Visible CEO Says It Wants to be the Netflix or Lyft of Phone Carriers
*By Tracey Cheek*
Visible wants to make signing up for a phone service as easy as calling a Lyft.
The digital-only wireless carrier backed by Verizon offers unlimited text, talk, data, and hot-spot for $40 a month. CEO Miguel Quiroga, a telecom industry veteran, says that this is the phone service that consumers want.
"Visible is basically designed to be a simple, easy to use phone service that you could basically sign up and manage your entire experience from the comfort of your couch," Quiroga told Cheddar.
According to the company, over 60 million customers switch phone carriers every year due to pain points like hidden fees and poor customer service. Visible set out to take the complexity out of the mobile experience, and bring it directly to the consumer in an easy to understand way.
"If you're able to get experiences through Netflix ($NFLX) or Lyft, you're able to go and sign up for services for Visible," said Quiroga. "It's no different, it's exactly the same, and we're trying to tap into that type of behavior."
The cloud-based wireless carrier, which has been live for seven months, has no physical stores ー which means customers will never have to wait in a line for service. It has just started to sell its own devices, including several iPhones and Android Samsung models, to further ease the phone-buying process.
"It's zero percent financing, yes it's zero percent down, but there's also no hidden fees," Quiroga said. "So we take the guesswork out of trying to understand what the customers are really looking for."
The digital-only wireless carrier offers a protection plan called "Visible Protect" for $10/ per month. The plan covers loss, theft, and damage. If repair is needed, customers don't have to worry about bringing their device to a Visible location (because there aren't any).
"We don't have physical stores but we also do have the ability for customers to go into an Apple Care or Android face-to-face environment if they are in need of specific kind of troubleshooting with that device protection program."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/visible-ceo-says-it-wants-to-be-the-netflix-and-lyft-of-phone-carriers).
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
It’s an annual tradition: the Fed’s banking ‘stress test.’ A year after the regional banking crisis, there are good reasons to make sure they’re prepped.
Summer is upon us, which means weddings, trips overseas, and trips to see Taylor Swift. Avoid a “Cruel Summer” with these budget-friendly tips and tricks.
While Nvidia's meteoric rise led it to briefly dethrone Microsoft as the world's biggest public company, there's a lot more going on in this market than A.I.
