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T-Mobile UK Blocking Mobile VoIP Start-Up
wjamesau writes "The war between telecoms and VOIP heats up: according to Om Malik, T-Mobile UK is refusing to interconnect with mobile VoIP provider Truphone, a UK start-up with a mobile VoIP client that enables calls cheaper than mobile. 'T-Mobile told Truphone, that as a result of a policy decision, they don't connect to VoIP-based low cost calling services. T-Mobile UK's decision to block Truphone might have come as a response to the new and radically better Truphone 3.0 client that allows you to send Free SMS messages and allows VoIP calls over 3G. According to M:Metrics, nearly 86% of UK mobile users are heavy SMS users, and that means it is a cash cow that carriers like T-Mobile can't afford to be slaughtered by IP-based SMS services.' Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?"
Question: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?
Answer: Yes
Question: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this LEGALLY?
Answer: The courts can decied
- or -
The customers and decide.... (for or against!)
Depends, are they stuck with a monopoly to get service? If so, they dont have much choice.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The big giants will keep trying to crush the little guy all the way to the bank, until a judge finally realizes what's happening, and how the consumers are all getting stifled.
In other words, it'll keep happening until a judge pours a big jug of frosty piss on the big monopolistic company.
The mobile operators are already in the EU's cross hairs and they've been forced this year to essentially remove the roaming charges for calls between EU states. The commission also indicated that that was just the first step of bringing the mobile operators under control as they are today running wild and ripping off their customers.
Personally, I hope they come down on them like a ton of bricks as they really are ripping of their customers. For instance locally, here in Sweden I pay an acceptable 20/month for limitless 3G data traffic. If I take my phone to Belgium, my gangster of a mobile operator charges 10 per MB. It's quite absurd what they have been getting away with so far.
charging to txt and having 3G simultaneously makes no sense.. it just is a matter of time until everyone tunnels through the net if they dont make txting free or a token amount. W/ any sort of idle/push based email, it makes more sense to tunnel your txt messages via your email client (to other peoples cell phone numbers via the gateways) than to pay the ludicrious per message rates. W/ cingular/att unlimited data is $20 and unlimited txting is $20, so its better to pay $20 once and tunnel. This has the added advantage of logging your txt messages in your imap folder.
I'm not familiar with the UK's anti-trust laws but I doubt if this is going to fly. The only reason T-Mobile has any interest in blocking them is to prevent them from gaining a market share. I'm wondering if any of T-Mobile stated their reasons for this 'policy decision' because I'd be impressed if they could fabricate anything that made sense and wasn't anti-competitive.
Only if the other providers play ball.
"What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."
All it takes is a critical mass of users of these new phones, say 5 percent of poor teenagers who don't want expensive phone plans. Then it switches from "VOIP phones can't call T-Mobile users" to "T-Mobile phones can't work with VOIP users", which would pretty much spell the end of T-Mobile in the UK.
Technology is on the verge of surpassing the cell phone business model. All it will take is a few tiny third-world countries to take a small chunk of WFO money and build a nation-wide free Wi-Fi network, supporting VOIP phones for anybody who can afford one, and soon a lot of slightly bigger countries will see that proof-of-concept and start asking, "why not here?" Things could really snowball from there. In fact, were I a Rich Bastard trying to launch a service like that, I'd probably bankroll some infrastructure myself in a couple highly-visible small nations... say Dubai, South Korea, or the like. Let everybody see just how good we could all have it, and see what that sets in motion.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
T-Mobile ironically are the least restrictive when it comes to use VOIP over the data service. It's "discouraged" but not barred. Vodafone on the other hand bar it - even if they don't have a mechanism in place actually to detect it : http://leavingthedayjob.blogspot.com/2007/06/does- anyone-at-vodafone-understand.html
Please think of the CEOs! They have to put bread and water on their plates too :~(
I was right there with you until
But big companies have convinced the world that patents are evil; and thus their effectiveness are being destroyed through FUD.Big companies love patents. They only dislike certain patents that make it difficult to sell a product or limit their ability to enter/influence/control a market.
Patents are just tools. The true measure is how the tools are used and/or abused. And these days, patents are useful to big companies plenty. Just look at MS and the whole Linux licensing thing.
