When I received a “Mention” on a Tweet earlier this week:

my curiosity was piqued. Obviously Marcus had read one of my previous posts about CounterPath’s Bria on the iPad and iPhone and had encountered the CounterPath name in association with a new Rogers service. Over the years CounterPath has become associated with providing IP-based communications clients for enterprise, carrier and consumer use on PC’s, smartphones and tablets.

After some investigation it turns out that this past Monday Rogers sent an email to many of its consumer wireless customers asking them to take part in a beta program for a forthcoming service called Rogers One Number.

The concept basically is to provide a PC softphone that is associated with a wireless account such that conversations can be mirrored onto your PC through a web browser plugin on a Windows or Mac PC. Exchange SMS text messages, place and receive voice calls, there’s even a hint of a video call option in call management menu.

So what does this service deliver? From a web browser you can:

• synchronize contacts with your wireless device address book
• receive and place voice calls
• send and receive SMS messages

Going forward it appears Rogers One Number will also offer:

• links to Rogers Yahoo Mail and GMail
• receive and place video calls

All conversation activity, initiated or received on the softphone, is also reflected on the wireless phone(s)associated with the account. For instance, at this time, a call to my BlackBerry not only rings on my BlackBerry but also results in a call notification on my desktop PC. If I have missed a call a small “missed call” notification appears near the system tray on Windows PC’s. Text messages sent from the softphone also show up under text messages on the BlackBerry. And the service also applies for iPhone or Android phones.

So how does CounterPath come into the picture? When setting up the service there is a CounterPath End User License agreement to be accepted; also Norton Utilities identifies the plugin software as coming from CounterPath. CounterPath’s business model, in their OEM activities, involves providing the chat messaging along with voice and video calling infrastructure behind a user interface designed to an enterprise or carrier  customer’s specifications. In this case Rogers Wireless is the CounterPath customer who is responsible for the final user interface.

From a start-up page a wireless customer can register for the service; once confirmed via SMS messaging of a PIN number you are taken to a setup wizard where you need to enter key information, including a physical location for associating with e911 services. At that point you are asked to download a browser plugin for either Windows or Mac. Once you relaunch the browser you can open up the portal at the user interface and start using the service.

Once set up I made a few test calls with good quality voice. On placing a voice call (green phone icon in the Header bar above) a small call management client appears with options to escalate to video, place a call on hold and end a call. The upper icon bar includes a call log, a dial pad and a settings menu associated with the audio and video hardware. The lower icon bar covers mic mute,switch between multiple calls, switch between “headphones” and “speakerphone” and add a third party for a conference call. The program automatically had designated my FREETALK Everyman Headset as the headphone and Yamaha SoundGadget speakerphone as the speakerphone.

The main question re the video is who can you have a video conversation with? At the moment it would appear to only work with calls where both parties were using the Rogers One Number portal where you can set up video. On a voice call to my Skype client (calling my Skype Online number), the client appears to support the G729 codec; however, given that CounterPath is now incorporating Skype’s SILK into other products, there may be a future opportunity to wider audio bandwidth calling – at least between Rogers One Number web portals, if not to the wireless device itself.

Also of interest is the line “My web phone Emergency Address”. This is the initial setting that one enters when working through the setup wizard addressing a CRTC requirement for support of emergency services.

The images below show the dial pad and audio/video settings. Of significant interest is the potential for support of HD video should a webcam support it. However, until I can find a party who can receive a video call, we won’t know the full answer.

Bottom line: The Rogers One Number client is a recognition that many users have only a wireless phone and a PC; landlines are losing customers, especially with the “under 35” demographic. It’s a convenience that allows their consumer customers to make and receive calls on a PC in parallel with calling activity on the wireless phone. As analyst Jon Arnold mentions in his post, Rogers Wireless “One Number” Launch – Upping the Stakes:

The twist with One Number is that it’s built around the mobile phone, which is pretty much where consumers live, breath and sleep these days….

Anyhow, it’s very much a Web 2.0-meets mobility-meets VoIP mashup, and I think consumers will love it. Most people under 30 have long moved on from a landline, and with One Number, their PC simply becomes an extension of their smartphone – you just don’t need anything else.

To go back to the original Tweet that triggered this post, is it flaky? No, but it’s still in beta. There are a few issues that need to be addressed; however, it certainly addresses the basic requirements of providing PC access to conversation activity associated with a wireless device. Its feature set is not at the level of Skype for both functionality and ease of navigation but it will certainly provide the basic text messaging along with voice and video calling features. (And text messaging will generate SMS revenues for Rogers.)

If there is one major disappointment, it’s that Rogers elected to use a web browser plugin instead of an independent client; that makes it somewhat clumsy to access along with the requirement for always having a browser open. And the browser plugin needs a fair bit of desktop real estate in order to be fully seen; not a client you can put to one side such as Skype or Trillian.

One other question: will this service also incorporate some aspect of social networking where it can follow Facebook and Twitter activity? Given it was subtitled, by default, “My Social Hub” I would expect it to include these features also.

With respect to that most important feature called price – other than to realize there can be associated SMS revenues, we still have not heard what the pricing model is for using Rogers One Number voice and video calls. Most likely it will follow the Rogers Home Phone long distance model where calls from a Rogers Home Phone customer to other Rogers Home Phone customers or Rogers Wireless customers within Canada have no associated long distance charges.

From a wireless carrier business perspective Rogers One Number is a feature that introduces unique competitive positioning into a Canadian market where six carriers are now looking for customers. For that reason I cannot see any other charges beyond what is currently charged for wireless services.

Check out Jon Arnold’s complete post for another perspective.

Following the Mood Messages of a Skype employee in my Skype Conversations window I came across this last Friday: “brand new version of Skype To Go available. Dead simple to use, nothing to download, call directly from your contact list !” Curious, I went to my Skype To Go subscription where I found all six of my Skype To Go contacts had suddenly, and spontaneously, sprouted individual 647 numbers (647 being the overlay area code for Toronto’s legacy 416 area code).

Previously I had a single Toronto-based Skype To Go number which I would call to access one of my six contacts by selecting a number between “1” and “6” when I called the number. This process, using a Bluetooth connection between my BlackBerry and car audio system,  meant my “hands free” calling to this number in my car required that I actually use the keypad on my car’s “phone” panel. The new Skype To Go resolves this issue and more.

Here’s what’s new:

• Up to nine Skype To Go contacts can be designated; each with an individual Skype To Go number
• Up to five of your mobile or landline phones can be registered as valid phones to use these numbers
• When calling from a registered phone to one of the nine contacts, there is no need to wait for any voice prompts; the connection is now immediately made.
• Validated with a PIN and entering one of the registered phones’ numbers, one can call these numbers from any other phone.
• You register also the Country and Area Code you are calling from. When you move to another Country you can change the registered Country and get new local phones numbers for each of your Skype To Go contacts. But when you return to your “home” country you will get back your original Skype To Go numbers.
• The listing also shows what your charges are to these numbers below the destination number.
• You can select which of the registered numbers you want to display as your callerID when making these calls.
• What’s not changed? Your old Skype To Go number which you can still use for calling numbers not included in your Skype To Go contact list.

Skype To Go numbers can be obtained in 23 countries (note that Canada was added earlier this year):

So what’s the cost?

• If the number called is on one of your Skype subscription plans, there is no charge to landlines and mobiles in the eight countries with totally unlimited calling; for the 33 countries with unlimited calling to landlines only you pay the going Skype calling rate for calls to mobile phones (for instance, $0.317 per minute to mobile numbers in Spain). Note that Skype’s fair usage policy applies.
  
• If not on a subscription you pay, via Skype credits, the normal SkypeOut charges plus a connection fee.

Bottom line: I can now make totally hands free calls to these nine “most frequent” contacts using Skype To Go from my car via my BlackBerry or iPhone simply by pressing the “Enter” button on my steering wheel and saying “Call [Name] Other”. To simplify this process I have recorded these Skype To Go numbers under “Other” in my smartphone and Outlook address books. Back to total compliance with Ontario law regarding use of mobile phones while driving.

The bonus: I added my wife’s BlackBerry as a registered phone and she gets to call three relatives in another Canadian city at no cost when calling from Toronto’s rather large local calling area, encompassing four area codes. (With 90% of  its population spread out across a belt 100 miles wide and 4,000 miles long, Canada still has long distance charges, although they are gradually evaporating into carrier calling plans at low or no cost.)

Yesterday Apple released FaceTime for Mac, making its popular iPhone 4 Facetime application available to all owners of MackBooks and iMacs that are using the Snow Leopard (OS/X 10.6) operating system. Most significant about this announcement was the immediate expansion by several million of the user base who could be reached on FaceTime calls. (3.89 million Macs were sold in Apple’s most recently reported quarter.)

The limitation for video calling (and any real time communications service) has always been how many users can really use the service, given the interoperability limitations. As pointed out by former Skype CEO Josh Silverman in an interview at CES last January, when Skype launches a service, such as video calling, it is immediately available to the over 100 million active Skype users in a quarter.

Other attempts at video calling services, such as Logitech’s Vid, are limited to either other users of supported Logitech webcams or any third party offering using Logitech Vid software but there was no contact base built up to communicate with.  Two or three years ago Rogers attempted to launch a wireless video calling service but nobody had the mobile handsets required to make and receive video calls; the service has at best languished. The launch of FaceTime on the Mac will certainly significantly expand the user base who can experience video calling, even if limited to WiFi or Ethernet connections.

