Round Two: Google Voice web app for the iPhone

Mashable linked to a great story in the New York Times about the Google Voice app for the iPhone. I urge you to go and have a read:

“Already, Google says it is readying a replacement for the Google Voice app that will offer exactly the same features as the rejected app—except that it will take the form of a specialized, iPhone-shaped Web page.”

Sounds like a great idea. As Mashable’s Adam Ostrow notes, Jajah released a webpage like this in 2007. What Adam forgets to mention is that Morodo was probably the first alt. mobile VoIP company to offer calling from a webpage configured for the iPhone.

Want to make cheap calls from your iPhone without installing an app? Let MO-Call show you how.

Apple bans Google Voice apps for iPhone

Just in case you have been living under a rock for the last week or so here’s the news: Apple has refused to offer Google Voice Apps for the iPhone from the iTunes app store. Everyone and his dog has been on their soapbox about this one so, without further ado, I’ll clamber up on mine:

Anyone who has bothered to read the Apple Terms & Conditions when downloading the iPhone SDK should know that they are working with a closed platform for a closed device. Apple can, quite legally, ban your app from the iTunes store because they don’t like you, your app or, if they are having a really bad day, because they don’t like the colour of your socks. It would be a fantastic world if every mobile development platform were truly Open Source but that’s not the case and that’s not the way-of-the-world, so if you want to develop for the iPhone you need to work with Apple’s rules.

Apple’s T&C might not seem particularly fair but this is nothing new. If I write a BREW app for Verizon Wireless cellphones, I will have to go through Qualcomm/Verizon to distribute that app. The platform belongs to it’s patent holder and is licensed to the Operator. Together they approve your app (or not) and in the case of my software, MO-Call – an app that competes with the Operator – they most certainly disapprove.

Nothing that Apple has done is any different from the approval processes that other Operators have been running for years. In fact, we should celebrate Apple as they (arguably) changed the game by being the first manufacturer to retain significant control of the app store and content.

Given the columns of newsprint and blogtype devoted to the subject recently, the fact that Apple picked Google as a target, rather than say Truphone, has harmed neither them, nor the target.

In summary: Caveat Emptor.

PS: None of the above has stopped us from developing a  MO-Call app for the iPhone.

Orange Monkey – streaming mobile music

The UK division of French Mobile Network Operator Orange has launched a prepaid streaming music player for mobile and desktop. In keeping with the Orange UK animal theme for tariff plans, the new service is known as Monkey. This I find pretty significant as so many aspects of the offering have been aimed at the lower socio-economic end of the market – namely, consumers who do not own a credit card.

Recognising that the cash-strapped don’t always have smartphones, Orange has resurrected the old British Telecom dial-a-disc technology and will be streaming music by phone call. Those readers of a certain age may remember BT’s dial-a-disc, call 160 from any phone and listen to Top Of The Pops for 10 pence per minute, it was quite popular in it’s own time. The Orange Monkey phone number will play music for free as long as the consumer tops-up by more than £10 each month.

I’m not sure whether this will catch on. It’s not going to be a great quality service for the listener as streamed music over a phone line can’t be much better than 32 kbps.

Similar services do exist, one I use frequently is www.audionow.com, a website that provides dial-in numbers for American radio stations. I should add, I don’t use Audionow to listen to the radio, oh no, it’s an excellent resource for VoIP engineers who need to ring test phone numbers and keep those calls open (without making nuisance calls!). Much better than the lists of ‘telephone company test numbers‘ that proliferate the Internet.

Feel like a blast of nostalgia? You can listen to an archived BT dial-a-disc recording by ringing +442392988085 and following the prompts.

