Jon Arnold has updated his very interesting portal website IP Convergence TV. This time I also wrote a guest opinion, because to make money from mobile VoIP companies have to accept certain realities: "WiFi isn't everywhere and callback costs double".
I love the mobile use of VoIP but I still find it quite uncomfortable. That's what I point out. Especially annoying is how Skype, Fring, Truphone and other SIP based VoIP services get blocked by German 3G providers. Sorry, Dean Bubley from Disruptive Analysys! The reality looks much darker for VoIPo3G than you predict for the future. (But thanks for your regular Google ads "3G mobile Voice over IP. Analyst report: is it a threat to carriers? Or a future opportunity?". I better put a direct link to your website.)
Mobile VoIP over Wifi works only at home or in the office where I don't need it. So in my guest opinion I advocate intelligent cell phone software which automatically completes calls as callback, callthrough, Vo3G or VoWifi while the user doesn't even notice. I have already installed an example software on a Nokia E61.
Maybe if more and more people use these options, Dean's dream will come true. If everyone uses only mobile callthrough, triggered by intelligent software on the handset, the mobile network operators cannot charge any other items than the tariff's included minutes for local calls. Their voice legacy cell phone networks would become dumb pipes into the internet, the way we already see it with the 3Skypephone or iSkoot, Ringfree, Mobivox, Jajah Direct, Sipbroker, Tpad, Rebtel, Mobiletalk, etc. If mobile operators wanted to charge for international calls at all, they would have to embrace VoIPo3G and could at least charge for data, the way Dean predicts it.
But until this comes true, the mobile VoIP companies should attack the incumbents with better callthrough options, to take more and more cell phone calls out of the traditional networks and into IP. Read the full text for further explanations!
Showing posts with label 3G. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3G. Show all posts
Friday, February 1, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
Israeli mobile VoIP software miracle automatically connects the cheapest way
Last year I was nagging that "Packet8 MobileTalk could be done much better", and I was right. I could learn that now when the Israeli company Mobilemax installed for me on a cellphone the underlying software which powers Packet8's MobileTalk. It is a real mobile VoIP wonder weapon which I covered in an article for Areamobile. Companies like Truphone, Gizmo5, Wifimobile and Tpad should make its features a part of their mobile services to make them work also outside of the spare Wifi areas.
Internet telephony could be a killer application for mobile phones. But it has it quirks, shows a series of articles I wrote. In most cases you need at least a cell phone which can open mobile websites. It let's you do a mobile callback with VoIP providers like Jajah or Voxalot. After entering the phone numbers of the caller and the callee on a mobile website, a server rings up both and connects them over the internet. Of course this also costs double, but for international calls it's still cheaper than the own cell phone provider's prices. Only Wifi cell phone calls are less expensive. They only cost a few cents per minutes and often they are free. But Wifi isn't always available.
Mobilemax thus developed a software which automatically sends mobile phone calls the less expensive way over the internet whenever that's cheaper than normal calls. No need to open mobile websites on the phone or to trigger callbacks by SMS or instant messaging. The software simply sits unobtrusively in the background and automatically determines the way in which the call is connected. The user only needs to enter the number.
The program works on about 500 phones with Palm, BlackBerry, Symbian or Windows Mobile operating systems and last month it has been deployed for the first time by the US VoIP provider Packet8. Once a number has a foreign area code, the software starts to act and connects via a landline number to the server by Packet8. The server connects the telephone conversation with the other party over the VoIP network. Calls from the United States to Asia or Europe cost only a 2 to 5 US cents per minute more than the price of a local call. The American mobile operators normally charge up to three dollar minute. German companies like Running Mobile or Cellity offer similar solutions.
But the Israeli software has much more functions which the competitors lack and also Packet8 doesn't use. The program could also automatically decide to connect a phone call as a callback or over Wifi. Even VoIP calls over 3G will soon be possible, although all German mobile network operators seem to block them now I realized in some self-experiments. Mobilemax' software is a real miracle weapon for mobile VoIP and the handling is particularly pleasant, because no extra buttons have to be pressed. The software even senses in which country the user is and automatically chooses a local number for callthrough or callback. What a pity that consumers cannot have it. Mobilemax distributes the software only to companies. "We don't see ourselves providing the underlying service of the application and compete with our customers", said Mobilemax' Director of Business Development, Perry Nalevka, to me in an interview. The Packet8 customers pay $10 per month only to use it. In addition they get the VoIP telephone minutes billed.
Other companies want to follow the same business model, Nalevka said, which started as a one-touch-dialing solution for calling card users and roamers who had to use tens of access numbers, PINs and dial flows to make a call without being ripped off by the mobile operators. Six different service providers worldwide and several IPBX and enterprise mobility providers are now testing the software. So far several tens of thousands of licenses purchased.
