Amp'd Mobile

» see ampd.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the goodbye ~

amp'd was the kind of phone an american 22-year-old who still watched mtv in 2006 was supposed to buy on an installment plan. for some reason, that demographic was not me. by 2006 i was 22 in ankara, mtv turkey existed but ran reality dubs more than music videos, and the local mobile carrier was turkcell with a nokia 6230i. honestly, i never saw an amp'd handset in person and would not have qualified for the service even if i had wanted one. the whole pitch was built around a us youth-credit-card audience that turkey did not really have.

amp'd mobile was founded by peter adderton in 2005 after he sold his stake in boost mobile australia. for some reason, the company raised more than $360 million from a list of investors that read like a cross-promotion deck: mtv networks and universal music took the strategic slugs, with highland capital and intel capital filling out the venture-side syndicate. honestly, the strategy was "build a youth phone brand on top of verizon's network, pump short-form video plus a branded ui through it." service launched in the us in late 2005 and in canada on march 14 2007 through a telus mobility wholesale deal. by then, the subscriber count had climbed to around 175k.

to be honest, the books were rotten under that headline number. honestly, court documents during the chapter 11 process showed that around 80k of those 175k subscribers were not actually paying their bills. for whatever reason, the company had pushed signups without real credit screening because the marketing target was young credit-thin customers. by then, verizon wireless was the wholesale carrier and the unpaid amp'd account had grown to the point that verizon was threatening to cut off the network. anyway, the chapter 11 filing landed on june 1 2007 and verizon pulled the wholesale connection on july 31, ending service for the paying portion of the customer base at the same time. the canadian launch on telus mobility shut down on the same august 1 cutoff. anyway, the brand was gone by the end of that summer.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the breakout ~

for some reason, the marketing in 2006 leaned on mtv tv spots plus a custom branded ui called amp'd live, a brew application that bundled music clips with short-form video and pulled ringtones through the universal partnership. by then, the amp'd handsets were rebadged kyocera and motorola devices with the amp'd skin layered over the carrier firmware. the brand sponsorship list at the 2006 mtv movie awards was a small visibility moment. close enough.

the technical positioning of amp'd live as the first real us 3g video service was a year ahead of verizon's own vcast. honestly, the demos played well at industry events. anyway, the actual usage pattern of paying customers was closer to "regular voice and sms" than the video-and-music-heavy bundle the company had built. the average revenue per user came in below what the wholesale costs required.

~ the decline ~

for whatever reason, by q1 2007 the operational problems were already public: long customer service hold times, mail-in rebates that never got fulfilled, and a series of stories in mobile-industry trades about verizon's escalating concerns over the unpaid wholesale bill. by then, the support contract had bounced from clientlogic to sento corporation, with neither vendor scaling fast enough to handle the youth-customer churn pattern.

the chapter 11 filing on june 1 2007 ended any hope of a refinancing round. honestly, the funding stack was already exhausted (close enough), the existing investors were not willing to put in more capital, and verizon was unwilling to extend further wholesale credit. anyway, the bankruptcy court process did not produce a buyer for the operating business and the network connection was severed on july 31.

~ what got buried with it ~

to be honest, the amp'd live brew video platform was technically interesting but did not survive the shutdown. for some reason, the wholesale-mvno model amp'd had used (no credit screening, marketing-led acquisition, premium device subsidies) became the case study every wholesale carrier cited in 2008 to refuse mvno deals with low-credit consumer brands. by then, verizon tightened its mvno screening for around two years and helio (still alive at that point on the sprint backbone) had to deal with the corresponding industry chill. the long-running mvno-flop joke in mobile-industry press across the rest of the decade was "remember amp'd," which it usually was.

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