollars for the Verizon network and staff a support centre. They say that the more popular they get the more revenue they can leverage from Verizon. If you can make the numbers then you may make some money.

One of the ETel bloggers (Aaron Huslage I think) is looking to do an in-depth review of this so stay tuned to Etel blog for further results. What do you think, would you be interested in OReilly or any of its interest areas like Make, Oscon, Radar starting a Sonopia group? State your view below....