So how does FaceTime for Mac work? Download the application from Apple’s website and install it. It will initially ask for an email address to be associated with your FaceTime for Mac. You then are given your own image along with a list of Contacts, which comes from your Mac Address Book. My initial call was to fellow blogger, Dan York, during which I found he could be accessed on his iPhone 4. I simply clicked on his mobile number and the call was made. Dan then associated his FaceTime for Mac with a personal email address and we then made a subsequent MacBook-to-MacBook call.

Orientation: on the iPhone you can change the orientation of the image simply by rotating the iPhone where its accelerometer automatically changes the orientation. On the MacBook it is necessary to mouse over your own image and a circular arrow icon will appear; click in the icon and the image goes from portrait to landscape (or vice-versa, as appropriate).

Dan has reported on our calls in Hands-On with Apple’s new FaceTime for Mac (Screenshots). He outlines three issues: How do you shut the video off? What about Windows? and the implications for Standards?

My own issue is this. FaceTime is pretty well a stand alone video calling application; it does not even link into iChat. Skype video calling is accompanied by an entire ecosystem of real time communications tools that allows concurrent chat sessions (I always like to ask if someone can take a call), file transfer, or multi-party calling. So it works when the daughter reluctantly wants to show her new braces to her Dad (watch an iPhone 4 TV ad) but there’s no chat session for sending the bill to Dad. Phil Wolff makes some interesting points in Skype beats FaceTime for Mac: 18—13.

Can you use other webcams than the Mac’s Built-in iSight webcam? Yes, I subsequently made a call to Alec Saunders using the FREETALK Everyman webcam on the MacBook Pro; it may be my personal perception but I thought it gave a better quality image, but have no evidence as to how this would have appeared at the other end.

And, as for the use of your Mac webcam for other video applications mentioned by Dan? I made some more calls that beg to differ with Dan’s thoughts on this; but that’s the subject of a separate post.

Bottom Line: FaceTime for Mac will give millions of more users the ability to experience video calling. The market usage is far from saturated and we’ll be seeing ongoing innovation such as multi-party video calling (now in Skype for Windows 5.0) and perhaps more services offering video calling on smartphones. (BlackBerry/RIM – are you following this?). Will we eventually see interoperability?

But the bottom line will be how many parties can you call using a service. The race for users has become serious. One certain call: the next version of iPad will definitely have webcam support. An obvious way to add more millions of end points for FaceTime.

Related articles

• Apple Fights Back In Video Chat With FaceTime for the Mac (newteevee.com)
• Why FaceTime And Not iChat? (crunchgear.com)
• Apple introduces FaceTime for Mac (macworld.com)
• Skype beats FaceTime for Mac: 18 – 13 (skypejournal.com)

Having been invited to attend a BlackBerry Torch launch event in Toronto a week ago Monday, I have now experienced RIM’s latest smartphone for about ten days. Suffice it to say, as a veteran BlackBerry user, it certainly elevates BlackBerry’s feature set to a level that is very competitive in today’s smartphone market.

So what’s new – relative to my previous Bold 9700?

• combining a touch screen display with BlackBerry’s traditional keyboard
• BlackBerry 6 operating system
• a WebKit-based web browser that delivers a state-of-the-art smartphone browsing experience
• universal search
• an accelerometer that allows operation in both portrait and landscape mode
• a 5M-pixel camera with flash
• enhanced multimedia support
• significantly enhanced social networking support

To comment on some of my experiences:

Migration from a Bold 9700 to the Torch: using the latest version of BlackBerry Desktop Manager’s “Switch Devices” feature, the entire migration process required 20 to 30 minutes, including all my installed applications. Desktop Manager 6.0 is more user friendly and has a much easier migration process than previous versions – key when you’re trying to appeal to a consumer market.

However, for many applications, such as Twitter and Social Scope it was necessary to log in again; effectively a positive security feature. The biggest challenge is organizing the applications within the various categories across which you can swipe in the main menu: “All”, “Favorites”, “Media”, “Downloads” and “Frequent”. Once organized finding an application using touch screen gestures becomes much faster.

The Touch Screen and Its Keyboard: Touch with all its gesturing effects brings a significant productivity improvement to the handling of emails, media and web browsing. All the traditional ways to use the touchpad and keyboard remain available but for the majority of applications it becomes much easier to use the touch screen as opposed to the four function keys, touchpad and traditional keyboard. For example, it is now possible to simply swipe a finger left or right to move through your Messages, including emails.

As for the Touch screen keyboard: it simply confirms that my fingers are too large for a touch keyboard – works fine for entering a few characters but I revert to the hardware keyboard for any serious typing such as longer email replies.

Bottom line is that the touch screen and hardware keyboard are significant complements to each other and bring the advantages of each where appropriate in context of the application. And, being a true multi-tasking smartphone, the touch screen has features that make application switching much easier.

Note there are a few applications that are currently not sensitive to the touch screen, the most significant being the Google Mobile suite, including GMail, Google Maps and Google Reader. Here you can continue to use the touchpad but trying any gesture on the touch screen has no effect. I’m sure Google and RIM are working on a resolution of this situation. But almost all my other applications are appropriately touch sensitive.

The Browser: Not only is the WebKit-based browser the first truly reliable browsing experience on a BlackBerry; it also brings in features such as “tabs” that make browsing a much more manageable activity. Combined with the touch screen’s gesturing, such as the two finger expansion and pinch for zooming/unzooming, BlackBerry’s OS 6 browser has become on par with my iPhone browsing experience. Actually one advantage of also having the BlackBerry’s touchpad available is that it can be used for the precision cursor location required when two or more links are very close to each other such as on the PGATour.com mobile website.

The Torch also includes an accelerometer to allow portrait and landscape mode viewing in the browser; however, if the hardware keyboard is open, only portrait mode is available. On the other hand, when viewing YouTube videos they always come up in landscape mode. One of those small but important features that contributes to the device’s user friendliness.

Overall the BlackBerry 6 browser is a much more reliable, user friendly (and satisfying) experience.

Universal Search: within BlackBerry 6 is a search facility that not only searches the web but can search the entire BlackBerry. Basically hit the search icon on the status bar, enter the search term(s) and hit return. The applications containing the search term(s) will show up; click on the application and it will take you to the search term(s). Included in the applications is an option to do a Google search. In my world there can never be too many search opportunities, whether in Outlook, Skype chat messages, Gmail on the BlackBerry or iPhone, Google on the desktop, or locating emails from a contact on my BlackBerry.

Social Media: When I arrived at the Canadian BlackBerry launch event, one of Canada’s top social media guru’s, Amber MacArthur (@ambermac), author of Power Friending, was demonstrating the Torch’s social media features. Full disclosure; through a recent series of her columns in the Globe and Mail, it was apparent Amber remains a hard core BlackBerry user. But it quickly became apparent why she was carrying out this role at the launch event. BlackBerry 6 includes a comprehensive “Social Feeds” application where you can readily view your stream of Twitter, Facebook, BlackBerry Messenger and five other IM feeds either in one stream or filtered by application. In addition swipe to the left and you can view a stream of selected RSS feeds. A very comprehensive interface that has the potential to challenge my favorite Twitter/Facebook client – Social Scope. (Social Scope, which has BlackBerry 6 compatibility, has the ability to follow individuals and specific hashtags as well.) In summary, Social Feeds is a new feature that will readily appeal to anyone managing social media.

Of course, BlackBerry Torch includes RIM’s unique social networking tool, BlackBerry Messenger, that, in its latest incarnation, provides instant PIN-to-PIN chat, photo and file transfer along voice messaging. I continue to use it when I really need to grab a contact’s attention and using other Internet messaging applications, including email, as an intermediary can not get the message across fast enough.

And finally, BlackBerry integration with applications. Many BlackBerry apps are integrated tightly with the Address Book and other primary BlackBerry apps such that, for instance, a Contact’s picture will be retrieved from FaceBook if it is not available from an Outlook Contact synchronization. From a Contact in the Address Book, one can immediately go to her/his Facebook or LinkedIn page or locate an address in Google Maps.

Bottom line: This review highlights the features that became apparent over the course of my first ten days with the BlackBerry Torch; there are many other more subtle ones. For any BlackBerry aficionado it’s a “must” upgrade that puts the BlackBerry technology performance on a par with either iPhone or Android.

RIM’s real challenge is to attract new BlackBerry adopters and recruit more application developers. Certainly the PlayBook announcement earlier this week, with its underlying QNX OS, appears to brings to the table many of the tools required to assist the latter challenge. And RIM’s continued promotion of BlackBerry Messenger, a unique application that has bailed me out on many occasions, as well as its ongoing reputation for the most mature smartphone email operation and high level of security help with the former.

Of course the final piece of the puzzle for full support of real time social networking would be that missing BlackBerry SuperApp: a carrier agnostic Skype for BlackBerry; Amber, a longtime Skype user and enthusiast who used Skype for TV reporting long before Oprah, would have loved to have been able to demonstrate it.

And why the timing for this post? BlackBerry Torch launched yesterday on five Canadian carriers: Rogers Wireless, SaskTel, Telus, Bell and Virgin Mobile

Three more announcements this week that should help these challenges:

• Press Release: Research In Motion announces BBM social platform
• Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service
• Press Release: RIM to launch free BlackBerry Analytics Service

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• Review: BlackBerry Torch is a hot pick, but has flaws (thestar.com)
• BlackBerry Torch 9800 Goes Live on Rogers (intomobile.com)
• BlackBerry Torch up for pre-order on Vodafone (v3.co.uk)
• BlackBerry Torch 9800 Launched on Bell and Telus (intomobile.com)
• BlackBerry: Smartphones Sans AntennaGate (voiceontheweb.biz)
• Skype and Third Party Access: Getting Back to Basics (voiceontheweb.biz)

Over the past week we have been hearing rumors about a BlackBerry tablet offering; they came true yesterday – the only surprise being the tablet’s name – with RIM’s announcement, at their Devcon 2010, of BlackBerry Playbook. Having followed RIM for over twelve years and watched the “Sneak Preview” video, BlackBerry Playbook combines both their technology strengths and market strengths to launch a new era of the “professional” tablet [RIM’s term].

