Note: If you joined Cape before January 27th, 2026, please ensure your app is updated to the latest version to access our new features.
It’s been ten months since we announced Cape’s Open Beta alongside Proton.
In the time it took for us to exit Beta, there have been at least ten new mobile carriers launched in the United States (that I know of), averaging one a month. Newcomers include Trump Mobile, ex-presidential candidate Andy Yang’s Noble Mobile, and Smartless Mobile by a trio of podcast celebs. Apparently Youtuber Mr. Beast has a carrier on the way too. Due to changes in mobile tech, it’s never been easier for celebrities and marketers to launch a new telco by slapping fresh branding on leased cellular infrastructure.
At Cape, we chose a different route. We operate our own mobile core, and design our own SIMs. That makes us the only full-stack telco in the world constructed around privacy as a first principle. And that investment in our own core and SIMs is what allows us to offer proprietary features, like:
- Identifier Rotation, which changes how you appear on the network, even when you’re roaming on the physical cell towers of another operator;
- Network Lock, which prevents attackers from accessing your location, calls, and SMS; and
- Secondary Numbers, which are additional phone numbers with last-mile encryption to keep your communications more private and secure.
But forgoing the out-of-the-box infrastructure of host carriers meant that we had to build a lot of basic telecom functionality ourselves. When we started, Cape service lacked voicemail, international roaming, and more. My own friends and family hesitated to sign up without these bread and butter features.
So we built them, and made them more private and secure than industry standard.
For example, voicemail is encrypted. We made “last-mile” encryption available for all SMS, including group texts. Our international roaming routes back to our core, mitigating some of the risks of using foreign networks.
Coming out of Beta doesn’t mean we’re finished. I’ll be cliché and say: we’re just getting started. But I have the team to back it up. We don’t have any celebrities (yet), as most of Cape consists of top-flight engineers, product managers, and designers who are better at writing code or configuring a radio than they are at tweeting or podcasting. They have a killer product roadmap for the year ahead.
If you joined us during Beta, thank you. Your feedback made Cape better. And if you’re joining us now, welcome and hold on to your seats—we’ve got a lot more coming.
-John Doyle, Founder and CEO of Cape
