Wireless Industry Cozying Up To the Disruptors

PreacherTom writes, "As recently as a few months ago, the wireless industry showed little apparent interest in partnering with companies like Sling, Skype, and ISkoot. After all, they make products that threaten to compete with services that mobile-phone companies are eager to sell. Times are changing, at first in Europe and perhaps soon in the U.S. A few days ago, Sling Media's CEO sat down with execs from Hutchison Whampoa, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson for discussions. Skype isn't far behind, while ISkoot is in 'advanced discussions.' According to analyst Krishna Kanagarayer, 'This could turn the U.S. wireless industry on its head. The advent of mobile access to full-blown home PC and TV applications could lead to a revamp in pricing of wireless service providers' data plans, possibly to tiered pricing. And as applications such as mobile Skype take hold, data and voice use will become indistinguishable.'"

Comments

I hope this is good news

[troll -1]

The industry needs to get out of the old 20th century phone system mentality and become part of the Internet. I bought a Treo 650 from Sprint a while back. Recently I switched to Cingular but had to buy another phone because the one from Sprint doesn't work on Cingular's network.

Could you imagine if the Internet had been designed and implemented by private industry? It would be a whole bunch of separate networks and you'd be nickel and dimed for every service.

Phone systems are just plain dumb.