So you ask, what strengths are they leveraging?

• legacy multitasking smartphone experience, combined with multiprocessing on a dual core processor
• purchase last year of QNX for its robust operating system technology and expertise
• evolution of their “touch” technology expertise over the past two years
• superb graphics displays
• release of a WebKit-compliant web browser in BlackBerry OS 6
• robust security – approved by NATO and many governments internationally, yet now challenging the security investigation agencies of many countries
• wireless data transmission efficiency
• long time evolutionary experience with push technology (and its impact on battery management), email, Blackberry Messenger and document handling
• enterprise support, including BlackBerry Enterprise Server
• legacy Java support for application development, combined with support of both Adobe Flash and HTML5
• over 450 wireless carrier relationships worldwide

(Full disclosure: for the past ten days I have been experiencing a BlackBerry Torch – and an iPhone 4; an initial BlackBerry Torch review post will follow for the Canadian launch day, September 30. However, it have given me sufficient exposure to RIM’s most recent touch, display and web browser technology to support some of the statements above.)

As one who has been involved with the sale and marketing of multitasking on PC’s for 25 years, it would seem to be a “natural” that any new tablet devices should fully support multi-tasking. Recent BlackBerry smartphones have consistently demonstrated the value of true multi-tasking (and inherently the underlying virtual machine architecture); it becomes even more apparent when using the new web browser, message management and social networking infrastructure in BlackBerry OS6.

Over those 25 years one nagging complaint has been the robustness of both the Windows and Mac OS operating systems. While they have improved significantly over the past couple of years (I actually now run a Windows 7 quad-core desktop for several days without having to reboot and have occasional “total freezing” of my MacBook Pro), neither can boast a legacy of supporting nuclear power plant operations, running Europe’s high speed trains and manipulating the robotic space arm on space shuttle missions.

RIM’s most strategic acquisition, of the many they have made over the past few years, was its purchase of QNX last April. (Again a company which I first learned about 27 years ago as a supplier of robust embedded systems software.) Fellow blogger Alec Saunders, whose resume includes a year working for QNX, has more to say about RIM’s secret weapon. And watch this CrackBerry.com video for a more complete description of all the features that QNX brings not just to the end user but also to the developer community:

So what differentiates a “professional” tablet from iPad?

• dual core 1 GHz processor, incorporating true multitasking and multiprocessing
• dual 1080p HD video cameras (front facing and on back panel)
• enterprise ready – supports the installed base of BlackBerry Enterprise server installations
• the world’s most proven robust operating system – the secret sauce running Cisco routers and probably your automobile
• works as a complement to BlackBerry smartphones – bringing productivity well beyond simply tethering
• support for HDMI-out to larger displays
• government endorsed security
• BlackBerry Messenger, now elevated to a social platform for third party applications
• a “developer’s paradise” for porting and developing applications (watch the video)

And what are the unanswered questions?

• While the collateral talks about “video conferencing” and H.264 support, will we see a real time video calling capability? (The image on the right would certainly indicate a “Yes”.)
• Will RIM and Skype finally work out a way to support a carrier agnostic, true IP-based Skype for BlackBerry conversation client? An application that would benefit significantly from RIM’s multitasking and battery management features.
• Can RIM gain sufficient developer support to have an attractive array of mobile device applications?
• Can RIM find an appropriately attractive price point? (No pricing was announced.)
• How does it fend off Android-based and other (HP) tablets entering this market?

Bottom Line: BlackBerry Playbook has raised the bar on many technology fronts. It’s definitely a different approach to providing an electronic briefcase, especially for business users. But can RIM leverage its PlayBook feature set to attract customers beyond current BlackBerry owners to expand their market share? Don’t count RIM out of the game yet by any means; it brings more legacy mobile device experience than most attempts to enter this market. 2011 is going to become the “Year of the Tablet” with several players and market approaches.

Other RIM announcements yesterday:

• Press Release: RIM launches BlackBerry Advertising Service
• Press Release: RIM to launch free BlackBerry Analytics Service
• Amazon to launch Kindle App for new BlackBerry PlayBook
• Press Release: RIM Announces New BlackBerry Enterprise Application Development Platform

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• RIM officially enters the tablet market with the BlackBerry PlayBook (techvibes.com)

When I first saw the antenna band completely surrounding the iPhone 4 during Steve Jobs’ initial presentation, I recalled a comment made to me by RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaradis after a RIM Annual General meeting a few years ago. And I should also mention that I personally have a history of dealing with rf and associated antennae during my days working as a physicist in the Magnetic Resonance (“MR”) research and commercial space where all MR spectrometers and imaging systems are embedded with what amounts to enclosed radio stations operating in the FM radio and conventional television channel frequency ranges.

So I was skeptical about how that iPhone 4 antenna would work from the time of the initial announcement. And when fellow blogger and Twitter aficionado Luca Filigheddu took a poll earlier this week as to whether one would prefer a BlackBerry 9800 (the model that’s heavily speculated but not yet announced) or an iPhone 4 I could not resist the opportunity to  respond as shown above.

Three points:

• Mike’s comment when he saw me holding a BlackBerry 8700 a few years ago with my hand wrapped around the upper left corner was to the effect that I should avoid having my hand around that area as that is where the rf antennae are located. But it’s pretty easy to hold your BlackBerry while avoiding one corner of the device. Yesterday to check out the “Jobs test” I took up the “death grip” challenge presented by CrackBerry.com’s Kevin Michaluk and found “if I death grip my Bold 9700 the bars stay no matter what”. Seems like the rf engineering has improved going from the 8700 to 9700.
• From the rf physics point of view: Mike spent a lot of time at last year’s annual shareholders meeting (2009) talking about how RIM relies on internal basic physics research to assist in the design of BlackBerries, including an extensive discussion about their rf technology research. He is, after all, the energizer around the establishment of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics; while its researchers are free to pursue whatever research they see appropriate this investment is probably not totally altruism when it comes to understanding the physics behind wireless smartphones.
• In my fifteen years’ experience with Magnetic Resonance instrumentation, perhaps the most frustrating aspect was to get the rf engineering right. You can get there (or we would not have the high quality images we see with today’s MRI studies) but you need to understand the physics behind it and have lots of patience.

After drafting the above commentary yesterday afternoon very late Friday CrackBerry.com put out a rather strongly worded statement from RIM co-CEO’s Jim Ballsille and Mike Lazaradis:

“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable. Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation. RIM is a global leader in antenna design and has been successfully designing industry-leading wireless data products with efficient and effective radio performance for over 20 years. During that time, RIM has avoided designs like the one Apple used in the iPhone 4 and instead has used innovative designs which reduce the risk for dropped calls, especially in areas of lower coverage. One thing is for certain, RIM’s customers don’t need to use a case for their BlackBerry smartphone to maintain proper connectivity. Apple clearly made certain design decisions and it should take responsibility for these decisions rather than trying to draw RIM and others into a situation that relates specifically to Apple.” [Author's bold]

Bottom line: Steve Jobs may be a marketing genius but he ain’t no rf engineer or Ph.D. physicist. It’s all coming out in the iPhone 4. But even his marketing genius is degraded when he endeavors to justify the iPhone 4’s current problem by attempting to demonstrate rf issues with competitor products. “Bumper physics” does not solve the problem; not to ignore the resulting degradation of the overall appearance. It’s time for Apple to do their own antenna research, Steve.

Once iPhone 4 is finally available in Canada I don’t know that I’ll be rushing out for any special upgrade offer Rogers may come up with. And by then, maybe we’ll be seeing some new BlackBerry models, including those that are the subject of speculation.

P.S. –“Sans” – the French expression for “without”.

Full disclosure: Both Kevin Michaluk and I are on Rogers for our wireless carrier which offers a highly reliable 3G/HSPA+ service. Is there also an AT&T infrastructure issue involved here? We’ll only find out when iPhone 4 launches in Canada July 30. For completeness, the author has been the owner of a minuscule number of RIM shares since 1998.

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When I made those initial Skype for iPhone calls last weekend, not only did I gain a quick appreciation of the voice quality but I also realized that the forthcoming multi-tasking feature of iPhone OS4 could offer new possibilities. Yes, multi-tasking would facilitate Skype’s Instant Messaging in an “always-on” mode but there could also be an even richer experience for business users.  Having attended eComm 2010 a couple of months ago, I recalled that Ringio, who introduced their offering at that event, may have that business-savvy application.

Basically think of Ringio as providing a “lite” customer relationship manager for businesses relying heavily on mobile communications. When you either call a contact or receive a call from a “known” contact, Ringio can bring up contextual information that provides background information that may assist both your conversation and team productivity. In fact, they recently demonstrated this concept with their announcement of Ringio Mobile PBX for Android. Fellow Voyces.com blogger Larry Lisser positions Ringio in All hail the Mobile PBX. Ringio calls it like it is:

To be clear, Ringio’s not expecting you to have desk phone. The focus of their innovation is to drive context into phone conversations, leveraging the information we already store about a given inbound caller (ie. when they called last, who they spoke to, what they bought last, when they were last served, and so on). Ringio is one amongst many moving quickly to bring far more context, than simply Caller ID, to a phone call.