Other companies who use it:
Today it supports the following configurations:
Further developments:
You can find more information about the software in Rich Tehrani's interview with Perry Nalevka: "MobileMax: Bullish on Fixed Mobile Convergence" (December 31, 2007).
Internet telephony could be a killer application for mobile phones. But it has it quirks, shows a series of articles I wrote. In most cases you need at least a cell phone which can open mobile websites. It let's you do a mobile callback with VoIP providers like Jajah or Voxalot. After entering the phone numbers of the caller and the callee on a mobile website, a server rings up both and connects them over the internet. Of course this also costs double, but for international calls it's still cheaper than the own cell phone provider's prices. Only Wifi cell phone calls are less expensive. They only cost a few cents per minutes and often they are free. But Wifi isn't always available.
Mobilemax thus developed a software which automatically sends mobile phone calls the less expensive way over the internet whenever that's cheaper than normal calls. No need to open mobile websites on the phone or to trigger callbacks by SMS or instant messaging. The software simply sits unobtrusively in the background and automatically determines the way in which the call is connected. The user only needs to enter the number.
Establishing a call with VoIP software from Mobilemax
The program works on about 500 phones with Palm, BlackBerry, Symbian or Windows Mobile operating systems and last month it has been deployed for the first time by the US VoIP provider Packet8. Once a number has a foreign area code, the software starts to act and connects via a landline number to the server by Packet8. The server connects the telephone conversation with the other party over the VoIP network. Calls from the United States to Asia or Europe cost only a 2 to 5 US cents per minute more than the price of a local call. The American mobile operators normally charge up to three dollar minute. German companies like Running Mobile or Cellity offer similar solutions.
But the Israeli software has much more functions which the competitors lack and also Packet8 doesn't use. The program could also automatically decide to connect a phone call as a callback or over Wifi. Even VoIP calls over 3G will soon be possible, although all German mobile network operators seem to block them now I realized in some self-experiments. Mobilemax' software is a real miracle weapon for mobile VoIP and the handling is particularly pleasant, because no extra buttons have to be pressed. The software even senses in which country the user is and automatically chooses a local number for callthrough or callback. What a pity that consumers cannot have it. Mobilemax distributes the software only to companies. "We don't see ourselves providing the underlying service of the application and compete with our customers", said Mobilemax' Director of Business Development, Perry Nalevka, to me in an interview. The Packet8 customers pay $10 per month only to use it. In addition they get the VoIP telephone minutes billed.
Configuration also allows other VoIP flavours
Other companies want to follow the same business model, Nalevka said, which started as a one-touch-dialing solution for calling card users and roamers who had to use tens of access numbers, PINs and dial flows to make a call without being ripped off by the mobile operators. Six different service providers worldwide and several IPBX and enterprise mobility providers are now testing the software. So far several tens of thousands of licenses purchased.
Other companies who use it:
- Reliance - Indian provider launching in 8 countries soon.
- Gamma Telecom, UK - launched the Crosslink service targeting SMBs and enterprise users
- Tellink, Belgium - callback provider for SMBs and roamers
- Tel3, Miami FL - residential provider
- Boomering - SMB mobility & callback solutions for roamers
Today it supports the following configurations:
- Callthrough with PIN or PINless (CLI based).
- Roaming location based callthrough with multiple access numbers automatically selects the relevant access number according to the user's location.
- Seamless callback triggered by: DID, USSD, SMS, IP. The application triggers the callback, answers the incoming call and if needed sends the destination number.
- Dial around replacing prefixes in the dialed number (1010).
Further developments:
- Support additional phone models as they are released.
- Add new routes to seamlessly divert calls to: VoWIFI, Vo3G (to SIP or termination).
- Adding in-call Mobility features.
You can find more information about the software in Rich Tehrani's interview with Perry Nalevka: "MobileMax: Bullish on Fixed Mobile Convergence" (December 31, 2007).
Sunday, November 18, 2007
The iPhone is beautiful but nasty
Finally I could get my hands on the Apple iPhone and check it out for one day. I must say that I am not that overly impressed like others commentators. The iPhone is a real multimedia machine, a true Apple product: fancy, with sharp pictures and fat sound. But it's definitely no Jesus phone. It does some things that I am really missing on my smartphone, like seeing every Youtube film. But the iPhone also full of small bitchinesses, like a spoiled starlet.
Youtube lies behind the goggle box
To see Youtube I just tip on the icon with the old TV set and it starts directly. Unlike other smartphones the iPhone delivers the entire Youtube on the screen, not just some handpicked films, like the mobile version for Symbian does. That's great because Youtube is Television 2.0 where people decide for themselves what they wants to see. The editorial preselection on my Nokia smartphone is always wrong with it's recomendations.
