ROK Mobile currently offers one phone plan for $49.99/month that includes unlimited talk, text, streaming access to a music library of 20 million songs, and 5 GB of 4G LTE data courtesy of Verizon's network.
In a recently published Forbes article, ROK Mobile co-founders, John Paul DeJoria and Jonathan Kendrick discussed some new and unusual features that they have in store for the MVNO.
ROK Mobile's prepaid wireless phone plan will now also include a $100,000 accidental death insurance policy, $20,000 to cover burial costs as well as 24/7 online access to doctors through MeMD and roadside assistance for family members. The co-founders dubbed this new feature and concept "compassionate capitalism."
The new features will be available to customers who have been subscribers for at least 2 months.
ROK Mobile's founders state that part of their business model revolves around securing low-income customers who previously used pay as you go phones or calling cards. Kendrick stated that many of these low income families can't afford to pay for a funeral or to see a doctor, so they have bundled all of these services together to try and help those families.
Bundling all of these services together is certainly going to hurt ROK Mobile's bottom line since the company is not increasing the price of its prepaid wireless plan. The MVNO hopes to make up for it through volume of plans sold. Generating high profit is probably not something that is of high priority to the company and DeJoria, who himself signed the Giving Pledge in 2011 which commits him to give away more than half of his total net worth of $3.2 billion.
ROK Mobile has now posted the details of the insurance policy online, and as with any insurance policy it is very particular. Briefly the policy states that $100,000 accidental death benefit will be paid out if you die directly from a covered injury/accident, and pass on within 90 days of the covered accident. A covered accident is defined as a sudden and unforeseeable external event that results directly and independently of all other causes. A covered accident must occur while you are insured under the policy, and cannot be contributed to by disease, sickness, mental or bodily infirmity.
There is a long list of exclusions that the policy will not cover, and I won't post here, but if you are interested you can check them out in the attached link above.
The policy is unavailable in several states including Alaska, Delaware, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah and Washington.