With its aggregation of background notes, conversation outcomes, voice mail messages, online presence status and call logs, Ringio appears to bring elements of enterprise level computer-telephone integration to the small business entrepreneur. While only launched six weeks ago, according to a recent interview with Ringio CEO Sam Aparicio, they are already gaining traction with consultants as well as small business sales and tech support teams. Joining Google Market Place, with integration into Google Contacts and GMail, certainly assists in building awareness.

Sam went on to explain that Ringio can bring a unique form of team building and collaboration for a small business. When job descriptions and responsibilities can have a lot of gray areas as the business builds its revenues and customer base and any team member could be answering the phones, with Ringio any member answering a contact’s call can readily be aware of previous conversations with other team members.

While they have delivered an application for Android, Ringio needs to consider offering not only an iPhone application, potentially supporting Skype for iPhone (and iPad?), but also a BlackBerry Super App to support the largest North American business smartphone vendor today.

Here’s the other challenge for these applications – whether it’s the iPhone, BlackBerry or one of many Android offerings, holding the phone up to the ear of course makes it impossible to see this information during a voice conversation. Aside from using the speakerphone mode, would this be an ideal application for having a full headset (mic plus speakers) for the various smartphones?

Bottom line: Ringio should provide a good gage on how readily the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, with its focus on “applications as the value creators”, will be implemented into the mobile smartphone market space. Where generating awareness can be a larger challenge than delivering the appropriate technology, users in the broad small business market space need to see user interfaces and to have user experiences that encourage adoption. Calling a product a mobile PBX and actually delivering with a broadly accepted solution is the execution challenge for Ringio.

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Since its release late Saturday, Skype for iPhone 2.0, with its support of calling over 3G carriers and superwideband audio using Skype’s SILK codec, has set the blogosphere awash with two genres of commentary: those who seem to think the end of free Skype calling is approaching as an Armageddon and those who recognize the launch of Skype for iPhone 2.0 as not only setting a new benchmark for mobile voice calling, especially for call quality, but also having a significant impact on the overall smartphone market.

Re the “small fee” (now set to start at the beginning of 2011), I simply say this is one more sign that Skype is a business with investors who are looking for a return. Nobody can argue about its value-add, both in terms of providing international mobile calling convenience but also by delivering a significantly enhanced user experience through establishing a new benchmark for mobile call quality. This outcome definitely justifies a “small fee”, provided it is not obsessive. Alec Saunders, author of the Voice 2.0 Manifesto, positions this issue appropriately in “Skype’s “small fee” is noise, guys”:

Sometimes you have to really shake your head at the quality of the commentary on the internet.  Fact: Skype has finally released a version of Skype for iPhone that supports calling over 3G networks.  Never mind the fly in the ointment that all the commentary is  stuck on – the fact that Skype wants to charge a “small fee” for you to use it on a 3G network.  Frankly, that’s noise.  People will pay for the ability to make a high quality Skype call on 3G, and not pay their carriers long distance termination charges in foreign markets.  So long as the fee is reasonable, nobody is going to object.

Alec goes on to make several points about what the launch of Skype for iPhone 2.0 really means; his post is well worth the read. (Full disclosure: as Canadians who participate in the Canada Pension Plan, Alec and I each have a $17.50 investment in Skype.)

As for the new benchmark for mobile phone call quality, there are several impacts. But first, if you have not heard it already, click here to hear Skype for iPhone 2.0’s “near CD-quality” call first hand between myself and Dean Elwood in the U.K.

Andy Abramson comments on how deeply Skype developers may have gone into the iPhone hardware to achieve this result in “Skype on 3G-Something Borrowed, Something New”; he concludes with:

How good? Well put it this way..why would anyone with an iPhone want to call over old AT&T after their first Skype over 3G call. Oh, and yes, it makes Skype on Verizon sound like, well, a plain old telephone call…..Ma Bell, you’re back sounding like you’re old self. The way the boys in the labs have always dreamed and said you could.

Over at Voyces.com, in “Skype for iPhone over 3G: An Industry Benchmark Game Changer for Skype”, I have commented on the broader impact of Skype for iPhone’s support of SiLK. Simply put, it has the potential to place Skype as a key mobile communications software infrastructure supplier across the entire mobile phone industry. Not simply because of the technology itself but rather as a result of demonstrating high quality voice calls accessible to Skype’s several million users through a single application for the iPhone resulting in several million end user experience – the “Skype network effect”.

With the support of SILK in a smartphone application that runs over both 3G and WiFi, calling costs become almost secondary to an exceptional end user experience with voice quality on mobile devices.

SILK has now become not only a benchmark but also a key communications infrastructure element. End users will pay for a quality experience, especially when it impacts business productivity. Both wireless carriers and smartphone vendors need to rush to ensure they have incorporated Skype’s SILK technology into their offerings. Otherwise the iPhone (iPad and iPod Touch) have one more key feature that sets them apart from the remainder of the smartphone users.

Dean Elwood sums up this “Skype network effect” best when he talks about the Skype “on-net” calling:

The proposition for Skype’s shareholders is the fact that you have to be on the Skype network in order to get the “near CD-quality”. Because you don’t get hi-def when you call a regular landline or mobile, only another Skype-enabled device. So if you want to make free calls to your friends, they all need to get on the Skype net.

and concludes with…….

It’s the mass-market adoption of Skype that makes it work. You need to be on their network, along with other contacts you call regularly, to make it work for you. So in the absence of interconnect, which Skype do not do, your a. n. other mobile VoIP carrier of the future has to start from the ground up.

Bottom line: Dean backs up his observations by telling me that he will be making most of his voice calls using Skype for iPhone when away from his office. It would be most interesting to see not only if this drives more users to using Skype as opposed to the carriers’ voice channels but also the fallout for the transition of communications from a very hardware-oriented infrastructure to a complete software infrastructure operating totally “in the cloud”.

Next: the questions that remain to be answered going forward.

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While attending eComm 2010 three weeks ago I was honored to be asked to join six other bloggers in providing weekly posts to Voyces.com, a blog that provides opinion, insight and perspective on developments in the IP-based and mobile communications space.

The initial two posts:

Has “Social Sharing” Become the “Nom du Jour”? provides a follow up to my previous Voice On The Web post on Jonathan Rosenberg’s keynote presentation at eComm 2010, The Rise of Real Time Sharing. Suddenly I was finding a rash of uses of the term “social sharing” and conclude with:

In six to nine months’ time maybe we’ll have a more pragmatic handle on what “social sharing” really means in terms of the emotions generated and the degree of interaction attained in practice.

• Is it turning a “me” experience into a “we” experience?
• Is it simply an emotion inducing “Kodak moment” or does it require more interactivity?
• Is it an extension of the concept of a “family agent” to our friends and followers on our social networks?
• Or is it simply another “nom du jour” catch phrase?

In the meantime social sharing remains an academic concept whose real value-add needs to be proven through real world experience incorporating real time communications .

The Missing BlackBerry SuperApp talks about RIM’s quest for SuperApps and how the most prominent missing SuperApp is the Skype for BlackBerry “direct to consumer” application. Just having it work over WiFi would meet my needs but more importantly for BlackBerry it would remove one more major negative to acquiring a competitive smartphone for which Skype has written a SuperApp. In conclusion:

…. if FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter are pervasive enough to trigger development of a BlackBerry SuperApp, Skype for BlackBerry has to be the one major “social sharing” SuperApp that is required to help RIM fight the smartphone battles currently being waged in the consumer and business markets.

It’s not a case where its presence would necessarily be winning sales at this point but rather it’s the absence of this application that contributes to losing BlackBerry sales across the consumer smartphone distribution channels. If, as stated at his WES 2010 presentation, Mike Lazaradis is looking to have 100 million BlackBerry users in the next couple of years,  and if Skype CEO Josh Silverman wants to make good on his “Skype Everywhere” goal, Skype for BlackBerry will have to be available soon.

Head over to the post for the details.

I look forward to working with Alec Saunders, Larry Lisser, Andy Abramson, Luca Filigheddu, Jamie Siminoff and Thomas Howe as Voyces.com develops its own “voice”.

Going forward Voice On The Web will continue to be my primary blog, with the goal of providing two to three posts a week on issues as well as hardware and software offerings in the Skype, IP-based communications and smartphone world. I’ll continue to post pointers to Voyces.com posts as well. Stay tuned for the ride.

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Ok, so the iPad does not have a camera of any type. But is its form factor not a “natural” format for video calling? When Global IP Solutions put out a press release yesterday I was a bit skeptical about who would take up on their “one way Video Conferencing/Chat capabilities for iPad developers, powered by GIPS VideoEngine™ Mobile”.

We’ve heard a lot of speculation about video calling on the next generation iPhone. Global IP Solutions has been offering their GIPS Video Engine Mobile to iPhone developers for the past several months. When the iPad came along they were able to port it quite readily to the iPad as announced in the press release linked above:

GIPS VideoEngine Mobile supplies iPad developers with a simple to integrate, high-level software API that contains the complex video conferencing/video chat capabilities [that can be embedded] into applications running on Apple’s iPad operating system.

Of course without a camera of any type on the iPad a video conversation involving the iPad would have to be one way (receive) video and two-way voice. One had to wonder why would there be interest in video calling using the iPad?

Yesterday the answer came home loud and clear. I had a demonstration of a video call received on an iPad over the GIPS internal WiFi network. Having experienced lots of video on the iPhone and BlackBerry Bolds (usually You Tube) and video calling using Skype, one aspect of this experience turned me from skeptic to advocate for using iPad for video calls.