On the iPhone I just enter my search word and as result I get as much films like on my desktop PC. The only problem is that the virtual keys on the touchscreen are much too small, which makes me commit many typing errors. The picture quality is great, due to the high resolution display with 160 dots per inch. To fast-forward the movie or to stop it I just have to grab on the display to make the necessary buttons appear. I did that until the fat fingers on the screen seriously inhibited my Youtube pleasure and I had to clean. The landscape format gives you a real TV feeling, especially if you like cartoons. But I don't understand why the picture stayed in landscape mode when I put the phone upright. I love the iPhone feature which makes the entire screen turn when you move the phone in this direction.
Youtube fat fingers on the iPhone
Wifi is convenient but uncomfortable
However it's indispensable to have fast Wifi internet access for Youtube. With EDGE I had to wait eternally even for websites, when I played around with the iPhone in the Berlin subway. On my 3G smartphone I am used to read the latest news there without any problems.
Of course it's great that the iPhone automatically logs into every Wifi network that it has used before. But setting up a new hotspot is horrible. The iPhone finds the network's name very fast, but then follows the input of the password which in my case consist of lower case letters, uppercase and numbers. On the damned iPhone I could only choose between uppercase an numbers. A friend of mine had the same problem when he checked the iPhone at home. The arrow key for uppercase and lower case has no effect. I just couldn't enter any lower case letters. To not go entirely nuts, I finally had to chang my Wifi password so that it consisted only of numbers. A passnumber, so to say, which I could enter easily. But that's not very safe. That's why I chose a new Wifi password directly after the iPhone test.
Cool Cover Flow
The iPhone obviously wasn't made for security savvy techno geeks, but for design fans. They will surely love such cool effects like the cover flow: Turn the iPhone into landscape format, while listening to the music, and wipe over the shown record cover. It makes the covers of all stored songs rotate until your next favourite tune appears. Looks really fancy and works better than Windows Vista, where such graphical effects often bring the entire computer to its knees. When I change from cover view to list view, the cover rotates and disappears in the backgroung. Looks quite spacy.
Fat sound, but only for expensive earphones
Also the sound of the iPhone is great with Apple's small white earphones. It's cristal clear and banged my eardrum quite hefty when I pumped up the volume too much. Too bad that these white squits always fall out off my ears and I cannot use my own earphones with the iPhone. As soon as I connect them the entire iPhone goes silent. The phone doesn't work with every earphone because Apple moved the plug more inside the device. I already have great headphones from Philips which make me look like a DJ. They have cost only 3 Euros in a department store, cover my entire ear and have a great sound too. When they get broken I will buy new ones. That happens every few months because the cables are thin, also the iPhone's. Only for the iPhone squits it's really expensive to buy new ones: at least 40 Euros at Gravis, Germany's biggest Apple dealer.
iPod and iTunes are not the same on the iPhone
To listen to the music the iPhone has two buttons which have similar names but do different things: iTunes and iPod. The first one is to buy music and the second is to listen. The iPod button hides all the functionalities we already know from the iPod MP3 player: playlist,album, genre, artist and all that stuff. Nothing has changed and that's OK since I don't have to learn anything new.
The easiest way is to use the iPhone like an iPod: organize everything beforehand in iTunes and then just synchronize it with the iPhone. But before I could to that, I had to update the iTunes software again. Nearly every week it asks me to do so.The 63 MB download and the installation took nearly half an hour this time. Again it was very important to switch off the automatic synchronization in iTunes, before plugging in the iPhone, and to use the cell phone as an external hard disk. If not, all the music had disappeared that my friends had bought and downloaded before. The laptop computer had it just overwritten.
iTunes also works wirelessly
I also could have avoided the synchronization process, because iTunes works nearly completely as a standalone application on the iPhone. But only nearly completely. I could have searched through the entire Apple music store from the iPhone and I could have bought songs over Wifi or the EDGE mobile phone network with just one click. The last used iTunes ID comes as a preset, you just have to enter the password to finish the purchase.
But why of all things the free podcasts cannot be downloaded with the mobile iTunes version? They are my favourite feature. Unlike in the PC version you just get albums and titles for sale as search results. It would be so great to download the latest TV newscast over the air to the iPhone and see it on my way. At home I never would have time anyway.
At the end I was really happy when I could download my favourite podcast to a laptop computer and synchronize it with the iPhone: Dance Department, number 112. One hour of finest electronic dance music. Every week another world famous DJ spins the turntables. This week it's Ferry Corsten who also did great remixes for Moby and U2. The download is free of course. My favourite iPhone button is located at the bottom right of iTunes. It's name is "Further". When I touch, it all the content comes in neatly ordered: albums, audio books, compilations, composers, genres and also podcasts. That way I can find my favourite programs easily.
But I had to look for this button quite a long time.