So, in the current patent climate, the little guys would actually thrive if patents were repealed. This, to me, is why much of the debate about patents misses the mark. Even though in principle the patent system encourages innovation, in practice every system you create is yet another system that the rich (or the "currently entrenched," if you prefer) will use to prevent the poor (or the "newcomers" if you prefer) from gaining power (or money). Which is why, despite all the good that the patent system does, I believe we are reaching the point where it is inhibiting more innovation than it is encouraging.
Youre almost certainly right that the UK courts wont allow these actions by T-Mobile. But the REAL question here is whether these actions can crush this (probably poorly funded) upstart BEFORE the slow-turning wheels of government and justice get a chance to stop them? Im betting on no-- The government will say "oh gee that was illegal" and slap them with a nominal fine, but by then it wont matter anymore. Or maybe im just a cynic.
It's one of my pet hates when "as a result of a policy decision X cannot do Y". And I've encountered it where the 'policy' was 'written(?) by the very person telling you.....
A number of times I've asked 'where is this policy written?', or 'does the person/committee that wrote the policy have the ability to make an exception?'....
Saying "as a result of a policy decision" is a cop-out. In this instance they should say "We don't want to lose our market share or go out of business by opening up to competition"
Then your £7.50 buys you a gig of data to use only as they see fit!
Data bits are simply 1's and 0's. They should be in charge of moving that data, and not deciding good data from bad data.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
T-zones was $5/month (web only, ports 80/443). True data service was sold (unlimited) for $30/month. This included unlimited usage of their EDGE network as well as unlimited usage of their wi-fi locations. A steal in my opinion. Unfortunately, most Slashdot users are cheapskates who have no clue as to how much a network actually costs to run.
> Then your £7.50 buys you a gig of data to use only as they see fit!
> Data bits are simply 1's and 0's. They should be in charge of moving that data, and not deciding good data from bad data.
They should be allowed to do whatever is morally acceptable. They have a duty to their shareholders or owners to make as much money as possible. As informed consumers we are free to form contracts with whoever offers us a product/service we desire at a price and with conditions we find acceptable. I find TMobile's contract satisfactory, and so I remain with them.
You're free to offer a rival service, but good luck providing people with a way of undercutting your pricing policy. The argument reminds me of people who complain that wine is too expensive in restaurants. If the price of wine was reduced to only a couple of pounds above what it costs in the shops then obviously the restaurant is going to either have to increase the price of the food, or make less money.
You are incorrect about the origins and purpose of SMS. The ss7 spec has always included space for short messages. It is a well thought out implementation that is now massively used throughout the world by just about every carrier in one way or another.
See http://www.pt.com/tutorials/ss7/index.html for a good breakdown.
I agree, and I'd like to think that this is a well-supported principle, but the recent AT&T announcement seems to suggest otherwise. It's for different reasons, but at the base level, they're not that different.
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The UK mobile phone companies (like many around the world, no doubt) face a dilemma - they offer phone technology that supports VoIP services but some (Vodafone with the Nokia N95) disable to VoIP bits, yet some (BT) offer their own combined 3G/GSM/VoIP services (BT Fusion).
My company has 14 phones on contract with Vodafone and the phones run Windows Mobile 5, so support a VoIP application - I have tried this and it works fine, but the data charging structure makes its use expensive. Vodafone offer us free 3G/GSM calls between our mobile phones and also to 10 designated landline numbers - two of which connect to our Asterisk server so we can dial in free and then use DISA to get a dial tone and dial any landline number we want - in effect giving us national and international calls at the rates charged by our VoIP service provider. Vodafone know we have connected to an Asterisk server and have not passed any comments about it, but being the cynic I could imagine that sometime the terms for their '10 free numbers' could easily be adjusted to exclude numbers that terminate at VoIP service providers.
From my perspective, the much-maligned BT have understood that they are a carrier for comms and no longer a 'telephone service provider' so they have made it possible to support (and charge for) any comms done by their customers, rgardless of protocol and type (voice and data).
Banning the use of SIP/VoIP from mobiles will hopefully fizzle out as customers realise that they can port to 'another provider' who has taken the bold step of offering a contract that keeps the customer happy and makes the company money regardless of what their phones are used for.
AT&ROFLMAO