The iPad form factor is an ideal format for receiving video calls. Its medium “family” picture frame size is very familiar to consumers. Propped up in a vertical position on a coffee table or physical desktop, it would be receiving video in a format and size that is quite suitable for family participation in a video call. With the accompanying (wideband and superwideband) HD voice, it delivered a perfectly natural conversation. Overall, the iPad is a natural size for video calling.

Where will we see this? Keep in mind that Global IP Solutions delivers engines that take voice and video input and transmit it efficiently over the Internet to a final destination. Their customers, who specify and provide the end user interface to the GIPS engines, include Yahoo, Lotus/IBM, Communigate, Nimbuzz (with an iPhone app), Citrix Online and many other vendors of IP-based voice and video services. And, again from the press release:

As video access becomes available from Apple, GIPS VideoEngine will support 2-way video chat/conferencing.

Bottom line: From this demonstration, and listening to the sessions at this past week’s eComm America 2010, by year end I expect low cost and mobile video calling and conferencing services will be breaking out in a big way:

• We’ll see mobile smartphone video calling not only on iPhone but also on Android devices, (RIM, BlackBerry?). Read through the GIPS blog to get more in-depth perspective on why I say this.
• Where feasible with the device display screen, the video calling standard will become HD over consumer broadband connections with the launch of the HD webcams for Skype in the next month or so.
• But the resolution standard for smartphones and tablets will actually be determined by the individual device’s screen properties; in general they will require less wireless data bandwidth than HD video calling over (cable, DSL) consumer broadband.
• We’ll be seeing low cost multi-party video conferencing solutions from a variety of vendors bringing onsite telepresence to small business.
• And there is reason to justify a built-in video camera on the next generation of iPad (but on the dipslay side a la MacBook Pro).

Update: San Francisco’s KRON-TV also visited Global IP Solutions last week and witnessed prototype video calls using mobile phones:

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In the past I have written about how WiFi is becoming the de facto unregulated stealth wireless carrier; I have also mentioned Boingo as a service that provides significant convenience when on the road, with its 125,000 access points at airports, hotels, restaurants, coffee shops and other public locations worldwide.

Over the past year Skype has added Skype Access as a feature of the latest versions of both Skype for Windows (4.2) and Skype for Mac (2.8) which provides another WiFi access option at the same 125,000 Boingo access points. It’s what I would call a “last resort” option in that its convenience also comes at a premium price starting at over $0.20 per minute. Obviously it is limited to work over PC’s, whether Windows or Mac.

Today there is a new option for Apple iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch owners only: purchase “Boingo WiFi Credits” via the Apple App Store. For $1.99 you get one hour of iPad, iPhone (or iPod Touch) connectivity over WiFi. Ideal for those who do not have a Boingo mobile account but occasionally need WiFi access at an airport or hotel to make a Skype or Truphone call. From the press release:

Consumers can purchase the $1.99 Wi-Fi credits in advance or at the time of connect simply by confirming the purchase using their iTunes account login. The credits can be redeemed for 60 consecutive minutes of Wi-Fi access at a single Boingo hotspot, and can be used at any of the more than 125,000 Boingo hotspots worldwide.

Apple mobile device owners can purchase as many credits as they want. Those users who buy credits in blocks of ten will be rewarded with an additional free credit.  The credits are good for up to one full year after purchase.

Available under “Boingo WiFi Credits”, initially on the U.S. and Canadian Apple App Stores. An interesting alternative for those who do not need the ongoing access available through Boingo’s Mobile WiFi offering.

To summarize the various Boingo offerings:

• For PC’s: Boingo Unlimited Americas, Boingo Global (subscriptions) or Skype Access (occasional use)
• For iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch:  Boingo Mobile (subscription) or Boingo WiFi credits (occasional use)
• For all other WiFi enabled smartphones: Boingo Mobile (subscription).

Bottom Line: one more option to connect via unregulated wireless access.

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A month ago at Mobile World Congress, Skype and Verizon stole the spotlight by announcing Verizon’s forthcoming Skype mobile service. This afternoon at CTIA in Las Vegas, Verizon and Skype announced that the service will launch in two days on Thursday, March 25 (think Christmas in March).

If there was one overriding theme that came out of the press conference today, it was “it’s about the user experience”. Skype’s Russ Shaw emphasized this during our CES interview in January; Josh Silverman, Skype CEO and John Stratton, Verizon Wireless Chief Marketing Officer, reinforced this during the Mobile World Congress press conference.

So what is this “user experience” that “it’s all about”?

• Make it as easy to make a Skype call as to make a circuit switched wireless call.
  • Find a name in the address book and press a “Call” button.
• Provide free Skype-to-Skype voice and IM conversations to any Skype contact worldwide
  • Without any charge against voice minutes or data usage
• Provide an “always on” experience by allowing the application to run in background
  • Receive IM chat messages and Skype voice calls while running other applications
  • Provide ongoing “presence” status via Skype IM
• Merge the device address book with your Skype contacts to ensure ready availability for both making and receiving a call
  • whether a normal voice call, a Skype-to-Skype call or an international call via SkypeOut
• Run the voice conversation over a proven, scalable, reliable voice network
  • that also has maximum geographical coverage
  • receive calls anywhere, anytime – not tethered to a PC for Skype conversations
• Optimize for longer battery life
• Make the download and installation a default with minimal, if any, user intervention
• Make it available to all your existing customers who have bought either BlackBerry or Android smartphones in the past
  • going back to the original 8830 BlackBerry World Edition and the Curve 8330
  • also available on the BlackBerry Storm, Storm 2, Curve 8530, Tour 9630 and three Android models
• Two other points made: the service is CALEA-compliant and E911 access remains available via the Verizon voice channel.

Customers will be able to access and install Skype mobile in one of four ways:

• For existing BlackBerry customers the application will be pushed to their BlackBerry’s home screen over the next few days after launch
  • New BlackBerry customers will find the application on their home screen
• Android users will be able to install the application from the Google App store
• The application can also be downloaded by going to www.skype.com/go/mobile
• Text “SKYPE” to 2255 to receive a download link

While there is no universal Skype for BlackBerry yet, the Verizon offering demonstrates how Skype can take advantage of the BlackBerry’s feature set:

• optimize for battery usage
• “always on” Skype connection by running the Skype mobile client in background
• using BlackBerry’s “push” technology to push the Skype application to all (existing) Verizon customers on BlackBerry

There are some limitations:

• No WiFi; must be in a location where Verizon signal is available
  • not deep in an underground location
• No roaming with Skype;
  • Skype calls can only be made while on the “Home” Verizon network in the U.S.
• Limited audio bandwidth using the inherent Verizon voice network
  • No SILK codecs involved; probably G.729

One final note: When asked about exclusivity, Skype’s Russ Shaw, GM for Mobile replied to the effect that “the Skype mobile experience is exclusive to Verizon” and that “features and functionality won’t be elsewhere”. Leaves a lot open to interpreation; we’ll see as Skype for Symbian and Skype for iPhone evolve.

Bottom line: While it will be a great service for Verizon’s customers wherever they are in the U.S., there are limitations such that the service is not available for international travel. It’s a service that is not only available to new customers but to their entire legacy base of BlackBerry and Android users.

The service, however, provides an initial step for getting Skype onto a mobile service with revenue generation for both Verizon and Skype. The big question is “Will it drive new users for Verizon?”

Yes, this post only covers the basics; more commentary to follow.

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It’s almost a week since the close of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, B.C. – an area where I have spent a lot of time over the past thirty-six years, mostly on business but also on (ski) vacations. These Olympics turned out to be a defining moment not just for Canadian athletics but simply for bringing the country together. (Seventeen days without politicians in the headlines is an totally positive experience and a welcome relief. Leave it to the athletes to build a sense of national unity.)

A Winter Olympics record 14 Gold Medals for some really dedicated, yet enthralling, Canadian athletes (and 26 medals in total), gold medal hockey championships for both the men and women and, let me say, as never before – Canada rocks! At one point two gold medals were earned within five minutes; Canada used to wait between five Olympics to win a gold medal (well, at least, three) and none had been won when Canada hosted the 1976 Summer Games (Montreal) or the 1988 Winter Games (Calgary).

It is estimated that over 22 million Canadians (out of 34 million) watched portions of the gold medal men’s hockey game – ending dramatically with an overtime “golden” goal; it was the most watched Canadian television event ever. There’s not a Canadian now who does not know the words to O Canada! (and a government proposal this past week to change one sentence to be more “politically correct” was shot down in a hurry…)

Last fall I wrote Skype: the “Unofficial” Personal Communications Software for the 2010 Winter Olympics? where I included some background on the telecommunications infrastructure build-out for the Olympics. But what was the experience and the outcome?

Personally I stayed at home and followed the action on television and the Internet. All events were originated with HD video and 5.1 channel surround sound; CTV ran a marathon Olympics program that commenced at 9 a.m. on opening day (Feb. 12, starting with the last day of the torch run) and continued 24/7 without a break, other than for the occasional five minute newscasts, through to midnight after the closing ceremony (Feb. 28). The broadcast consortium comprised CTV, TSN, both of which are Bell Globemedia properties, and Rogers Sportsnet (and their French language counterparts) in order to have sufficient resources to cover all the events.

Decisions, Decisions! It was not a case of tuning into one station and having the network choose which events you were allowed to watch; rather the viewer had to decide which sport they wanted to watch at any one time and choose one of three or four channels running different events. For instance, in the evenings one could select between figure skating, curling and bobsled (or hockey or freestyle skiing) – or go out and buy a couple of additional TV sets to watch them all concurrently. (Now if they could all just not  run commercials at the same time, channel surfing would have been more enjoyable.)

