Many people were wondering during the last two years how the Israeli mobile VoIP company Fringland Ltd. wants to make any money. Their versatile software works on virtually every platform and supports more than 1.000 mobile handsets. I heard that 200.000 new users sign up every month to Fring, as well as 80 companies which want to become a SIP affiliate. More than 500 SIP companies are already using the Israeli software as an easy to deploy solution for mobile VoIP, by sending a preconfigured Fring to their users' handsets or telling their customers how to use it. Fring invested heavily in software development and has to channel the other 500 companies' traffic over its own servers. Every voice connection goes first from the cellphone to Fring's servers, no matter if it's on Skype, SIP or Google Talk. Fring could take its share from the other companies' earnings, but hey do it for free. Also there is no paid version of Fring. All these business ideas are still in the cloud.

So how does Fring want to make money?

The cell phone multi messenger, which also serves perfectly for nearly free VoIP calls over 3G, should soon be sponsored by advertising. At the OSiM World conference in Berlin I saw an unreleased software version with banner ads for McDonald's in Fring's chat window. In a former occassion I could already see advertising by Gillette. The Israeli company with $20 million in venture capital seems to finally care now for revenue streams. Although CEO Avi Shechter had told me in February in an interview at Barcelona's Mobile World Congress that the entire year of 2008 would be dedicated exclusively to software development and revenues would be irrelevant. "The McDonald's banner ads are just a demonstration", said Fring's cofounder Boaz Zilberman when we met in Berlin. So until now Fring makes no money from advertising but is proving the concept.


One problem is, says Boaz, that mobile advertising is not very common yet. The advertisers still don't understand it and therefore employ only small budgets. But these small budgets would be eaten up immediately on the millions of daily Fring messages. That's why the company is going for bigger clients and advertising networks like Doubleclick or others. Context sensitive advertising like at Google Mail is not on the agenda. "We would have to read every chat message", says Boaz. "But we don't want that because it would hurt our users' trust." The business model of another Israeli born company seems creepy: Pudding Media is even eavesdropping their users' conversations to deliver targeted advertising at the computer screen during the phone calls.

Fring is now developing from a sole software for messaging and VoIP to an universal contact solution, which even keeps track of your buddies' location by GPS. The latest version 3.36.6, which you can only download from Fring's developer website, has already joined the menus for messengers and social networks. The boundaries between these categories are every time more blurry, because for instance Facebook is also an instant messenger now. In future software versions, every person should appear only once in Fring's contact list. Until now some people appear twofold, threefold or even more times - because they are connected to Skype, MSN, ICQ or other services at the same time. One click at the buddy's icon will start a chat, no matter which messenger to other person is using, which can always be escalated into a Fring phone call via VoIP.

Labels: Fring, Google Talk, ICQ, Mobile VoIP, MSN messenger, Pudding Media, SIP, Skype, VoIP, VoIPo3G

                                      

Just a fast news break: O2 in Germany is not blocking the phone numbers of Rebtel anymore. Their blog says "Victory! Rebtel is officially back in town and we’re planning on staying for a loooong time without any unexpected interruptions." I just heard the good news from my contacts and already did some Rebtel calls with a German SIM card from O2. Rebtel's CEO Hjalmar Winbladh is very happy that the pressure from thousands of Rebtel users made this breakthrough possible. He had had asked to write emails to the boss of O2 in Germany, Mr. Jaime Smith Basterra (jaime.smith@o2.com) or call the O2 support desk on 0049 179 55 22 2. Hjalmar told me in an email:

"We are very grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from our users. They proved that together we can make a difference. O2 would not have changed their mind without our users mailing, visiting and calling O2's CEO and customer support. Thank you all Rebtel friend! People can now stay in touch their loved ones again and afford to pay for it. We hope this has shown other operators that people do not accept being told who they can call and if they can use VOIP-services or not. We will continue to support our users and offer some of the world's lowest rates and best quality calling."

It cannot be overheard: Rebtel is happy, but they also send a message to incumbent telco operators to never try that again. Actually not only the Swedish company was affected. There are still more callthrough services and chatlines which see their numbers constrained by O2 and E-Plus in Germany. Their numbers are blocked or "limited", which is an especially nasty trick that user handytim explains in the web forum Telefon-Treff.de: "The numbers are not blocked, only limited. In my test I could only establish 1 connection out of 100 trials". While blocking of certain phone numbers is illegal for mobile operators, limiting seems to allowed to save their bandwith. One has to ask what's the difference to a blockade if really one of 100 calls comes through.