Youtube lies behind the goggle box
To see Youtube I just tip on the icon with the old TV set and it starts directly. Unlike other smartphones the iPhone delivers the entire Youtube on the screen, not just some handpicked films, like the mobile version for Symbian does. That's great because Youtube is Television 2.0 where people decide for themselves what they wants to see. The editorial preselection on my Nokia smartphone is always wrong with it's recomendations.
On the iPhone I just enter my search word and as result I get as much films like on my desktop PC. The only problem is that the virtual keys on the touchscreen are much too small, which makes me commit many typing errors. The picture quality is great, due to the high resolution display with 160 dots per inch. To fast-forward the movie or to stop it I just have to grab on the display to make the necessary buttons appear. I did that until the fat fingers on the screen seriously inhibited my Youtube pleasure and I had to clean. The landscape format gives you a real TV feeling, especially if you like cartoons. But I don't understand why the picture stayed in landscape mode when I put the phone upright. I love the iPhone feature which makes the entire screen turn when you move the phone in this direction.
Youtube fat fingers on the iPhone
Wifi is convenient but uncomfortable
However it's indispensable to have fast Wifi internet access for Youtube. With EDGE I had to wait eternally even for websites, when I played around with the iPhone in the Berlin subway. On my 3G smartphone I am used to read the latest news there without any problems.
Of course it's great that the iPhone automatically logs into every Wifi network that it has used before. But setting up a new hotspot is horrible. The iPhone finds the network's name very fast, but then follows the input of the password which in my case consist of lower case letters, uppercase and numbers. On the damned iPhone I could only choose between uppercase an numbers. A friend of mine had the same problem when he checked the iPhone at home. The arrow key for uppercase and lower case has no effect. I just couldn't enter any lower case letters. To not go entirely nuts, I finally had to chang my Wifi password so that it consisted only of numbers. A passnumber, so to say, which I could enter easily. But that's not very safe. That's why I chose a new Wifi password directly after the iPhone test.
Cool Cover Flow
The iPhone obviously wasn't made for security savvy techno geeks, but for design fans. They will surely love such cool effects like the cover flow: Turn the iPhone into landscape format, while listening to the music, and wipe over the shown record cover. It makes the covers of all stored songs rotate until your next favourite tune appears. Looks really fancy and works better than Windows Vista, where such graphical effects often bring the entire computer to its knees. When I change from cover view to list view, the cover rotates and disappears in the backgroung. Looks quite spacy.
Fat sound, but only for expensive earphones
Also the sound of the iPhone is great with Apple's small white earphones. It's cristal clear and banged my eardrum quite hefty when I pumped up the volume too much. Too bad that these white squits always fall out off my ears and I cannot use my own earphones with the iPhone. As soon as I connect them the entire iPhone goes silent. The phone doesn't work with every earphone because Apple moved the plug more inside the device. I already have great headphones from Philips which make me look like a DJ. They have cost only 3 Euros in a department store, cover my entire ear and have a great sound too. When they get broken I will buy new ones. That happens every few months because the cables are thin, also the iPhone's. Only for the iPhone squits it's really expensive to buy new ones: at least 40 Euros at Gravis, Germany's biggest Apple dealer.
iPod and iTunes are not the same on the iPhone
To listen to the music the iPhone has two buttons which have similar names but do different things: iTunes and iPod. The first one is to buy music and the second is to listen. The iPod button hides all the functionalities we already know from the iPod MP3 player: playlist,album, genre, artist and all that stuff. Nothing has changed and that's OK since I don't have to learn anything new.
The easiest way is to use the iPhone like an iPod: organize everything beforehand in iTunes and then just synchronize it with the iPhone. But before I could to that, I had to update the iTunes software again. Nearly every week it asks me to do so.The 63 MB download and the installation took nearly half an hour this time. Again it was very important to switch off the automatic synchronization in iTunes, before plugging in the iPhone, and to use the cell phone as an external hard disk. If not, all the music had disappeared that my friends had bought and downloaded before. The laptop computer had it just overwritten.
iTunes also works wirelessly
I also could have avoided the synchronization process, because iTunes works nearly completely as a standalone application on the iPhone. But only nearly completely. I could have searched through the entire Apple music store from the iPhone and I could have bought songs over Wifi or the EDGE mobile phone network with just one click. The last used iTunes ID comes as a preset, you just have to enter the password to finish the purchase.
But why of all things the free podcasts cannot be downloaded with the mobile iTunes version? They are my favourite feature. Unlike in the PC version you just get albums and titles for sale as search results. It would be so great to download the latest TV newscast over the air to the iPhone and see it on my way. At home I never would have time anyway.
At the end I was really happy when I could download my favourite podcast to a laptop computer and synchronize it with the iPhone: Dance Department, number 112. One hour of finest electronic dance music. Every week another world famous DJ spins the turntables. This week it's Ferry Corsten who also did great remixes for Moby and U2. The download is free of course. My favourite iPhone button is located at the bottom right of iTunes. It's name is "Further". When I touch, it all the content comes in neatly ordered: albums, audio books, compilations, composers, genres and also podcasts. That way I can find my favourite programs easily.
