http://www.sambamobile.com/

Bit of data lost but thats all.

Seems like a much more orderly shutdown than Ovivo.

Nooooooo

They have not gone bust; they are just closing down because they can no longer buy data at a reasonable cost.

Anyone who has bought credit, sim or dongle in April will get a refund.

At the moment my dongle is still working and as it’s about to die I have been wasting data doing a few speed test and I’m still clocking an impressive 18.42Mb/s down and 2.4Mb/s up so this is a sad loss when it dies but like they say “All good things must past”.

As with Ovivo I’ve saved £££ over the past 2 years with Samba so I wish them luck in any future projects but for now I’m off to EBay to see what the latest deal is for the 6Gb EE PAYG data sims.

Samba R.I.P.

If they are just closing down what about the data people have earnt but not used,

Ah well It was good while it lasted. Data is still working ATM, but will probably close later.

Got my email this morning.

Always thought this would have gone before Ovivo to be honest.

To be fair to Samba, it has handled the shut down a lot better - including giving some money back - so the accounts must have been managed better, but it just adds to all the other ad funded services that have been tried over the years. Have any been successful? Are there others still working?

There were barely any ads to watch - so you usually had to watch the same ones over and over (subject to the usual restrictions, such as a daily limit) so advertisers were either not interested or not seeing a return. Once there were public service announcements from the Government, the writing was surely on the wall? They obviously pay, but not much. They're the last resort fillers.

What I do think can work is for someone to offer a decent allowance of data for a very competitive price (under £5) which means a regular income. Ideal for people with tablets or multiple devices that they want to get online.

500MB or 1GB for £2-3 a month would be the sort of figure I'm thinking of. I don't know if a company could turn a profit for that, but these companies all appeared to be run on a shoestring budget anyway. When my Samba SIM arrived, it looked like it had been cut with scissors and I'm pretty sure it was a handwritten envelope with a normal stamp.

Unlike Ovivo, however, Samba seems to be managing things fairly and honourably. Thus, I'd support any new venture from the people behind it unlike whatever the director(s) of Ovivo go on to do.

Nobody spent any money so they have not lost anything, only time watching ads and if it’s like myself and others I know that just run the ads in the background while doing other things, they, we did not lose much time either.

BTW I've got 6 Gb of credit on my sim but I'm not crying.

A copy of the email for anyone interested.

http://imgur.com/a/SQBoW

Who will be next?.Any companies business models that are unsustainable?.

Yes two I can think of, HMG and EU.

Government PSAs were there for over a year. The last time I logged in last week there were quite a few adverts available, though I hadn't been logged in for a while as I had a healthy bank of data built up during last year.

I had three sim cards with them attached to my account, the first one went blank late yesterday morning, the second one disconnected in the middle of the evening but the third one is still on network with data - I'd expect that to go within a few hours though.

Just need to look for a cheap alternative for my tablet now when I'm not in a wifi hotspot.

Maybe I wrote that badly, rather the fact that on some days these were pretty much the only ads I saw.

You are right though, there were more ads in the final weeks. Perhaps this was down to agencies having new budgets, or having to spend old budgets, around March/April time. Nevertheless, the choice of ads were still poor and I doubt any advertiser intended to have the same people watching their advert daily - and paying each time.

I think the whole business model is flawed. It works for Google, as we're talking revenue on an unprecedented scale - and many different platforms for advertisers to experiment with.

Facebook and Twitter also works thanks to the sheer volume of users, even if a large number never engage with adverts at all (but perhaps they don't have to, as some of it is just about brand recognition, not directly selling there and then).

Samba, Ovivo and any others that have tried (or will try) just don't have those benefits.

...aaaaaaand my last sim went dead at around 2.30pm today!

Just got an email recommending some other alternatives. All paid, one was Mobi-Data.

I would have posted the email but I moved it from another folder on my email account it seems either my email client or the email server has lost it.