The affected companies are listed in a Google Spreadsheet which forum user Vesko keeps up to date: Budgetmobil, DialNow, Calleasy, voipwise.com, nonoh.net, VoipBusterPro, yipl.de, Chat House, Bluerate, Speed-Chat, partyknack.de, 030chat.de and Phonecaster. As you might notice there are several Betamax services among them. If the company wasn't so reluctant to talk to its users, Betamax could make a similar call for help.

Labels: Betamax, Callthrough, Mobile VoIP, O2, Rebtel, VoIP

                                      

A commentator to my last post "Why Truphone and Gizmo5 applaud that Nokia turns it's back on mobile VoIP" doubts my argumentation by asking:

I thought Truphone is based on the built-in SIP client? Then it would seem unlikely that Truphone applauds Nokia dropping the mobile VoIP stack from certain models.

My answer is the following:

Yes, Truphone until now works on top of the built-in SIP client. But the Truphone software develops more and more into a standalone application: with the inclusion of SMS, callthrough where no Wifi is available, presence information and so forth. They aren't afraid of building their own SIP app since it ties the customer even more to them. Therefore Gigaom wrote:

Truphone isn’t waiting around for Nokia to do something. A company spokesman told us: “From Truphone’s perspective Nokia has removed the VoIP client from all the N-Series phones for the planned future. We are putting in a replacement client functionality so that existing customers are not orphaned.”

Don't forget that Truphone has a very high pricing for Wifi calls! Their software is convenient to install, but many other VoIP companies are three times cheaper. That's why they would be very happy to be your only mobile VoIP provider. Vyke already launched their own client, as you can read here, and Gizmo5's CEO Michael Robertson officially applauded Nokia's move in a FierceVoIP article.

The only losers are the cellphone users, since these 3rd party apps are much more difficult to use than the native SIP client. Read this insightful comment, posted at Phoneyboy's blog:

"I’m using VOIP on Nokia’s phone via my own asterisk server. How can Nokia expect me to develop my own Internet telephony application so that I can continue to use it? There are simply thousands of small users out there for whom this is beyond what they could do. This will leave them out in cold.

And further comment. Any third party application will have hard time to match the comfort of integrated symbian UI, where normal and internet calls are integrated together and one push of a button decides which one to make. Just compare this with Fring whose UI is just terrible."

We tinkerers who use Asterisk, Voxalot, Voipstunt, PBXes and Iptel.org are out of the game for the new Nseries devices. I am afraid that the Nokia E71 is the last cool device for a VoIP aficionado like me. Hopefully the Android devices will have more to give. Phoneboy calls us, who use 10 VoIP providers on our Nokia devices, a "minority". Nevertheless he "understands the frustration". Thank you!

But still I think that he is wrong, or maybe just blue-eyed, when he says: "It sounds like the problem is only limited to these two handsets". The problem affects all Symbian Series 60 3rd generation Feature Pack 2 (S60 3.2)! This means: All new handsets from now on are affected. Nokia's VoIP isn't revolutionary disruptive anymore, but has changed to a big boys' only business.

P. D.: I have just found a new Gigaom article about the topic: "Nokia Clarifies Its Future N-Series VoIP Plans". Thanks for quoting my thoughts.

Labels: Asterisk, Callthrough, Gizmo5, Mobile VoIP, Nokia, PBXes, SIP, SMS, Symbian, Truphone, VoIP, Voxalot, Vyke

                                      

Om Malik has asked "Is Nokia Turning Its Back on MobileVoIP?", pinpointing to the fact that the new Nseries devices N78 and N96 lack an own SIP client, while Nokia before embraced mobile VoIP on it's Nseries and Eseries devices. Charlie Schick of Nokia Conversations says the report of the death of VoIP has been "grossly exaggerated" and people like Phoneboy, Gizmo5's Michael Robertson or the company Truphone are buying that argumentation, although it has its flaws. Truphone, Gizmo5 and Fring must have realized immediately that they are winning from Nokia's move. That's why they are holding back their horses.

Nokia says that it's no problem that they have removed the native SIP client from their latest handsets, since companies can develop their own VoIP software based on great APIs. But it's not as easy as Nokia is trying to say: There are hundreds or thousands of companies without an own software for mobile VoIP. They just rely on the SIP standard. In Germany it's GMX, 1&1, Sipgate and the several Betamax daughters. Together they have millions of customers, I am one of them. These people cannot use VoIP on the new Nokia phones. I have always ten or more VoIP providers installed on my Nokia E61i's SIP client. This way I can always use the cheapest route and leverage free on net calls.