But that was only half the story. This broadcast coverage was complemented on the Internet where CTVOlympics.ca provided not only schedules and event participant information but also over 2300 hours of content, including real time streaming. Watch events live (with no commentary but lots of crowd noise and announcer pick-up) but, more interesting was that they accompanied the streaming with detailed event schedules and real time result tables so you could follow the evolution of an event towards determining the winners and where individual participants were placing, especially as the “individual performance” events proceeded.

For example, watching figure skating you knew when each skater would skate, the details of their individual programs (so you knew when a “triple lutz, double toe loop” was about to happen) and then a detailed result table (with more scoring information than I could handle in real time). Combining this while watching the telecast changed the entire event viewing experience and how I chose to watch the games. Same for the downhill skiing and those crazy snow cross events in the freestyle category, amongst all the other events.

My first exposure to Olympics ‘”saturation” coverage was watching the 1972 Munich Olympics while working in Germany. Sixteen hours a day of coverage by the German network was thought to be ground breaking at the time. But combining multi-network broadcast coverage with the Internet resulted in an entirely different and unique Olympics event viewing experience. And following my Twitter contacts during events made for a much more amusing time; it was hard to take too many of the more “cynical” tweets seriously. Unfortunately international arrangements were such that much of the CTVOlympics.ca activity could only be accessed from Canadian IP addresses. Political and copyright barriers are still an impediment to fully open international communications.

As for the effort that went into delivering the Olympics worldwide, the official telecommunications carrier Bell Canada reported:

“The Bell team rose to the extraordinary challenge of connecting the 2010 Winter Games and bringing these 17 glorious Canadian days to the billions of people watching around the world too,” said George Cope, President and CEO of Bell Canada. “The leadership role Bell played in delivering Canada’s Games drove communications innovation in this country to new heights. By exceeding the immensely high communications standards of an Olympic event, we’ve provided an incredible legacy of increased broadband connectivity for British Columbia.”

As the first telecommunications partner to deliver both wireless and wireline connectivity to an Olympic Games, Bell successfully executed all critical network and communications services at Vancouver 2010, including enhanced high-speed wireless data and fibre broadband networking, complete broadcast support, extensive Internet portal services and full network security.

The 2010 Winter Games network supported the communications needs of an estimated 250,000 visitors, almost 6,500 athletes and officials, 50,000 staff and volunteers, and more than 10,000 members of the Canadian and international media. Bell’s Olympic network delivered over 24,000 hours of broadcast coverage to more than three and a half billion viewers around the world according to the International Olympic Committee – the most in Olympic history, and a 50 per cent increase over the 2006 Winter Games in Torino and a 25 per cent increase over the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

When a customer first drove me to his Whistler chalet in 1974, it was a bit of a nervously challenging drive on a narrow two lane “Sea-to-Sky” highway that, for one stretch, went out from a canyon wall on wooden platforms. My host had a telephone connection – two wires under his unit connected to the neighbor’s phone line – literally in open air. Today, with a few exceptions it’s a four lane, fully paved highway and Whistler is connected to the world by the most advanced communications technology available.

One outcome for the Canadian wireless telecomm market: Bell, in co-operation with Telus, has built out a full HSPA+ network reaching over 90% of the Canadian population. Canada now has three wireless carriers, the original being Rogers, offering not only HSPA+ speeds but also the Apple iPhone and three candidates capable of offering the forthcoming iPad. But this is  just one example of how building an infrastructure for the Olympics has created a much more competitive telecommunications market within Canada. And each of them has the capacity to handle the smartphone data load growth reliably, not only for iPhone/iPad but also for BlackBerry and a selection of Nokia and Android products.

The one statistic we’re missing: how much of that traffic involved Skype calling?

Bottom Line: Not only did we have a great Winter Olympics party but there is a telecommunications legacy that will help to bring this country even closer going forward.

Congratulations to VANOC, the athletes and all those businesses – and the 25,000 volunteers- who help make it happen (and so successfully).

Now to deal with my case of Olympic Withdrawal Syndrome….

Full disclosure; the author was born and raised in Canada (Ontario and Saskatchewan) and has lived in Canada (and paid the taxes) for all but three years of his life. And he remains a Saskatchewan Roughriders fan.

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Full disclosure: This post was prepared prior to today’s press conference using information that was publicly available prior to the conference. In the second post I’ll discuss the service as announced at CES today.

When you can advertise “Free phone calling internationally”, they will come! In the CES interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman, Josh makes the point about how Skype draws in customers by offering a free service that is easily adopted by consumers and then offering “premium” services, such as SkypeOut calling, to generate revenues. This model has led to:

• over 580MM registered Skype accounts (probably 100MM are currently active)
• over 12% of international long distance calling minutes are Skype-to-Skype calls
• and revenues approaching $1B per year.

As mentioned in the recent CES interview with Russ Shaw, Skype’s VP & GM for Mobile and EMEA, Skype’s partnership with Hutcheson Whampoa’s 3 service in nine countries has delivered interesting carrier-friendly results from 3’s customers who take advantage of its free Skype-to-Skype calling:

• 20% higher margin
• 17% additional traditional voice minutes
• lower churn rate
• high ARPU (average revenue per user)
• over 1 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes delivered in the UK since Nov. 2007

Results that should get all wireless carriers’ attention! And Russ did emphasize these results to reinforce where some of Skype for Mobile’s current activities and resources are being directed.

Setting the stage in the U.S. market for today’s Skype-Verizon announcement:

• Verizon has a reputation as offering the best high speed (3G and faster) wireless data services within the U.S. and nobody’s complaining about their voice quality.
• AT&T’s major strength appears to be its iPhone arrangements
• AT&T’s network performance issues, especially with their data service, are well documented (even their voice channel failed me on my last two trips to the U.S.)
• The major failing of the iPhone that impacts Skype for iPhone is its lack of multi-tasking capability
• Skype has announced they will be making available Skype for iPhone running over 3G – a service that will only be available on AT&T for the duration of the current Apple-AT&T agreement
• Verizon needs an offering and drawing card that will compete with AT&T’s forthcoming ability to offer a Skype-based service on the iPhone.

So it should come as no surprise that Verizon is announcing an agreement to offer Skype on several devices including the BlackBerry line and the Android phones they support.

The Service Architecture

Based on information that has come out over the weekend and content archived on this weblog, this service is modeled on an architecture similar to the iSkoot architecture used for 3’s service whereby data (Skype chat messages, presence and call signaling information) go over Verizon’s data channel but the actual voice calls are connected to the phone via Verizon’s (robust and readily scalable) voice channel. As a result:

• Call quality is limited by the (3.7KHz) audio bandwidth of the voice channel (in particular, no SILK superwideband quality calls)
• Verizon has no termination charges for calls to Skype contacts (or what amounts to being a Skype-to-Skype call – a key factor in making this service cost effective from the Verizon perspective)
• There is no loading of Verizon’s wireless data network (and the associated backhaul demands) with the heavy demand that would be placed on it via a true VoIP client.
• The resulting “Skype for Verizon” Skype Lite client on the BlackBerry and Android devices  has no support of calls via WiFi access points.

So the Verizon-Skype announcement certainly builds on previous Skype technology and business model experience; it will take advantage of proven and demonstrably reliable carrier voice and data services. I’ll have more in the follow-up post covering the actual announcement.

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Over the past several months I have written three posts about WiFi’s ever-increasing role as a complement to the wireless carriers:

• WiFi: The Real Threat to the Mobile Carriers
• Is WiFi Becoming the Unregulated Stealth Carrier of the Future?
• Traveling in a Bipolar Mobile Mode

Basically, in my recent travels I have found that WiFi access is becoming more readily available at home, in the office and, as I travel, in hotels, airports and restaurants. Especially when in countries where roaming charges can be excessive, I seek out WiFi access points when on my BlackBerry and iPhone to minimize roaming expense for data.

Now that Apple is allowing VoIP over 3G, this strategy will become even more critical when using the Skype and Truphone applications for the  iPhone where the conversation uses VoIP technology over the data channel. While my home network data plan has sufficient monthly capacity for making these calls from within Canada, I’m not sure I want to be paying $1/MB when roaming in, say, the U.S. for a Skype call.

Brough Turner has built up an immense wealth of knowledge about Internet infrastructure and wireless carriers, not only from the technology perspective but also the business implications, including costs. He has recently published a post, WiFi Offload, not Femtocells, where, while postulating that Femtocell technology is too complex and costly become mainstream, he supports his argument by pointing out the business reasons for relying on WiFi as a primary “carrier” for wireless:

• “most mobile data is destined for the open Internet, not for someplace on the mobile operator’s network” Apparently 96% to 99%. Yet, relative to a direct broadband Internet connection, it’s much more costly per user (and more complex) for a wireless carrier to provide the tower and backhaul infrastructure required to connect a mobile phone to the Internet.
• “the primary sources of mobile data demand are laptops, notebooks and smart phones”. It’s become reality that most mobile devices these days support WiFi in addition to 3G/LTE/4G. And the iPad is a “data only” device. Demand for wireless connections will continue to grow rapidly; carriers need to look at the cost of new towers vs encouraging installation of WiFi access points (for which they have zero cost if the subscriber installs the access point).
• “WiFi access points cost less than femtocells” When end users can set up a WiFi access point for around $100 whereas the carriers’ towers can run $1MM to $2MM per tower and require a backhaul Internet link, it is actually to the carrier’s capital cost advantage to support the build out of WiFi access points, whether private (home, office) or public (hotels, restaurants, airports, etc.).
• “WiFi access points are showing up everywhere”. Yep, see the posts referenced above.

