Orbislo
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How we operate

Six rules, and the price of each one.

These are not aspirations. Each one is a rule that has already changed a decision, and each one has a line underneath it saying what it costs us. A value that has never cost anything has never been tested, which means nobody knows whether it is real.

We took them backwards from the product rather than forwards from a workshop. Look at what Orbislo actually does when money is on the line, write that down, then hold ourselves to the written version.

01

Publish the number, not the adjective

Any claim that could be a number is a number, and it sits where the decision is made.

What it costs us. The throttle threshold on the buy button converts worse than silence. We know, because silence is what everyone else chose.

02

Refund before we are asked

If the product failed you, the money goes back without a ticket, a form or a conversation.

What it costs us. Automatic refunds give up every dispute we would have won by attrition.

03

Never sell where we cannot serve

No buy button in a territory our partners cannot deliver. No warning label used as a substitute.

What it costs us. Every refused territory is revenue we could have taken and refunded later, which is what the category does.

04

Tell you first

When something breaks, affected customers hear it from us before they notice it themselves.

What it costs us. We generate our own bad news, on the record, with a timestamp that can be quoted back at us.

05

Your balance is yours

Data does not expire, the wallet is not a ticket, and nothing is engineered to be forfeited.

What it costs us. Unused balance is free margin in this category and we deleted it on purpose.

06

Where these came from

The travel eSIM category taught us all six by doing the opposite. Search any large brand in this space and the autocomplete suggests the word scam.

What it costs us. That is not because the companies are unusually wicked. It is because the product is bought in a hurry, used in a foreign country, and judged at the worst possible moment. Every small ambiguity in the sale becomes a furious review two weeks later.

The same six, as a scoreboard

RuleHow you check it from outsideThe number today
Publish the numberOpen any unlimited plan and look at the buy button2 GB a day, then 1 Mbps
Refund before askedFail a provisioning and time the reversalUnder 60 seconds, automatic
A price drop follows the saleBuy a plan, then watch its price for a monthDifference to your wallet inside 30 days
Never sell what we cannot serveLook for a buy button in a weak territoryAbsent in 55 places we could have listed
Tell you firstRead the status page during an incidentPost mortem inside 72 hours, over 30 minutes
Your balance is yoursLeave a wallet alone for a year and lookData never expires

A principle you cannot check is a slogan. Every row here can be checked without asking us for anything.

What these values do not say

They do not say we are the warmest brand in the category or the boldest. Every rule here had to be checkable from outside this company, and a feeling cannot be checked, so nothing that could only be felt made the list.

They do not say the price never moves. It does, and when it moves down inside 30 days of your order the difference arrives in your wallet on its own, with no claim to file and no code to enter.

They do not say a provisioning attempt can never fail. One can, which is why the refund for it is written down in advance and issued inside 60 seconds rather than waiting on a ticket queue.

They also do not say we are a family. We are a company. We pay people, we set targets, and when a target and a rule collide the rule wins and somebody writes down what that cost. That document is boring and it is the most important artefact we keep.

A traveller working from a small cafe table with a laptop and a phone
The rules exist for the moment somebody far from home needs the thing to just work.

How a value gets changed

Values that only ever get added are a shrine. Values that can be argued down are an operating system.

  • Anyone can propose a change in writing, with the decision it would have altered
  • The proposal has to name what the new rule costs, in money or in speed
  • It is argued in a document rather than a meeting, so the reasoning survives the people
  • If it is adopted, this page changes and the old wording stays in the history
  • If it is rejected, the rejection is written down too, because the next person will ask

Questions people actually ask

Are these values or are they marketing?
Each one is written as a rule that changes a decision and costs us something measurable. Publishing the throttle number on the buy button loses us the sales that a vaguer page would have won. Refusing to sell in territories our partners cannot serve loses the revenue. If one of these six could be deleted without changing a single thing we do, it should not be a value.
Why publish the throttle number on the buy button?
Because it is the number that decides whether the plan works for you. Unlimited day passes run at full speed to 2 GB a day, then 1 Mbps. Metered plans have no throttle at all. Independent testing has measured one large competitor throttling near 3 GB a day and another that publishes no number at all and was measured under 1 Mbps after throttling.
You say you refund before being asked. How?
If provisioning fails after payment, the system issues the refund itself within 60 seconds. There is no ticket and nothing to chase. If the price of a plan you bought falls within 30 days, the difference goes to your wallet automatically. You do not have to notice.
What happens if the plan I bought gets cheaper?
The difference goes to your wallet automatically for 30 days after you buy. There is no claim to file, no code to enter and nothing to notice. Wallet balance does not expire, so it is still there on the next trip. The rule costs us the margin on every price cut we make, which is why it is written as a rule rather than a promise.
What does never sell where we cannot serve mean in practice?
If our partner networks in a territory cannot deliver a connection we would be willing to pay for ourselves, the buy button is not there. There is no half hearted plan with a warning underneath. A country page in that state says so and points you at what will actually work.
What happens when a value and a quarterly target disagree?
The value wins and we write down what it cost, in the same document that carries the target. A principle nobody ever loses money to is decoration.
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