It would be nasty if had to install ten or more pieces of software for that purpose. It's already annoying that Truphone requires a special software because they don't give me my SIP password. That's a perversion of the idea of standards. If I need a special software for every company's offer why is there a standard called SIP?

So as a VoIP tinkerer I have to stay with the older Nokia devices, or at most I can change to the E71. But Nokia's new Symbian release, S60 3.2, is no option for me - as long as it has no own SIP client. It's obvious why companies like Fring, Truphone, Gizmo5, Vyke and others are applauding the Nokia move. It ties their customer to them and makes it more difficult to use other companies' offers. With a native SIP client, which allows to be connected to several different SIP services at the same time, I can be promiscuous. Even the most disruptive mobile VoIP companies prefer to lock me in their walled garden, but I don't want that.

I still believe that pressure from mobile operators has caused this move of Nokia. HSDPA and HSUPA have brought great bandwith to the latest handsets, enough to use it for Voice over 3G. With the right voice codec you can talk about 15 minutes and use only 1 Megabyte of data. Filtering for VoIP packets slows down the mobile data networks and therefore it's not very common. If you combine that with the right VoIP provider, like Betamax, this means free mobile phone calls to more than 30 countries. Only data prices apply.

Labels: Betamax, free phone calls, Fring, Gizmo5, Mobile VoIP, Nokia, Truphone, VoIP, VoIPo3G, Vyke

                                      

Truphone finally makes it public: According to fellow VoIP blogger Alec Saunders and the UK site Techworld, Truphone is set to announce Truphone Anywhere, a service that lets you acccess the Truphone network from any mobile, whether on WiFi or not.

You know what? I know this service since February and better didn't tell to not ruin Truphone's surprise. Research Director James Body showed it off secretly to me at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. That's what I wrote in a later blog post on February 29, 2008:

They always have much more advanced Truphone versions installed than normal users. The last lab version I saw in Barcelona was quite promising and solved a problem I was always nagging about.

I am don't think that the new Truphone Anywhere feature with its beautiful Skype like "A"-logo is a direct reaction to my nagging blog post "To make money from mobile VoIP, companies have to accept certain realities" from February, 1st. But it attacks the problem that "WiFi isn't everywhere and callback costs double", which was always my strongest point against many mobile VoIP business ideas like Truphone.

To solve it, I recommended a network of international callthrough numbers which users can dial for local prices to channel their mobile phone calls into the VoIP system of companies like Truphone, Gizmo5 or WiFiMobile. It seems that Truphone finally took my advice, after Wifimobile had already announced a similar solution and Gizmo5 always cooperated with Sipbroker for local callthrough.

Techworld now writes that Truphone could join the bandwagon because they have bought the travel SIM card provider SIM4Travel. But I guess that Jajah or Tpad could also have provided with the necessary infrastructure.

Truphone Anywhere dials a gateway on a local number, which then connects through to the destination number, saving money if it is an international call. Unlike some other services, this is transparent, with the call set-up handled automatically after the user dials the remote number. It is enabled partly by a recent Truphone acquisition, SIM4Travel, which provides cheap international calling through gateways in Europe.

Let's see if it's as cool as the Israeli mobile VoIP software miracle from Mobilemax which automatically connects the cheapest way. I am also wondering what came first: 1.) the acquisition of SIM4Travel, 2.) the last round of financing, 3.) Truphone Anywhere? The official Truphone version is 1, 2, 3. The financining allegedly followed one week after the acquisition on April 17, 2008. But I am pretty sure that it went 3, 2, 1.

UPDATE:
I have now installed the new Truphone software 4.0. Anywhere doesn't work yet in Germany.

UPDATE 2:
After contact with Truphone's tech support and a complete erase and reinstall it works now.