Three instances where WiFi has “bailed me out” recently:

• On both my January trips to CES and IT Expo, I had set up voice roaming with Rogers. Just one complication – over 80% of the calls I received, via roaming partner AT&T, had such poor call quality I had to ask the party to hang up and call them back. But when I called them back it was using Skype for iPhone over WiFi connections to have a more than acceptable call quality. AT&T simply failed, big time.
• At one recent hotel the hotel wanted to charge $14.95 per day per PC or smartphone for a WiFi connection. However, the hotel chain involved also had an arrangement with Boingo. Once I got the Boingo availability reminder I simply upgraded my mobile Boingo plan to a combined plan at $17.95 per month, connected my laptop, BlackBerry and iPhone and bypassed the hotel charges. As a bonus, I was also able to use the plan while waiting for my flights at two airports, amongst other Boingo-supported locations.
• During my trips to Spain last fall I ended up in situations where no public carrier access was available but there was WiFi access – once in an office with no 3G signal and once in a hotel in an ancient building with WiFi but no landline phone. Once again in these situations WiFi was the path to get data and Skype for iPhone or Truphone was used for voice calls.

The Bottom Line: Brough says it best in answering his own question “What should an operator do?”:

Mobile operators need to focus on providing bundles of connectivity, not on whether its 3G/4G or Wi-Fi. They should be encouraging Wi-Fi offload by bundling “free” public Wi-Fi access with their mobile data plans.

In the long term, it’s likely most mobile data bytes will go over Wi-Fi.  The 3G/4G network is still necessary to provide a backup path when no Wi-Fi is available. Mobile operators who recognize this can still come out on top, if they focus on facilitating connectivity for their customers regardless of the technology involved.

Note to Rogers: while Andy makes great use of UMA from T-Mobile’s @Home service during his overseas travels, Canadians would appreciate the same level of support for Rogers’ UMA-based services, which are currently limited to access from WiFi hotspots within Canada.

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Pardon my exuberance but I am about to write about a product that I have been beta testing for the past few months. Seven months ago I knew very little about small business PBX’s other than to know they had big $$$ signs associated with their operation.

Back in 1992 my employer of the day paid $28,000 for a PBX that would service our local Canadian office of six to ten employees – and all the extensions had to be physically in the same office. Of course we would also be paying significant long distance charges, especially for out-of-country calls. The same employer was paying about $10,000 per month for a T1 line between California and their European office in Ireland. The economics of worldwide communications has changed somewhat since then; today’s announcement from In Store Solutions of the FREETALK Connect small business PBX takes small businesses further down that path.

About six weeks ago, while visiting In Store Solutions head office in Spain, using Skype for iPhone in a WiFi zone at my hotel room, I called a SkypeID that gave me the options to press 1 for Jim, 2 for another person and 3 for another person. I pressed 1 and a few seconds later my BlackBerry was ringing me back in Spain, But the PBX was at my home near Toronto, Canada as was an attached Linksys VoIP phone that the PBX also rang simultaneously with my BlackBerry in Spain. Had I answered my BlackBerry the only charge would have been my voice roaming package $1.25 per minute. Had somebody else originated that call in the way I did, I also would have had the option to answer the call, with no resulting charges for either party, on my PC’s Skype client which at the time was also in my hotel room in Spain¹.

Bottom line: any Skype user worldwide could have reached me via this PBX on a “local” or “remote” phone, a mobile smartphone or my Skype client with minimal, if any, costs for the call. And, in practice, geography as a factor to Find Me or Follow Me was not in the equation.

Today In Store Solutions announced FREETALK Connect, a small business PBX that changes the algorithm and business model for small business voice communications. With FREETALK Connect a business can benefit from:

• accepting inbound calls made via Skype, a Skype Online number, a SIP client, Asterisk (IAX2) or the PSTN, via either an analog line or a VoIP service provider.
  • incorporating Find Me, Follow Me features
• accept calls on local analog phone lines, local or remote VoIP phones, mobile phones anywhere or remote PSTN-accessed phones – all provisioned within the PBX.
• placing outbound calls over Skype, SkypeOut, a SIP-connected VoIP service or an analog PSTN line.
• managed voice mail including consolidation of voice mail and email into one mailbox

As I experienced the different communications paths this product opened up, I realized that this box can revolutionize how small business communicates with their suppliers, customers and business partners – worldwide.

The press release lists all the services that will be on board the FREETALK Connect when it becomes available for purchase by U.S. registered Skype users in March on the Skype Store:

Some of the key features from the Jazinga platform found in the FREETALK Connect include:

• Callback / Dial-around
• Access to Skype Buddy lists
• Auto Attendant / IVR
• Paging
• Call Parking
• Remote Extensions
• Music on Hold
• Conferencing

The FREETALK Connect also has an easily configured and updated:

• Managing routes to users, telephone services, and applications
• Providing SIP/Skype telephone service management
• Router management (networking, port forwarding, DNS, DHCP)

“Jazinga’s products consistently ensure call integrity by integrating quality of service and prioritizing voice traffic on the network into an affordable, simple product,” said In Store Solutions COO Craig Smith. “There was no question that FREETALK wanted to partner with Jazinga to develop the FREETALK Connect, because it continues our goal of working with the best providers to distribute outstanding products around the world.”

“FREETALK Connect is designed for small businesses with between 2 and 49 users, an undersold market that desperately needs UC functionality,” said Randy Busch, CEO of Jazinga Inc. “As a result of our partnership with In Store Solutions, the telecom technology playing field is much more level between larger enterprises and their smaller competitors.”

In terms of the technology within FREETALK Connect it incorporates both Skype for SIP and Skype for Asterisk to provide an optimum level of Skype-based services but at the same time providing inbound calling flexibility and optimizing outbound calling expenses, all combined with the call integrity features quoted above.

FREETALK Connect will requires users to have a Skype for Business account, available through the Skype Business Control Panel, associated with each unit. More on this aspect of FREETALK Connect is the subject of a future post.

Bottom line: Targeted at small businesses with 2 to 25 employees and/or business partners with its wide range of inbound and outbound calling options, an attractive price point, incorporation of Skype for Business infrastructure and the ability to self-configure via wizards, FREETALK Connect represents a game changer in the small business communications market. Lots more will be written about this product as the applications experiences evolve.

¹In this situation I could not have the Skype client answering option since I was using my Skype account to originate the call.

Full disclosure: In Store Solutions has become a client of Denali InterConneXions, publisher of Voice On The Web, building on the author’s previous business development experience with establishing partnerships that can assist with the promotion of a primary vendor’s offerings. A more complete statement will follow shortly.

Other posts:

Saunderslog: FREETALK Connect, the worlds first Skype-enabled Unified Communications system.

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Early today Skype released Skype for iPhone 1.3, available as an update in the Apple App Store.

Two key new features:

Landscape Mode for Skype IM:	Call Quality Indicator

The Call Quality Indicator builds on the experience gained with the call quality indicator in Skype for Windows 4.2 beta – a tool I have found most useful in sorting out call quality issues.

Check out Skype’s Peter Parkes post where he also discusses what the roadblock is for “Calling over 3G” as well as progress with incorporating push notification. C’mon Apple – it’s time to allow Calling over 3G: AT&T says Yes, Rogers does not have an issue. What’s the hold-up (iPhone 4?)? Maybe it’s a hardware performance issue?

The first thing I noticed after downloading the update was that the application appears to operate much more “snappily” in that wait times for chat sessions to appear or even to recognize you are Online appear to be much shorter. But I need more usage experience to confirm this perception further.

With the proliferation of WiFi access points in hotels, conference sites, offices, restaurants, airports and other public places, Skype for iPhone has become a very useful calling option for me with the extensive traveling I have been doing recently. And tomorrow I will put up a post about how I use Skype for iPhone to call my BlackBerry. Eh?

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The past six months, with three trips to Europe, have given me the opportunity not only to experience roaming on European 3G wireless services but also the strategies and alternatives that allow me to minimize roaming charges while traveling with both a BlackBerry and iPhone. A key to the achieving this goal lies in the support available for WiFi access points in hotels, restaurants, airports and at conferences that provide robust, scalable WiFi support. But the question outstanding is why would I use both devices? The answer lies in the applications and content.

While one can theorize academically about various low cost scenarios and one attempts to use WiFi wherever feasible, in actual travel, you need access to some form of wireless service wherever you may be. For instance, if lost in a city where you don’t speak the language, Google Maps can often help get you sorted out quickly. Or find the nearest restaurant district (was a big help in Paris, for instance). But you need wireless carrier access to use these services.

So what measures can I recommend?

First step: buy an International roaming package from the home wireless carrier. Over the summer Rogers introduced European roaming packages; here’s the comparison:

The good news about these packages is that the per MB and per minute charges remain the same for any overage over the minimum expenditures. The bad news is that roaming charges are still “huge” compared to the $0.03/MB or approximately $0.10 per minute paid when on my home Rogers network. U.S.-based users should check with their “home” carriers to see if similar plans are available. Rule of thumb and current reality, however: roaming charges remain the last ultra-high margin service for wireless carriers.

So, while relatively expensive, these packages are helpful when away from a WiFi access point; however, as mentioned above, the real saving comes when you set up for using WiFi wherever possible. (In addition I encountered a couple of situations where 3G coverage was weak or non-existent; in these cases access to WiFi became essential.)

Second step: ensure you have installed both Skype and Truphone on your iPhone; you can then make voice calls from WiFi access points at prevailing Skype or Truphone rates. For instance, Skype-to-Skype calls are free while SkypeOut calls are based on using either a Skype Calling Plan subscription or Skype credits.

