Looks like circles.life customers will be migrated to an amaysim plan. No notice on their website.
Circles.Life shutting down
Quarter Pounder on 21/01/2025 - 12:38
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Oh no !!!
I got an email yesterday saying Catch Connect is a different company to Catch and unaffected by their closure.
Is Catch Connect getting bought out by amaysim aswell?
Optus buys amaysim. Amaysim is now buying other MVNOs. Take over control of budget providers and raise prices.
That's how the free market works. It goes in cycles.
- Incumbent big players get lazy, overfocus on profits and less on innovation.
- New startups see a gap and decide to challenge the big incumbent players. May potentially go with thinner profits or even a loss to accelerate initial growth.
- Some startups won't work out and go bust. Some startups will work out and will slowly grow to medium size.
- At some point, the incumbent players decide they cannot compete directly because they are too big and slow, but they have the advantage in cash. Result: startups that make it past the initial growth stage and prove to be viable receive offers to buy them out.
- Some startups who believe they can still grow on their own and become even more valuable will decline the offers. Others will accept the money and be absorbed into the big incumbents.
- Once bought, parts of the startup will be discarded, other parts integrated into the big machine. How well or poorly the integration goes is an indication of how much the big incumbent actually respects the startup's innovations.
- Big incumbents get lazy, overfocus on profits, less on innovation and the cycle repeats itself.
It's very rare that a startup will actually grow to the same size as the big incumbents and become what they sought out to destroy.
My point is that as these smaller players get bought out, there may be a period of innovation stagnation, but said stagnation will breed new startups as those gaps increase.
Examples:
86 400 being bought out by NAB and integrated into uBank.
Xinja being a fellow banking startup of 86 400 but deciding to give out high interest for free without corresponding loans to offset for an extended period of time meant they eventually ran out of money.
Jeenee Mobile being bought out by Amaysim.
Amaysim being bought out by Optus.
Vaya being bought out by Amaysim.
This is how it works.
Start a business, get big enough for the big guys to see as a threat. They'll buy you out (hopefully you are now rich) and they screw it up.
It goes in Circles. Life.
They told us from the very start!
Dammit - have an upvote!
Markets are highly likely to have M&A activity when there are high barriers to entry/fixed costs and relatively low variable costs. Economics 101.
I think Amaysin bought Jeenee Mobile for the customers, not the innovations.
Don't forget liveconnected bought out by Vaya
Vaya bought out by amaysim
Amaysim bought out by Optus
How deep can we gooo
I wonder how much of it is winning back customers without letting them know they're on Optus. A good chunk of people left after the data breach, to those people the Optus name will be mud.
Yep, even telstra has recently bought out Boost.
Boost used to be amazing value a few years back, but they have been raising their prices so rapidly.
Amaysim buys network capacity from Optus
Optus doesn't need to buy Amaysim, just charge them more for access to their network and then undercut them with their own prices.
might be an antitrust violation doing that
Just got the email from Circles.Life. Wondering whether I should just port out before the changeover. At a glance, it doesn't seem like Amaysim plans offer anywhere near the same value.
"Circles Life customers keep the same SIM, mobile number and phone plan stays the same. "
"Only the mobile service supplier is changing for now. Customer's plans will not change immediately, and they will remain on a Circles Life plan. In the coming months you will receive a communication directly from amaysim with an overview of the amaysim plan that best matches their current plan.
I don't want to be on an amaysim plan. Might as well just jump the gun and port out now.
That is months away…
No need to change now.
@mboy: I’m looking at Moose as I need to stay within Optus network post 3G shutdown, are they decent?
@pisang95: Yeah they're great. I've been with them twice before - they do 6 month deals, so I port out after 6 months. I'll probably be porting back to them.
@mboy: Cool beans, will look into porting over at the first sign of price changes. I just got might first bill from Circles after getting their boxing day sales price.
@pisang95: Damn, that's annoying that you just signed up with them. At least I got a good 9 months with them (out of a 12 month offer).
@mboy: I know right, probably should have known something is amiss as the price was quite attractive. With them gone Amaysim has no obligation to honour the rest of the contract term I reckon. Thanks for the advice.
I’m not so sure about that as that sentence is being referred as “right now”, following that it states “Next month, the change of supplier process will be completed. At this time, Circles Life customers will receive information about the amaysim plan that best matches their current Circles Life plan.”
Another one bites the dust.
Circles.Life was probably the worst MVNO I've ever been with. Literally the only time I'd had data connections just fail over and over.
Interesting. Was never my experience in the 2-3 times I was with them. I had no issues with them at all.
More likely an issue on your end.
Hmm they seemed like 'good guys' but they didnt really have a good low-mid usage plan.
I use about 10gb per month, and with circles I was paying $25 for a 30gb plan, but I wanted something like that except half (e.g. $12.50 for 15gb or something). But their next lowest was something silly like $20 for 4gb. So I basically had to leave for an annual Boost one that worked out to about half the price.Already part way through a yearly Boost atm, but I'm sure one of the cheapy companies will have similar when it's time to renew.