But I had to look for this button quite a long time.
Friday, November 2, 2007
3Skypephone doesn't do mobile VoIP
Many commentators didn't realize that the 3Skypephone doesn't really do mobile VoIP. Even my friends at Areamobile thought at first that a 3G data flatrate would be necessary to use it. It was quite easy to get this false impression as the press release only said:
No more technical details were given. But the mobile Skype calls on the 3Skypephone are basically GSM phone calls, since it's the iSkoot service which is powering them. The day after the launch iSkoot could send out their own press release:
This means that Skype calls from the 3Skypephone aren't 3G VoIP calls. They are GSM calls from the phone to the 3-iSkoot server, which then cannels them over the fixed line internet to Skype. The data connection is only used to show the presence of the Skype buddies.
The 3Skypephone doesnt really do any mobile VoIP, since it uses Skype only in the fixed line part of the call. The bad voice quality, that for instance Luca critizes, is not because of unreliable 3G coverage. Possible causes are the low sound quality of the GSM codecs or transcoding issues at a gateway level. Yet still iSkoot is a nifty solution to guarantee Skype coverage nearly everywhere.
That's also why their FAQ list says:
Now it's also obvious why the technology doesn't work outside of the 3 network: It relies on free on net calls from the 3Skypephone to the 3-iSkoot server. Luca said that "if you are roaming (in Italy in some places you are under Tim coverage and not 3) Skype calls don’t work".
The 3Skypephone is no new invention but just another marketing skin for iSkoot. Take that TIME magazine if you want to elect your next "Invention Of the Year". ;)
29th October 2007 – Skype, the global Internet communications company and 3, the mobile operator, have launched a new affordable handset that lets you make free Skype to Skype calls and send free Skype instant messages from your mobile phone to other Skype users no matter where they are.
The 3 Skypephone is a fully-featured 3G Internet phone with Skype built-in. In addition to Skype calls the phone makes conventional calls and can be used to access 3’s broad range of other internet services.
3 customers using the 3 Skypephone will be able to make Skype calls and send instant messages on the move with the push of a button. This is the first time an operator has offered a mass market device which is tailor-made for free calling over the internet from a mobile. Now, all of Skype’s 246 million registered can be reached for free with the 3 Skypephone. ...
No more technical details were given. But the mobile Skype calls on the 3Skypephone are basically GSM phone calls, since it's the iSkoot service which is powering them. The day after the launch iSkoot could send out their own press release:
„CAMBRIDGE, MA – October 30, 2007 – iSkoot today announced that it has been selected by Skype to help power the 3 Skypephone – the first ever mass-market Skype-enabled mobile handset. ..."
This means that Skype calls from the 3Skypephone aren't 3G VoIP calls. They are GSM calls from the phone to the 3-iSkoot server, which then cannels them over the fixed line internet to Skype. The data connection is only used to show the presence of the Skype buddies.
The 3Skypephone doesnt really do any mobile VoIP, since it uses Skype only in the fixed line part of the call. The bad voice quality, that for instance Luca critizes, is not because of unreliable 3G coverage. Possible causes are the low sound quality of the GSM codecs or transcoding issues at a gateway level. Yet still iSkoot is a nifty solution to guarantee Skype coverage nearly everywhere.
That's also why their FAQ list says:
Q: Will it work on 2G, 2.5G& 3G networks?
A: Wherever you have coverage in the UK, Skype will work. If you can make a normal voice call, you will be able to make a Skype Call.
Now it's also obvious why the technology doesn't work outside of the 3 network: It relies on free on net calls from the 3Skypephone to the 3-iSkoot server. Luca said that "if you are roaming (in Italy in some places you are under Tim coverage and not 3) Skype calls don’t work".
The 3Skypephone is no new invention but just another marketing skin for iSkoot. Take that TIME magazine if you want to elect your next "Invention Of the Year". ;)
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Jajah offers pure play VoIP over 3G, inconsistent with their No Headset campaign
The web based callback operator Jajah starts to offer real VoIP calls over a 3G HSDPA cell phone network in Japan. That's funny since it undermines their own "Smash your headset" campaign which Jajah uses to attack competitor Skype. But Jajah's press department again did a great job of reality distortion so that bloggers and old school media didn't realize the the contradiction. I already covered the topic for the German news website Areamobile where I now work more often.
Normally people have to pay double at Jajah. After they enter their own number and the callee's number on a web site or in a mobile phone, Jajah's server establishes two phone calls to connect them. That's not always the cheapest option, compared to calling cards or pure play VoIP, and has nearly nothing to do with mobile internet telephony. Jajah uses VoIP only in the backend to connect the calls. The callers just need a normal PSTN or cell phone to start a Jajah conversation. But now Jajah starts to change these rules with a new operation in Japan. The per minute price gets cheaper by eliminating the double calls and Jajah does more or less the same like Truphone.