Third step: buy, at a minimum, a Boingo Global Mobile plan; while WiFi in hotels and restaurants is usually free or has a daily charge, Boingo Global Mobile provides access in over 70 countries at airports and often at hotels where, otherwise, you would pay a daily fee that is usually more than Boingo Global Mobile’s monthly charge.

Fourth step: put the iPhone in Airplane mode but with WiFi access turned on. In this way, no voice calls are received via a wireless carrier; also the iPhone specifically requires proactive user permission to roam on data – leave this turned off. But the iPhone applications, including Skype and Truphone, can all be used when attached to a WiFi access point. (Note: I do not give out my iPhone voice number but do use it for various tests; Google Voice is not yet available in Canada to provide multi-smartphone calling.)

So here is where I use each device:

BlackBerry Bold 9000: email (both BlackBerry email and GMail), BlackBerry Messenger 5.0, Google Maps, SocialScope – still the most comprehensive Twitter application on a smartphone; SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry. Keep in mind that BlackBerry is overall more efficient for handling data due to the data compression provided by the BlackBerry Network Operations Centre architecture for managing data traffic. This ongoing wireless data compression feature is a major reason why I prefer BlackBerry for services such as Google Maps or downloading/uploading pictures in SocialScope as opposed to the iPhone when on a 3G wireless carrier network.

iPhone: main application is Skype, followed by Truphone. Very handy for making calls back to North America from hotel rooms or lobbies, restaurants as well as offices and conferences supported with WiFi access. (But you must have the relevant application open to receive calls and receive/send chat messages.) Other preferred applications include the Safari web browser (faster and more versatile than BlackBerry’s) and Facebook (which has a richer user experience than on BlackBerry) and a few applications that are unique to iPhone. Also comes in handy if the BlackBerry battery has died and I need immediate access to, say, GMail or a browser.

Bottom line: the feature that continues to dominate my preference for BlackBerry over iPhone is the keyboard; it’s a real time two-way communications device whereas the iPhone, with its superior browser capability, continues to be an information delivery device but works best for one way communication. My use of its touch screen keyboard tends to be limited to entering user names and passwords.

A few comments:

• There’s one major application missing on the BlackBerry – with its full multi-tasking capability the BlackBerry is ideally suited for Skype as a VoIP client. One can have real time chat sessions continue in background while using other applications; we experienced this with iSkoot but at this point one would expect to have seen the Skype for BlackBerry that was announced by Skype around the time of last spring’s launch of Skype for iPhone. And now that Skype for Symbian beta supports both 3G and WiFi and the FCC is supporting for “net neutrality”, the “carrier-support” argument for avoiding VoIP clients over WiFi on the BlackBerry no longer holds water. In fact, Rogers has made it clear that they have no issue with running Skype over 3G networks. Let’s hope that Skype and RIM can get the act together such that we can see a product introduction early in 2010.
• On my most recent trip I only bought the 15 minute voice package; with BlackBerry Messenger and SocialScope (for Twitter) available I found little need to make voice calls while in 3G only mode. Skype on my PC at hotel rooms and conferences as well as Skype and Truphone over iPhone addressed 95% of my voice calling needs. (Now, if I could just learn how to order a taxi in Spanish!)
• I realize most smartphone users will only have one phone. I present this post simply to provide an overview of my experience using both these devices while optimizing my roaming experience when traveling out of the home country. I need to have both devices due to not only their popularity but also the different content exchanged and user experiences for each smartphone.

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At about 5:30 (GMT+1) this afternoon members of the Skype Public Chat discussion learned that not only was there a new beta version of Skype for Windows 4.2 available for download but also Skype had released its first beta version of Skype for Symbian (for Nokia smartphones).

Shortly afterwards, while listening to the final Gillmor Gang panel session at LeWeb, I downloaded, via the event’s WiFi network, and installed the newly available Skype for Symbian beta onto a Nokia E71 that I use on Spain’s Vodafone for emergency calls during my trips to Spain. As an initial test I then sent out a few initial Skype Chat test messages. While there were some long delays I finally did receive responses to these messages..

I then realized that the LeWeb official blogger sitting next to me had a Nokia smartphone and asked her to install Skype for Symbian on her N96. About five minutes later, as Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame was chiding Apple for not supporting VoIP over 3G networks, I made a successful Skype-to-Skype call between my E71 and her N96. While this call went across LeWeb’s WiFi network, the irony here is that Skype for Symbian is a complete VoIP client on a mobile smartphone and, according to Skype’s blog post:

Skype for Symbian works over Wifi or 3G data connection. We recommend having a unlimited data plan when using 3G connection.

I followed up with a successful Skype call to Andy Abramson at his hotel in Madrid, Spain where the voice quality was excellent in spite of the event’s background audio of the panel session.

My LeWeb deskmate has a Vodafone Netherlands voice and data plan and will let me know when she returns to Amsterdam this weekend if she can make Skype calls over Vodafone Netherland’s 3G network.

Skype for Symbian beta is claimed to be a “limited” beta; however, it supports:

• Free Skype-to-Skype calling
• Call phones with Skype credits or subscription
• Receive calls on your Online Number
• Instant Messaging
• Group conversations
• File sending and receiving

The important bottom line here is that Skype has finally released a mobile smartphone client that supports both 3G and WiFi from a full VoIP client with no intermediary servers as has been used on the 3 Skypephone over the past two years. Its use over the data plans of wireless carriers will test several aspects of smartphone services:

• Will carriers attempt to block VoIP clients’ services that bypass their inherent voice channel?
• Will smartphones have sufficient battery life to support a full day’s use of a VoIP client over a 3G network?
• How much data would be used during an average day’s use of Skype? (While many carriers claim to offer “unlimited” data plans, there are actually monthly caps of 5GB or more.)
• Where does a full Skype client provide an economic advantage over various voice plans, especially when it comes to making calls while roaming?

During my recent trips to Europe I have made heavy use of Skype for iPhone (and sometimes Truphone) over WiFi access points. Given the high charges for data while roaming, Skype for Symbian is still not a service that I would use over a “roaming” 3G network but I would continue to look for WiFi access points in hotels, restaurants and airports to access Skype on the supported phones. However, in my home country I can expect to make Skype calls from anywhere in Rogers 3G coverage areas using their relatively inexpensive data plan at little or no additional cost.

Update: Phil Wolff has more details and some caveats about this initial Skype for Symbian beta version over at Skype Journal.

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• WiFi: The Real Threat to the Mobile Carriers
• Skype Everywhere: Nokia and Skype Announce Ongoing Partnership
• 3 Pushes the Envelope Once Again: Offers Obligation-Free Skype Mobile Services
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On a recent trip to Spain, where I turned off my BlackBerry Bold’s and iPhone’s  mobile carrier network connection except when really required, I was able to use WiFi connections at my various hotels quite effectively to keep up with my “data” activities on these devices. (Except in a situation mentioned below I used Skype on my PC for voice calls.) But there were two situations I encountered during this trip which really hit home the message that WiFi is becoming as important as mobile carrier offerings for wireless smartphone communications:

• In one instance, two Canadians, who had stealthed Skype for iPhone onto their iPhones, used a Spanish hotel’s WiFi service to make Skype voice calls between each other, almost as if their iPhones were “walkie-talkies” while on the hotel’s grounds. No roaming charges for these calls.
• In another case, I spent one night in a hotel room, in a recently renovated 8th century building, that had no landline. But it had a WiFi service available; I used Truphone on my iPhone to make a couple of voice calls. (The price of staying “legal” in Canada is not to have Skype for iPhone installed.)

The trip, combined with my WiFi experience during a March vacation trip to South Carolina, significantly reinforced my belief that WiFi is becoming the potential “stealth” carrier in the smartphone communications business. But what does that portend for the future?

Friend Andy Abramson, in a post Rumored New Apple iPod Touch Will Be Huge for VoIP, Multimedia, has pointed to the rumors of a new iPod Touch that will include a camera, a built-in microphone and 64GB of memory:

This is awesome news for the likes of Skype and client Truphone and will likely start a flood of “me too” applications from the likes of Cablevision who operates a WiFi hot zone in the New York area, Clearwire and Comcast who are chasing customers in the Portland area with WiMax and elsewhere as the WiFi capability of the iPod touch means its a mobile phone without the mobile phone bill and contract connected to it, something Jeff Belk, the former Senior VP of Strategy at Qualcomm discussed in Unstrung in February of this year.

And where does he see the disruptive uptake?

…. Within two key categories:

1) Pre-teens who need a phone but can’t afford a contract

2) Travelers who don’t need to be “always on” but want to stay in touch cost effectively.

Who benefits from this? Anyone with a travel router to sell, including Apple. Toss a travel router in your bag, and stay in a hotel with wired broadband to your room, and logging on is a snap.

As pointed out in the introduction to this post, I think I was already well into Andy’s category 2 during my Spain trip. Alec Saunders, in Will the new iPod Touch unleash VoWiFi? I’ll wait and see, sees WiFi as a “backup” to 3G network but pipes into the road warrior discussion with:

Travelling, however, is a different story.  As Andy notes, you can talk for free on WiFi when you’re travelling, versus whatever the outrageous roaming rate that your carrier might charge.  Savvy travelers use products like Truphone and Skype to avoid roaming charges.

Bottom line: users will continue to look for the combination of access and cost that serves their immediate need. While in Canada, I never run over 1GB of data on my BlackBerry Bold and have a reasonable cost voice subscription for voice calls; thus my mobile carrier costs are not a particular concern. But when I leave Canada, I will look to use any wireless service that avoids the last bastion of excessively high mobile calling costs: roaming charges.

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