Labels: Gizmo5, Jajah, Mobile VoIP, SIM4Travel, Sipbroker, Tpad, Truphone, VoIP, Wifimobile

                                      

I feel quite visionary, now that Voxbone has announced their iNum service. That's a new initiative to make worldwide portable VoIP telephone numbers available under the new virtual country-code +883. VoIP News explains it very well under the emblematic title "Creating A Country Called VoIP":

The new VoIP country number is 883, the counterpart of the 44 one dials to reach the U.K. or the 81 one uses for Japan. Putting those three digits in front of an individual subscriber's number will produce what Voxbone calls an iNum, a portable, permanent global phone number. Calling the iNum will ring the Skype or other VoIP account to which it is registered, anywhere in the world. Only companies such as Inmarsat Global Ltd. had previously obtained country codes based on technology rather than geography.

Voxbone is dealing now with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and with phone companies to make the new number range accessible for cheap prices from every country. "The goal of iNum is assuring free connectivity for all the world's VoIP users, more low-cost connectivity between VoIP and the PSTN, and unique identifiers for VoIP users worldwide", says CEO Rodrigue Ullens. That's exactly what I advocated for in July 2007 under the title "A new number range for worldwide mobile telephony is missing" in this blog:

So I think that an entire new number range is missing for worldwide mobile telephony. The best thing would be a cheap interconnect to the ++882 or ++858 number range, or something similar. These are international codes that don't belong to any particular country, but to ENUM services. It would be great if people could call them from every country for local prices. So you would never have to change SIM card or number for travel. You just had a virtual number, similar to German 032 numbers which don't belong to a particular city but to VoIP.

OK, so +883 is planned for VoIP and I envisioned it for mobile telephony. But companies like Maxroam or United Mobile will surely find a way to make the new number range usable on cell phones and thus slash roaming prices for incoming calls. Be it with multi IMSI SIM cards, which can be local in several countries at a time, or as free call forward from a fixed line VoIP number as they do it today. After all it makes no difference if you have a number from Liechtenstein, Isle of Man, Iceland or a virtual country called +883 on your travel SIM. They are all weird.

Needless to say that I have directly signed up for iNum's public beta test which is scheduled to begin in June 2008. Let's hope that iNum has more success than the +878 initiative had six years ago or the Universal International Freephone Number (UIFN) with country code +800, which has also failed. "Without a strategy to get all the Telcos in the world to set up routing and tariffing for this number range, calls to this number range are going to go nowhere. The problem here is that they have very little incentive to do this", says a user at the VoIP user blog.

I keep my fingers crossed.

Labels: iNum, Maxroam, Mobile VoIP, United Mobile, VoIP, Voxbone

                                      

Hipsip is a nice and easy mobile VoIP service which let's you call Skype and SIP contacts from a normal cell phone without a Wifi or 3G data connection. In the last weeks I could try out the service as beta tester and now they open to everyone. Hipsip does basically the same like iSkoot or Mobivox, but is easier to handle. You don't have to install a software on the mobile phone or talk to a computer voice to establish the connection. The user just opens a mobile website where he sees his Skype contacts and calls them with a click on the name. The phone then starts a GSM call to the nearest Hipsip callthrough number where a server converts it into a Skype call. In my case it goes to a landline number in Hamburg, Germany.

Screenshot from the Hipsip mobile website.

One big difference is that Hipsip has no hosted bridge from the cell phone network to Skype. Your computer must always be switched on and you have to install a small software called Hipsip Bridge which has to be running together with Skype. Otherwise the mobile website on the phone says "Please connect your Hipsip Bridge to see your Skype contacts." That is a big disadvantage to the other mobile phone Skype services like iSkoot, Mobivox and Fring. But at least it's cheaper than ideas from SkyQube or VoSky. They not only require you to leave your computer running, but also to buy an extra hardware which hands your mobile phone calls over to Skype. Again, they also let you receive Skype calls on a cell phone.

Call your Skype contacts with one click on a hyperlink.

If the Hipsip Bridge doesn't run, you can still call every SIP address of choice or even email addresses, which will be explained later. I conducted a small email interview to the developer Christian Rees. He comes from Germany himself, where he long time ago used to write about Atari ST computers for the famous c't magazine. On the phone he had told me that they are already considering a hosted solution without Hipsip Bridge, but that's not so easy.


I see that you use HTML code like <a href="tel:+4940306988028">Call sip:johndoe@ipcall.com</a> on your mobile website. What does it do? A computer's browser doesn't know what to do with it, but a cell phone starts a call.

The answer is, that the so called telephone URL, tel:, is supported on converged devices (in the sense that they support circuit and packet data) like cell phones with a web browser. When a tel: URL link with a phone number is clicked in the browser, the phone starts dialing the number. It works on all phones that are less then 4 years old. It's customary for the phone to prompt the user with the number, as a safeguard. Our users can be assured that we are only returning our local callthrough numbers.