The Japanese company Emobile will be the first mobile operator in this country to offer VoIP over HSDPA. The start is scheduled for October 18, 2007, and the application has been developed by Jajah for the "One Alpha" devices of Emobile, which until now were data only and could not make phone calls. The phone calls go over the Jajah network and cost per minute about 9.7 Euro cents to Japanese cell phones and 1.4 Euro cents to the PSTN. Emobile makes its money by charging a flatrate tariff for the VoIP and other data usage. Emergency calls or calls to free numbers are not possible, as we already know it from other VoIP providers. The VoIP application comes preinstalled on new devices, or can be installed on existing devices, and the customer only needs to sign up with Jajah, which gets him a 300 Yen (1.80 Euro cents) call credit.
I would really like to know more about this application, but the information is spare. Jajah did not send out an own press release and their public relations people don't know more either, I learned from emails and phone calls. The big question is how the new Jajah VoIP application looks from inside and if it's the first outcome of the recent investment by Intel. Jajah's co-founder, Roman Scharf, said in May 2007 on this occasion: "The deeper Jajah can be embedded into Intel solutions, the better for customers everywhere. It is our intention to bring a best-of-class, next generation solution to the market which can be embedded and optimized for any computing device." Fellow blogger Moshe Maeir then explained in his blog posts "Jajah gets $20m and Intel’s patents" and "Behind the scenes of the Intel, Jajah deal" how Jajah's access to Intel's patent portfolio helps to embed Jajah's telephony functions at the chip level of mobile phones.
Maybe that's what's happening now with Emobile? The birth of a new mobile VoIP hardware?
The funny part is that you have to connect a HEADSET to the "One Alpha" device from Emobile, which runs Windows Mobile 6.0, to make a Jajah call. That's so ironic since Jajah is badgering their opponent Skype yet for months with a campaign under the claim "If you liked Skype, You'll love Jajah". It makes fun of the fact that Skype users are tied to their PC and have to use a headset to make a call. "Jajah is revolutionary because it lets you make free and low-cost global calls using your everyday mobile or landline phone," said Roman Scharf in the regarding press release. "Services like Skype require headsets, software downloads and sometimes other technical equipment, making them way too hard for the everyday consumer to use."
With the new VoIP service from Emobile Jajah works exactly the same way. But at least nobody has to pay double for a phone call.
Normally people have to pay double at Jajah. After they enter their own number and the callee's number on a web site or in a mobile phone, Jajah's server establishes two phone calls to connect them. That's not always the cheapest option, compared to calling cards or pure play VoIP, and has nearly nothing to do with mobile internet telephony. Jajah uses VoIP only in the backend to connect the calls. The callers just need a normal PSTN or cell phone to start a Jajah conversation. But now Jajah starts to change these rules with a new operation in Japan. The per minute price gets cheaper by eliminating the double calls and Jajah does more or less the same like Truphone.
The Japanese company Emobile will be the first mobile operator in this country to offer VoIP over HSDPA. The start is scheduled for October 18, 2007, and the application has been developed by Jajah for the "One Alpha" devices of Emobile, which until now were data only and could not make phone calls. The phone calls go over the Jajah network and cost per minute about 9.7 Euro cents to Japanese cell phones and 1.4 Euro cents to the PSTN. Emobile makes its money by charging a flatrate tariff for the VoIP and other data usage. Emergency calls or calls to free numbers are not possible, as we already know it from other VoIP providers. The VoIP application comes preinstalled on new devices, or can be installed on existing devices, and the customer only needs to sign up with Jajah, which gets him a 300 Yen (1.80 Euro cents) call credit.
I would really like to know more about this application, but the information is spare. Jajah did not send out an own press release and their public relations people don't know more either, I learned from emails and phone calls. The big question is how the new Jajah VoIP application looks from inside and if it's the first outcome of the recent investment by Intel. Jajah's co-founder, Roman Scharf, said in May 2007 on this occasion: "The deeper Jajah can be embedded into Intel solutions, the better for customers everywhere. It is our intention to bring a best-of-class, next generation solution to the market which can be embedded and optimized for any computing device." Fellow blogger Moshe Maeir then explained in his blog posts "Jajah gets $20m and Intel’s patents" and "Behind the scenes of the Intel, Jajah deal" how Jajah's access to Intel's patent portfolio helps to embed Jajah's telephony functions at the chip level of mobile phones.
Maybe that's what's happening now with Emobile? The birth of a new mobile VoIP hardware?
