UK mobile operators not friendly to the new kid

We all became familiar with VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) a few years ago, when Skype was the big craze (and free, though it’s cheap enough now). What a novel concept: call people from your computer for much cheaper than your phone company (or cable company, depending on your service) charges. It is especially effective for international calls, which have always been known for racking up innocent little phone bills. With VoIP, those calls are nice and cheap. Is there anything the Internet can’t do? British company Truphone is looking to bring VoIP to a mobile platform. Now, it won’t be a complete replacement for your mobile phone — you need WiFi access, and it doesn’t place emergency calls. But when you’re home, at a friend’s house, or even at Starbucks, you can make calls dirt cheap. British phone companies aren’t exactly keen to this idea. The first barrier came in the form of Vodaphone (which owns about 40% of Verizon Wireless). They opposed the service, but eventually backed down. Now T-Mobile has voiced its displeasure, and has gone so far as to block its customers from calling Truphone subscribers (remember, we’re still in the UK). T-Mobile, of course, is trying to spin this in their favor, saying that they’re not blocking the calls outright, but rather negotiating a connection fee that is “fair,” since Truphone is not a true mobile network. Says Truphone’s chief executive James Tagg: “T-Mobile will argue that it is not ‘blocking’ Truphone but is merely negotiating on price. T-Mobile receives 35 pence per minute from its customers but is offering only 21 pence per minute to Truphone even when Truphone’s costs are 9 pence per minute to terminate the call. T-Mobile is blocking our numbers unless we accept this loss-making offer and, since T-Mobile is the only company that can route calls from its customers it has a complete veto on the Truphone service.” Those are some strong words from Tagg, but perhaps his most indicting quote is this: “This amounts to T-Mobile being able to veto a new entrant into the market. This would put telephony back 100 years, to a time when interconnections were not assured.” We have a term here in America to describe a company that has that kind of power: a monopoly. Now, we still firmly believe that some monopolies can work in the favor of the consumer. But when a company uses its power to effectively ignore another company — especially another company attempting to provide true value to consumers — things need to change. The outcome of this scenario will likely determine the fate of mobile VoIP in the US. It’s definitely coming. It’s just a matter of when and how much resistance with which they will be met. [PC World]]>