Spinvox, the BBC and concerns about privacy

It might not be a long hot summer in the UK but it’s probably been a steamy week for James Whatley, the man who runs ‘Social Media’ at Spinvox, the nice speech-to-text service people.Putting News International’s cavalier attitude to privacy behind them, the BBC got stuck into Spinvox for alledged use of live call centre operators in transcribing speech-to-text. Whatley’s defence included the  bizarre claim that the number of messages referred to live operators is some kind of trade secret, the revealing of which would compromise company security. The BBC hit back by revealing company salaries, then referring to patents that made mention of human intervention in the transcription service. Back and forth they went with their claims…

Perhaps the most suprising fact I learned was that the average annual salary at Spinvox is a phenomenal £96,369, this in a staff of just over 200. The highest paid director earns just over half a million a year. OK, it’s not quite boo.com but if any VCs are reading this: how can a shareholder director possibly justify that salary in this current economic climate? If I’d invested in Spinvox, I’d be asking for a quick look at the books and an AGM right about now.

The WiFi SD card – freedom to browse

Dailywireless alerted me to an interesting story from Tech On, seems KDDI have been showing off a WiFi SD card for mobile, albeit with no release date. This might not be news to avid Japan watchers but I cannot help but hope that we are closer to the reality.

Mobile Operators have a worrying tendency to flex their muscle and request a WiFi rip-out at the drop of a 100K order with their vendor mobile manufacturers (Nokia and my local provider spring to mind).

Why do we put up with our Utility Vendors’ insistence on banning technology that benefits us?

The future of Mobile Branding

The simplistic aim for an application developer is to get a brand onto the device. For those selling applications as shrink-wrap software, this is a traditional needs-benefits sale which must be closed before the application is loaded.

It’s very simple to offer applications for free on the internet and enjoy many thousands of downloads – the iTunes iPhone App Store is full of one-chuckle show-your-mates apps. Installation numbers only become meaningful in context of conversion to a happy customer; one who regularly uses that application or, in gaming terms, uses that application until the enjoyment potential has expired.

For companies like Morodo, who offer service enabled by a free application, getting the brand onto the device is secondary to providing value in the service itself. Morodo’s MO-Call app is essentially a VoIP service. Our revenue stream is only realised when the customer uses that app, enjoys the convenient and relaible calling useful and pays for airtime (yes, you can try before you buy).

In fact, MO-Call is a case in point; the ethos of the app is that a customer should be able to make a phone call via an alternative network operator seamlessly, without having to interact with the software. The app itself (and the branding it carries) is invisble to the consumer.

Simply getting the brand on the mobile will bring you no value whatsoever unless the app sporting that brand provides a useful service to the consumer. Who wants to be an un-clicked icon buried deep in the user interface?

In mobile advertising, it’s not uncommon for campaigns to be based around a free app that provides content, updates or links to product information. Procter & Gamble’s mobile strategy sets very high store by such means of reaching the market and they are right to do so as their aim is to create recognition and presence; the brand-in-the- hand if you will. Again, without usage and interaction, such advertising becomes meaningless.

At present, the challenge lies with firstly the operating system owner and secondly, the application developer, to make it easier and more enjoyable to download all kinds of stuff to your mobile and play with it.

An edited version of this post was published in Mobile Business July 2009 in response to the question: what does mobile branding mean for your company?

Press Release: MO-Call – VoIP on Windows Vista.

LONDON – Morodo Limited is pleased to announce that it’s popular VoIP application, MO-Call, now supports Windows Vista. Morodo Managing Director, Andrew Reid, said. “Supporting Windows Vista and soon, Windows 7, helps us increase the availability of MO-Call to massive customer base. We continue to work towards supporting more operating systems ensuring that MO-Call customers can enjoy the benefits of low-cost and free VoIP calls on any device.”

James Barnes, Technical Director at Morodo, said. “Support for every Windows Operating System is a great foundation to catch market-share.” Mr. Barnes went on to say. “We will see many new internet-connected netbooks and Ultra Lightweight Personal Computers released in the near future. Many which run on Linux, and even Android, Operating Systems. Morodo will bring easy-to-use, clear quality VoIP to all of these devices. Support for Apple OS X is on the way.”