The funny part is that you have to connect a HEADSET to the "One Alpha" device from Emobile, which runs Windows Mobile 6.0, to make a Jajah call. That's so ironic since Jajah is badgering their opponent Skype yet for months with a campaign under the claim "If you liked Skype, You'll love Jajah". It makes fun of the fact that Skype users are tied to their PC and have to use a headset to make a call. "Jajah is revolutionary because it lets you make free and low-cost global calls using your everyday mobile or landline phone," said Roman Scharf in the regarding press release. "Services like Skype require headsets, software downloads and sometimes other technical equipment, making them way too hard for the everyday consumer to use."
With the new VoIP service from Emobile Jajah works exactly the same way. But at least nobody has to pay double for a phone call.
Monday, March 19, 2007
CeBIT 2007 is better than expected
Many critics had said that CeBIT is out of date and that it had lost ground to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas and the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, which have been held some weeks before. But Hanover's CeBIT is still the world's largest computer expo. After half of the time CeBIT has ten per cent more visitors than last year and to me it was more interesting to me than ever. Maybe because of the technological promises that at last have been accomplished after years of cheap talk.
It started with Vodafone's and T-Mobile's presentation of Europe's fastest 3G internet access for laptops and mobile phones: The new network combines High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access Technology (HSUPA). So it can deliver download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbits/s and uploads of up to 1.45 Mbits/s. That's faster than most classic DSL rates. I was impressed to see a 100 Megabyte FTP download to a laptop taking only 2:45 minutes. „The new HSDPA is at least seven times faster than every 3G internet access you get in the US“, said Vodafone spokesman Jens Kürten to me. „We will roll it out in Germany in the next months.“ Vodafone's 3G network covers already over 2,000 cities in Germany with data transmission rates of up to 1.8 Mbits/s. Faster transmission rates of up to 3.6 MBits/s are available in all major cities and 7.2 Mbit/s will follow soon.
But while Kürten sees it more as a replacement for fixed line internet access and Wifi hotspots on laptops Samsung presented already a tiny mobile phone which really can make use of such amazing speeds. The F700 looks from outside very similar to Apple's iPhone and has the size of a normal cell phone. But when you slide it open there is an entire keyboard for writing e-mails and chat messages. Unfortunately the interest in the phone was so big at CeBIT that the F700 had to be held behind glass and I could not check out the download speeds. Hopefully with devices like this the mobile network operators keep in mind what Germany's head of state, chancellor Angela Merkel, told them in their CeBIT opening speach: to bring down their prices. „You get more clients when you make it cheaper“, she said to more than 2000 IT managers. Many cell phone companies still charge more than 9 Euro per Megabyte and wonder why the mobile internet usage isn't higher among their clients.
With HSDPA these prices are just a joke and new Notebooks like Toshiba's „Portégé R400“ already come to the shelfs with built in 3G internet access and bundled with T-Mobile or Vodafone contract. The R400 downloads e-mails and synchronyzes the calendar continuously, even when it's closed or in standby mode. A second display outside the cover keeps you informed about new incoming messages, whithout the need to open the notebook. Although the luxury notebooks weighs only 3.79-pounds it can be already too heavy for today's miniaturization freaks. So Samsung's revealed on CeBIT it's Q1B, the world's lightest Universal Mobile PC (UPMC) which weighs just 1.67 poundsand runs Windows Vista. With 60 Gigabyte Harddisc, 1,0 Ghz Pentium processor and 7 Inch display the Q1B will is in the US stores from now on for 1299 dollars.
But maybe the times of personal computers are now really over and everything switches to the web. At least this idea came to my mind when the German software company Magix presented their online desktop Mygoya that's still in closed beta. The Flash website fullfils all basic needs of a computer user: E-mails, photo collection with optimization, all known messenger services with voice, videos, music, filesharing and office programs are managed in one Mygoya account. The files are saved for free on the 1 GB storage space and can be accessed from every computer or mobile phone with a Flash player. No need for an own harddisc anymore, because there will be more storage space in the paid version. No operating system wars anymore, because flash runs on virtually everyone.
„Soon the Mygoya desktop will also run Skype“, said Magix promotion manager Janek Bennewitz to me. I wonder how they want to do this since Skype is a closed system. But maybe these days are also over: At least the Italian company PCService presented a great way to bridge Skype and normal phones. Their Linux software Skip2PBX serves as an addition to a company's existing PBX. Installed on a Linux machine, which can also be virtual, it controls up to 30 Skype accounts at one time, using different sessions of the Skype program. When a Skype call arrives it's being redirected to a phone. The Users can call their Skype contacts for free by using short numbers on their phone. While the software still works only with ISDN and analogue phone lines the next version, which is due in june, will build the bridge from Skype to SIP.
