More Mobile Telephony Plays?
While VoIP in general has driven down the cost of landline connections (whether at the end point or within the carrier infrastructure), the race is now on to reduce long distance mobile telephony costs. Carriers' voice service plans, especially when including roaming charges, have left an arbitrage gap in the market. .We are starting to see an avalanche of services to address this opportunity. What triggered this post was a press release from Pat Phelan's Cubic Telecom announcing a forthcoming service covering 160 countries involving voice and WiFi.
Cubic Telecom's chief executive officer, Pat Phelan, commented, "We want a world in which you can pick up your mobile phone anywhere and call anyone for as long as you like and not worry about the price. When most people think about driving down the cost of telephone calls, they think of calling from computer-to-computer. We don't. We deliver simple, high quality, high value telephone services direct to the devices that people like to use - their mobile phones. There's no software to download, nothing to configure, nothing new to learn. Our service is straightforward and our network caters to all.
So here we go again! To review:
Mobivox provides low cost long distance calling from any phone in over 40 countries provided you have free or low cost access to one of their points-of-presence. Biggest feature: you can make a call from any phone or mobile device, with either landline or wireless connectivity.. With their service you can also call Skype users and use your Skype account to help reduce your calling costs even further.
This week Truphone announced Truphone Out+, allowing you to make Truphone VoIP calls in "many" countries using your existing mobile number and a feature called carrier pre-select that determines if the number you are calling is a Truphone user. Works fine if you have WiFi or an unlimited 3G data plan. Plans are to have this service initially available in many countries outside the UK and US where current users already obtain a distinctive Truphone number.
James Tagg, Truphone's chief executive officer, said: "Truphone Out+ will encourage access to the Truphone service from countries where we have not yet introduced local number ranges. At a stroke we have massively increased the number of people who can access and benefit from the Truphone service."
Shape Services' IM+ for Skype and the iSkoot service both provide access to Skype IM while using the underlying wireless service to access a Skype gateway for voice calls.
One entry to the Skype Mashup competition, MyToGo offers the ability to turn your laptop-based Skype into a personal PBX to call, from any three phones you designate (mobile, home, office), your Skype contacts or any phone number via Skype or SkypeOut provided you have a SkypeIn number and SkypePro subscription. Works great provided you have flat rate or free access to your SkypeIn number.
Next week watch for a new Facebook application from iotum. Yes, it involves providing low cost calling via a mobile phone. And what, aside from "low cost", will Cubic Telecom offer that makes its service attractive?
Speaking today with Thomas Howe, one of his comments was: "What do people always have with them? Their phones." One common characteristic: these are all services that are not country specific and can be accessed across multiple continents. Can they contribute to reducing the carrier's role to being simply a communications pipe?
Seems like it's going to be an interesting fall to watch.as these services vie for our attention and usage. In the end the user will have choice based on:
- mobile phone platform
- wireless access availability and costs
- completeness of service (voice only, voice plus IM, email, etc.)
- ease of access (can I still make a call with the minimum number of steps?)
- effortless synchronization with contact lists (Outlook, Skype or other IM Contacts, Facebook friends, etc.)
Related posts:
- Skype for iPhone puts another pretty face on IM+
- Security, Skype and the Blackberry
- IM+ 2.5: Call Your (Skype and Blackberry) Contacts Your Way
Tags: Cubic Telecom, Skype, IM+ for Skype, Facebook, iotum, MyToGo, Thomas Howe, Mobivox, Truphone, Truphone Out+, iSkoot, Blackberry
skype
While at the Skype Developers Conference in early June, 
with portal partners around the world to show Skype 
Fact: 
The OnState cloud assigns the call to an appropriate agent, based on his/her skills and/or responsibilities. The Agent sees the overall picture in a separate web-based window generated by the OnState cloud; an example of this Agent Call Management screen is shown on the right and in Russell Shaw's post.
FeedDemon has a Keyword Search feature that, using Technorati, finds for me all the blogs that mention Skype. Turns out that only a fraction of these blogs are in English; an indicator of the extent of Skype usage worldwide. Here is a sampling (with some being added to blogs I follow):
writes of 
Skype hedges their dialtone promise with 
Your Skype Profile has the option to include your Mobile, Home and Office phone numbers which become handy when your contacts want/need to call one of these numbers via SkypeOut. We are also starting to see some Skype-associated calling services that link a PSTN phone to Skype such that Skype becomes a "long distance" provider for the PSTN line. 
Ike Roelfsema, 
MyToGo requires
PamConsult, publishers of the pioneering Skype Extra, 
As promoted by 
In a chat session you will find an additional "Videos" icon above the text entry box. Click on this icon and a window with tabs for Metacafe and Dailymotion will appear on your desktop. Select a video from these tabs (notice there are multiple categories from each provider); you can preview the video in the window. 
Click on the "Insert in Chat" button; a link appears in your chat window text entry box which can then be sent as a chat message. Both parties can then click on the green arrow to start the video (it's a streaming video). There are three options for viewing the window (set via icons in upper right hand corner of the video):
In the chat window at the top
One more item to note about Chat windows in Skype 3.5: When you open a window there are now several options for selecting how far back you want to go in looking at Chat History with a contact. A small, but most useful feature.
users could choose 
I'm using a 
will include everything but the monitor. Distributed through 5,000 dealers. Unknowns: 
The silliest looking webcam on earth: the 
Security was a foundation design consideration for the Blackberry from its initial conception, with respect to both data streams and the voice conversation.The Blackberry is the only mobile device approved for use with several North American. European and South Pacific government security agencies. The list includes NATO, the U.S. Government's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).and Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE).
