VOIP and my mobile
By Iain MacMillan September 26th, 2006
In Stories
I almost had one of those ‘wow’ moments today when I was introduced to Truphone and the opportunity to use VOIP to make mobile to mobile calls. Free mobile calls? Lovely.
Of course, when I read a little more, I realised it was more of an ‘ah’ moment and that I’ll continue to use Skype for most of my needs, in the short-term. (A nice article on Techcrunch does a very good job of explaining why I’m currently unlikely to be that ‘mobile’ while using my VOIP mobile service). However, with wi-fi areas sure to become bigger and better, it’s going to be hugely exciting to see what our friendly, neighbourhood mobile operators do next.
1 Mat Morrison // Sep 27, 2006 at 4:35 pm
I’m interested to see where this whole 4G thing is going. I used the WiFi-enabled Nokia N80 for a couple of days last week - it was an interesting (if clumsy) vision of what we should expect to be doing next year.
More interestingly, at the moment, the handset manufacturers are mostly at the mercy of the big service providers - Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson rely on Vodafone, Orange et al. for their route to market. I’m tied into my contract for at least twelve months, and can only upgrade along the paths that my service provider allows me.
Even giants like Carphone Warehouse can’t break this pattern.
But in a future where my handset is increasingly network agnostic, will this still be the case? Will I start roaming through the networks, using the one that’s best for my needs and pocket. Will - in fact - this start being a dynamic process - where packets of my conversation or data can switch networks as I move through them? This is - when one thinks of it - pretty much what happens as one moves from cell to cell right now: the only thing that limits us is the stranglehold that the carriers have on the billing relationship (and their obsession with ARPU).
My head spins a bit at this. Could Vodafone just become an infrastructure and bandwidth provider, and lose its customers?
2 Lawrence Garwood // Oct 5, 2006 at 4:50 pm
I don’t think you should ‘ah’… but more of a “oooooooh errr”. Truphone is truley amazing and a reality. I have it set up on my E60 and although it is in beta. It works… it really works.
I don’t need to be tethered to my PC. I can hop onto any wifi network (with WEP number) and get started.
The beta is free and there is currently free calls on it. They apparently plan toroll it out to the Nokia N series and then all Wifi enabled phones.
I had it working on my E60 without a sim card… how great it that!!
This is the future of mobile VOIP telephony.
http://www.truphone.com
3 Nigel Shardlow // Oct 17, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Your handset may be network agnostic for WiFi but is unlikely to be agnostic about GSM and 3G any time soon (unless you’re roaming - but if you’re roaming you’re paying your home network anyway). The big convergence play at the moment is geared towards securing ‘home and away’ for the mobile networks. You’ll switch to wireless voip at home (using the broadband provided by your mobile network) and on the move you’re going to be using 3G. Relying on the availability of unsecured hotspots on the move to make your calls is impractical, and paid-for hotspots are still ludicrously expensive. The networks want you as a customer, wherever you are.