A nice addition to existing company PBXs and a great example of the new VoIP ideas presented in Hall 13. The companies there showed how they want to beat the incumbents by channeling more and more calls over the internet. This isn't always automatically the cheapest, we learn from recent news about real „minute stealers“ that take away phone minutes by hacking a company's VoIP gateway. „That's possible because you can configure most PBXs with just few clicks in your browser“, explains Jens-Uwe Junghanns, sales manager of the German PBX producer Junghanns.NET Gmbh. „The built in webserver of the PBX can be an open door for hackers.“ So their poison green „Cruise phone“ PBX for VoIP and PSTN telephony can be configured only from one computer which has the right Java applet installed. German security at it's best that nearly got overlooked at CeBIT in Hanover.
It started with Vodafone's and T-Mobile's presentation of Europe's fastest 3G internet access for laptops and mobile phones: The new network combines High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access Technology (HSUPA). So it can deliver download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbits/s and uploads of up to 1.45 Mbits/s. That's faster than most classic DSL rates. I was impressed to see a 100 Megabyte FTP download to a laptop taking only 2:45 minutes. „The new HSDPA is at least seven times faster than every 3G internet access you get in the US“, said Vodafone spokesman Jens Kürten to me. „We will roll it out in Germany in the next months.“ Vodafone's 3G network covers already over 2,000 cities in Germany with data transmission rates of up to 1.8 Mbits/s. Faster transmission rates of up to 3.6 MBits/s are available in all major cities and 7.2 Mbit/s will follow soon.
But while Kürten sees it more as a replacement for fixed line internet access and Wifi hotspots on laptops Samsung presented already a tiny mobile phone which really can make use of such amazing speeds. The F700 looks from outside very similar to Apple's iPhone and has the size of a normal cell phone. But when you slide it open there is an entire keyboard for writing e-mails and chat messages. Unfortunately the interest in the phone was so big at CeBIT that the F700 had to be held behind glass and I could not check out the download speeds. Hopefully with devices like this the mobile network operators keep in mind what Germany's head of state, chancellor Angela Merkel, told them in their CeBIT opening speach: to bring down their prices. „You get more clients when you make it cheaper“, she said to more than 2000 IT managers. Many cell phone companies still charge more than 9 Euro per Megabyte and wonder why the mobile internet usage isn't higher among their clients.
With HSDPA these prices are just a joke and new Notebooks like Toshiba's „Portégé R400“ already come to the shelfs with built in 3G internet access and bundled with T-Mobile or Vodafone contract. The R400 downloads e-mails and synchronyzes the calendar continuously, even when it's closed or in standby mode. A second display outside the cover keeps you informed about new incoming messages, whithout the need to open the notebook. Although the luxury notebooks weighs only 3.79-pounds it can be already too heavy for today's miniaturization freaks. So Samsung's revealed on CeBIT it's Q1B, the world's lightest Universal Mobile PC (UPMC) which weighs just 1.67 poundsand runs Windows Vista. With 60 Gigabyte Harddisc, 1,0 Ghz Pentium processor and 7 Inch display the Q1B will is in the US stores from now on for 1299 dollars.
But maybe the times of personal computers are now really over and everything switches to the web. At least this idea came to my mind when the German software company Magix presented their online desktop Mygoya that's still in closed beta. The Flash website fullfils all basic needs of a computer user: E-mails, photo collection with optimization, all known messenger services with voice, videos, music, filesharing and office programs are managed in one Mygoya account. The files are saved for free on the 1 GB storage space and can be accessed from every computer or mobile phone with a Flash player. No need for an own harddisc anymore, because there will be more storage space in the paid version. No operating system wars anymore, because flash runs on virtually everyone.
„Soon the Mygoya desktop will also run Skype“, said Magix promotion manager Janek Bennewitz to me. I wonder how they want to do this since Skype is a closed system. But maybe these days are also over: At least the Italian company PCService presented a great way to bridge Skype and normal phones. Their Linux software Skip2PBX serves as an addition to a company's existing PBX. Installed on a Linux machine, which can also be virtual, it controls up to 30 Skype accounts at one time, using different sessions of the Skype program. When a Skype call arrives it's being redirected to a phone. The Users can call their Skype contacts for free by using short numbers on their phone. While the software still works only with ISDN and analogue phone lines the next version, which is due in june, will build the bridge from Skype to SIP.
A nice addition to existing company PBXs and a great example of the new VoIP ideas presented in Hall 13. The companies there showed how they want to beat the incumbents by channeling more and more calls over the internet. This isn't always automatically the cheapest, we learn from recent news about real „minute stealers“ that take away phone minutes by hacking a company's VoIP gateway. „That's possible because you can configure most PBXs with just few clicks in your browser“, explains Jens-Uwe Junghanns, sales manager of the German PBX producer Junghanns.NET Gmbh. „The built in webserver of the PBX can be an open door for hackers.“ So their poison green „Cruise phone“ PBX for VoIP and PSTN telephony can be configured only from one computer which has the right Java applet installed. German security at it's best that nearly got overlooked at CeBIT in Hanover.
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