MO-Call enables low-cost international calling direct from a mobile phone, without the need to change mobile number, SIM or network. Offering seamless connection of low-cost calls, MO-Call provides savings of up to 90% over existing Mobile Network International Tariffs. The service works through a plug-in software application that can be downloaded, free of charge, from the MO-Call website www.mo-call.com

Press Release: PortaOne helps MO-Call to compete globally against Mobile Telephony giants

UK-Based Morodo Uses Internet to Provide Ultra-Low Cost International Calling To Mobile Customers; Service Succeeds Thanks to PortaSwitch’s Reliability and Scalability

COQUITLAM, BRITISH COLUMBIA – For legions of mobile phone users around the world, MO-Call isn’t just a service—it’s a lifeline.  MO-Call, from UK-based Morodo Ltd., is a virtual mobile network that lets people make international calls from their mobile phone at a fraction of the cost charged by their mobile telephony provider.  The secret: a software add-in, downloaded from the MO-Call Web site to the user’s mobile handset.  The add-in shifts outgoing calls directly to Morodo’s VoIP network for completion; savings can be as much as 90% below existing mobile network international tariffs.

As early as its pre-launch testing phase several years back, Morodo knew its service would be hugely popular.  Morodo quickly realized its proprietary billing system and vendor call management software would not scale quickly enough to meet the heavy demand. “We began seeking a robust, feature-rich billing and call control platform,” said James Barnes, Chief Technical Officer for Morodo Ltd.  “After evaluating products from several vendors, we found that only PortaSwitch had the combination of reliability, scalability, features, call management capability, and product support we needed.”
PortaSwitch, from communications infrastructure company PortaOne, Inc., is a software-based communication services and subscriber management solution that lets IP telephony service providers deliver a wide variety of business models quickly and flexibly.  The comprehensive, Class 5 product consists of a softswitch and application servers, delivering billing and provisioning, SIP call control, unified messaging, IP Centrex and IP PBX, voice VPN, callback management, conferencing and more.
“PortaSwitch is flexible enough to support MO-Call’s multiple means of call set-up, call routing, billing—including multi-currency support—and multiple vendor management, plus other features such as Helpdesk ACD (Automatic Call Distribution) and IVR (Interactive Voice Response),” Barnes noted.
Morodo uses every  product included in PortaSwitch: PortaBilling100, PortaSIP, and PortaUM (unified messaging platform), and PortaBridge, a conference server.  Morodo’s pre-assessment of MO-Call’s popularity—and system stress—was evident as soon as PortaSwitch was installed in 2007.
Thankfully, according to Barnes, PortaOne’s technical team has performed when needed.

“Our R&D has demanded much of PortaOne, frequently requesting support for new and innovative features in support of the MO-Call One Account communication service,” he stated.  “Because we originate the majority of calls from cell phones using the MO-Call application suite, we have stretched the capabilities of PortaSwitch and the PortaSwitch development team.  But they have always delivered for us.”

Since its rollout, PortaSwitch has improved Morodo’s business by making it faster and easier to manage call traffic, as well as to develop call features and calling products.  The company has since introduced additional services including Web callbacks for PCs, mobiles and iPhones; instant messaging; free PC-to-PC calls, and low-cost international PC-to-phone calling.  Barnes said PortaSwitch has not only alleviated the risk that is inherent in growing a broadly-focused, global telecom business, but also helped it compete head-to-head against Skype and the large mobile telephony providers. “PortaSwitch’s billing just works.  It’s the simplest thing—but the hardest to get right,” he said.  “I have worked in the telecom industry for fifteen years for carriers on three continents, and have never used a billing platform with so few bugs or errors.  It’s quite an achievement.”
For more about MO-Call, log on to www.mo-call.com. To learn more about PortaOne’s PortaSwitch platform, go to www.portaone.com.

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.