$20 for 4gb
Ew. They really are taking goodwill for granted. Aldi Mobile has a $19 for 10GB plan.
Actually now they have $15 for 6gb which isnt so terrible, but obviously too late now..
Damn! it's taken an annual chat negotiation, but i've been on 30GB a month for $9.99-$17 for the last three years.
Moose had an offer close to that a few months back, so hopefully they'll put a 'mop up Circles customers' offer up once the likely lame Amaysim replacement plans are announced.
(Base Circles rate of $25 for 30GB could easily be negotiated for monthly $ off discounts to be applied to the account)
In case you're not aware, Moose have a deal right now.
27GB on 5G is $14.80 per month for the first 6 months.Yep I just jumped on that. (profanity) amaysim
I'm 2nd month of 6 for $10 for 20GB of data. Even though its 4G only. Ive had no issues with Esim either. Hopefully amaysim honour the deal I'm on
same here
I'm on a 60Gb/m for $10 deal. Can't beat that!
This is my third time with them, and the only problem I ever had was trying to say their name to friends. That dot in the middle made it such a dumb name.
I guess I'll go back to Moose when they bump me.
I don't care too much for data. Just prefer 10GB a month. I barely use 2GB a month and on the rare occasion a bit more. I use a shit ton at home though
Shitty company to deal with quite honestly. Good riddance!
Godspeed
all these mobile and broadband providers are on notice period by Satellite providers. Hopefully may be less than a decade left for Optus/Telstra etc, while Federal govt pour money into nbn backbone which will get outdated soon !!
Will never happen, less than 0.5% of internet goes through satalites for a reason, can't beat the literal speed of light.
It's like saying car companies should be on notice because of helicopters.
i thought we would have flying cars by now
getk definitely has a picture of Elon on the wall with a big love heart around it.
Um electromagnetic radiation which is what carries the satellite signal travels at the speed of light too….
Considering the refractive index of fiber, satellites should actually be faster, especially for critical international traffic. I can definitely see the value in using satellite constellations for ultra-fast secure global communication, or for covering large areas where it would be infeasible otherwise.
But we're near physical limits for how low satellites can be, and we're at the physical limit for how fast the data can travel to them, no amount of optimization or progress can fix the latency.
To send a signal from here to Ozbargain servers is ~600km, Starlink is orbiting at 550km, so 550km up + 550km down + routing + 550km up + 550km down - not efficient and there is almost nothing that can be done about it.
@Jolakot: The latency isn't because of the distance. It takes light 0.0000226seconds to travel
2200kms. It's the routing, error correction etc. in between.
Lets be honest, they were a PR nightmare from day 1 and never really recovered.
Their name was tainted from the start.
I took up their 100Gb for $30 for 12 months plan. At the end of the 12 months I tried to cancel the plan, but it ended up that C.L extended the plan indefinitely. The deal was good, so I kept it on. I don't know what will happen next now that C.L is closing.
Same here, been with them since 2019 getting 100gb for $28 after they extended my initial 6 month offer.
Lucky I still have my Onetel number 0400
Now there's a blast from the past. How the hell does a murdoch/packer joint enterprise fail?
I wonder if that means I'll stop getting emails that I owe them money.
Big shame was churning between Moose and Circles Life every 6-12 months.
Amaysim plans are a rip off in comparison.I wonder how the 3g impacted customers will be treated. My poco x5 was booted from woolies (telstra) but worked on circles.life hopefully amaysim don't kick me.
I ordered a Sim from moose mobile when I saw the email. $14.80 per month for 6 months for 27 gig. People seem to think they're decent.
Good riddance. Didn't think they'd last at all
What was wrong with them?
I can't believe I never heard of them! I would so have been on their $50/6 month plan.
I've been on circles for a few years now where my promo codes have actually made them credit my account per month rather than me paying them. I doubt amaysim will honour my plan and promo codes.
I wonder if Circle will send me a nice cheque of my credit for my troubles.
I was going to use them to then move back to Amaysim but will need to find another one to move to first as I need to get an Amaysim sim on PAYg to keep number active while overseas.
ADAMHS
That’s capitalism for you.
The big eats the small, and everyone suffers just so the top 1% can hoard 80% of total wealth.
Talk about economic slavery…..
soon starlink or similar providers will appear telco only good in major city
And Telstra taking over Optus for the bankrupt on handling leak users data costing them billions over 300,000 data leaked with huge court case going on and big tech will merge.
Lol theres no way this is happening
@tightarse Any mileage in TopCashback becoming a MVNO operator using something like this: https://www.telcoinabox.com.au/mvno ?
There must be some kind of 'cashback' angle on monthly bills/ data use that can add a TopCashback flavour.
Catch Connect may be merged to Amaysim as well.