Who is the company behind the Hipsip offer, Sipcall.com?

Sipcall.com Inc., the parent of Hipsip, is a California corporation with offices in Menlo Park. The company was founded in 2004, is privately funded and in the process of raising more capital. We are less then 10 people with backgrounds from academia, VoIP and the mobile industry. We consider ourselves an international company, that happens to be located in Silicon Valley.

Our history goes back quite a bit, starting in 1999, with the idea that email addresses will eventually turn into phone numbers. We attempted to raise funding in 2000, targetting the mobile space already back then. However, it took until 2004 for the climate to be right to start again with new ideas. In early 2005 we began developing the Hipsip Bridge for Skype. Due to our funding situation back then, it has taken until now for the relase.

What are your further plans?

We are planning to make Hipsip more useful and convenient for our users. One priority is to improve the Skype experience. We have already put emphasis on providing ISDN like voice quality for Skype calls over SIP, since Skype is so exceptional in this respect and we don't want to loose too much of that. However, there are limitations to the current phone networks. We are not so hot on vaporware, so we'll announce new features when they are available. And we are very interested to hear from users what they need.

When will it be hosted, so that my computer doesn't need to stay switched on?

See above, but it is a high priority for us.

And what about new features?

One novel feature that we provide is EmailCall. With EmailCall, a user can turn their email address into their phone number, so to speak. This is how it works: if the user has verified his mobile number and email address and opts-in to EmailCall, he can now be called by his email address:

• by dialing the email address on any SIP phone registered on Hipsip, which will ring the users SIP devices (you could say we are sippyfying the email address).


• from any mobile phone by entering the URL: hipsip.com/john.doe@aol.com (as an example). When the URL is entered, the current mobile number of the owner of the email address will be returned. This is limited to other users of Hipsip, and is strictly an opt-in feature. The user can change his current number anytime, while the much easier to remember email address can be used to look it up in real time, and dial immediately.

The idea behind this is, that we will eventually see a convergence in the addressing space just as we are seeing it with networks becoming all IP, so that a single SIP/email/URI address will be sufficient for all the different modes of communications for which we have to remember identifiers today. This day is not here yet, but we believe that it will eventually happen. Today it is already possible to dial a URI on the Nokia N-Series and E-Series phones, which works very well over WLAN and 3G. Things will only improve when pure packet networks like Wimax and LTE come online.

My take: we have to wait and see how Hipsip develops. The market for such services is already crowded. But nobody has built yet the perfect bridge from Skype to SIP. Hipsip has potential if they get the service hosted, but then they would have to cover higher server costs. The EmailCall is funny but nothing new. Jangl already does it for nearly a year.


Side note:
Respect to blogger hero Russell Shaw who unexpectedly passed away last weekend when he was on his way to cover the Emerging Technologies Conference and VON.

Labels: Fring, Hipsip, Iskoot, Jangl, Mobile VoIP, Mobivox, Skype, VoIP

                                      

I have to admit that I was wrong in my last blog post about "Truphone's new pricing". I had bet that Truphone would offer free calls for another two months, as they always did when their free offer supposedly ended. But now they came up with a new pricing, called Tru Zone, that in the words of Stuart Henshall's blog "fails to motivate". Here is an example:

You can call any of the 40 countries in the Tru Zone for a tiny 6c to landlines and 30c to mobiles. Some countries such as the USA, Canada and China are double special. Calls to both landlines and mobiles are a flat 6c! Calls to much of the rest of the world are flat and simple too – just 10c to landlines and 30c to mobiles.

That makes Truphone now one of the most expensive VoIP services I know. But at least I was partly right with my bet: "as a big thank you for being one of our early supporters, you can continue to enjoy your existing Launch Offer pricing (that means free calls to 40 countries) until June 1st", says the email I got last week from Truphone.

So early adopters can still enjoy free calls. I guess that Truphone was afraid of a big wave of signoffs and criticism in VoIP blogs. New customers have to be attracted by Tru Zone's easy pricing and new features which you can't find at cheaper VoIP services. If you meet James Body or other members of Truphone's staff sneak a peek on their handsets! They always have much more advanced Truphone versions installed than normal users. The last lab version I saw in Barcelona was quite promising and solved a problem I was always nagging about.

Labels: free phone calls, Mobile VoIP, Truphone, VoIP