By Iain MacMillan on September 26, 2006
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.
Posted in Stories, VOIP |
Iain founded RMM in 2006, with the objective of providing good, strategic advice across all areas of digital and social media. Nowadays, the focus is entirely social and involves the provision of more than just advice – insight, inspiration and expertise in social media. Iain leads the strategy development and training teams on most client projects.
He specialises in leading client strategy projects in a number of sectors, including finance and gambling, where RMM has conducted studies into social behaviour in highly regulated environments. He also leads projects for travel sector clients, a sector in which RMM works in partnership with eCRM sector specialist, Spike Marketing. They work together across a number of clients, most recently including Neilson Holidays, Thomas Cook’s ski and active holidays division.
Prior to RMM, Iain spent five years helping to run the web design business, Tonic, winning and managing accounts such as Vodafone, GE, GAP, MTV and Barclaycard. Before that he worked at Tribal DDB London, working on Volkswagen before heading up the Victor Chandler, Sony Europe and Guardian accounts. And before that he had a colourful career in music promotions, running the annual Soho Jazz Festival in 1997.
Iain spends quite a large amount of time trying and failing to explain to his long-suffering wife why he really loves golf, seventies hard rock and eighties pop. She remains none the wiser.
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?
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
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.