All your Internets are belong to us

Forgive the corny headline, but this kind of news really has been a long time coming. Was it really eight years ago that we were pasting a poorly translated piece of dialogue from Zero Wing all over everywhere?

About that time, we also began thinking about how to originate low cost calls from a mobile. Of course, in those days we’d only just got hold of our new Sony Ericsson colour screen T38s (wow – colour screens) and the wireless Internet was 2.5G GPRS but we knew, even then, that one day we’d be able to make VoIP calls direct from our mobiles. It wasn’t long before we could, but, you know how it is, just because can do something, doesn’t mean that anybody’s going to let you…

Which is why it’s great news that every European Mobile Network Operator’s favourite Regulator, Viviane Reding, has finally put her smartly heeled foot down and demanded that the EU prevent the Telcos from standing in the way of innovation.

There’s probably a long way to go yet, only one Operator has openly admited that their anti-competitive behaviour has been ‘skating on thin ice.’ Although we’re still not enjoying the level field that the team at MO-Call have been fighting for, it’s nice to know we’re not the only people putting the customer first. Unlike an Internet meme, Mobile VoIP is here to stay.

Mobile VoIP – bite worse than bark

Following on from the recent post about Skype and the iPhone, it’s interesting to see Mobile Operator reactions being reported in the mainstream press.

The Times of London notes that O2 will be quite accepting of Mobile VoIP, remembers Truphone but fails, once again, to mention the awesome power of MO-Call.

USA Today reminds us just how The Phone Company really doesn’t care about you (and fails to remember that MO-Call provides low cost calling from over 1500 different mobiles – not just the iPhone).

Reuters announces that the battle for Mobile VoIP access really has commenced. Forward march MO-Call!

Tucked away in The Register, was a link to this story from the German, English-language, news source The Local. Seems the journalist was lucky enough to speak to a T-Mobile spokesperson, one Alexander von Schmettow, about that network’s position on Mobile VoIP. Here’s what Mr. von Schmettow had to say:

“It is clearly stated in our customer contracts that such services may not be used. There are two reasons for this – because the high level of traffic would hinder our network performance, and because if the Skype programme didn’t work properly, customers would make us responsible for it.”

What? T-Mobile’s Third Generation network cannot cope with RTP streaming? Really? And in what universe do customers blame Network Operators for poor application performance?

Laughable as these spurious claims are, Mr. Von Schmettow of T-Mobile goes on to say:

“..those who violate their contracts can expect to have them cancelled. It’s the same with any contract. If you rent a no-pets apartment and expect no one to notice your little dog, you can’t be surprised when your landlord comes knocking.”

So there you have it, as far as T-Mobile is concerned, using Mobile VoIP on their network is like keeping a little dog in your apartment. That’s the finest argument for protectionism that T-Mobile’s spokesperson could come up with…a little dog.

Woof Woof Mr. Von Schmettow.

Skype and the iPhone

Quite lot of words have been written about Skype’s new iPhone app. As several people have asked me about this, here’s a quick round up of what’s being said:

Michael Arrington accuses Skype of being arrogant (his pot/kettle/blackness interface is nestled in the early comments)

Om Malik gushes

Techdirt tells us it’s not for Canadians – would love to know the real Techdirt on this story.

Whilst over at All About Symbian, in a fantastic post, Steve Lichfield tells it like it is. Why won’t Apple let an app run in the background? Steve will tell you why.

Why hasn’t Morodo made a MO-Call app for the iPhone?

You can’t run an app in the background – unless you jailbreak
You can’t make calls over the native data-bearer (3G) – unless you jailbreak and use VPN

(And Apple really don’t like you jaibreaking any more).

So, how useful is a telephony app for the iPhone that is going to switch off when you receive an incoming call over the GSM network? Well, just read Steve Lichfield’s post if you haven’t already.

Here at Morodo we decided to focus on the main utility that customers are after – making a call – and we created a great set of MO-Call pages for iPhone that enable low-cost international calls – from the browser. As we use GSM as the bearer for our call, call waiting will work as you would expect it to.

Got an iPhone? Give MO-Call a try. Bookmark www.mo-call.com from the Safari browser on your iPhone and you’ll enjoy instant access to great international call rates direct from your dashboard. It even works in Canada…

App stores aplenty

Amidst all the noise from CITA you might have read that RIM’s Blackberry App World went live yesterday. The cynics are asking: “Yet another App Store for mobile downloads?” Personally, I believe this is great news for Developers and the mobile business in general. Looking at RIM’s close yesterday, the markets obviously agree with me.

Why are more App Stores a good thing? Education, Education, Education: five years ago my Mum didn’t know how to download an MP3, now she can BitTorrent with the best of them. How did she learn to do that? The knowledge entered the mainstream and ceased to be something that normal people believe is the preserve of the techno-geek. In other words, it became easy to understand.

In 2009, downloading-applications-to-your-mobile is climbing through the Early Majority to the top of Rogers curve. Brace yourself for the roller-coaster ride ahead.

You can download MO-Call for free from Blackberry App World, we’ll even give you some trial credit. Why spend more than you have to on your international calls?