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UK's Truphone Wins Injunction Against T-Mobile

Posted by kdawson on from the let-the-free-bits-flow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to CNET.co.uk, the cell-phone VoIP company Truphone has won a temporary court injunction against T-Mobile, who was accused of 'preventing the launch of the Truphone service' and 'abusing its dominant position' by not routing calls to Truphone users. This ruling could have a profound effect on the cell phone industry in the UK, as Truphone CEO James Tagg pointed out in a press release. 'The injunction is good news not only for Truphone but for every company trying to develop Internet-era services and for every consumer wanting freedom of choice and lower prices. We are determined to bring better-value mobile calls, text messages and other innovative services to mobile phone users, and it's right that we should not be prevented from doing so.'" The injunction, which the article calls an "interim judgement," isn't the final word; Truphone and T-Mobile still need to go to trial.

2 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Step 1 done by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been a Truphone user for a long time and I've been dealing with Vodafone UK and T-Mobile UK problems for months. At first it was problems with the VoIP application stack being blocked in my Vodafone-branded E61. Then there was T-Mobile. Anyway, what you people don't know is that Virgin Media (the new name for NTL Cable) is using packet shaping to degrade/drop Truphone packets for a horrible voice experience. I have noticed it ever since they rolled out their new system. Calls from Sipgate, Voxalot, Gizmo, etc all sound great. But packet-loss and latency are insane for Truphone. Could it be Virgin Media doesn't like their bundled telephone service being undercut? I think so.

  2. Re:Required to route calls? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You do realize the North American cell-phone charge model is simply an accident of the bone-headed area code scheme that doesn't cater properly for non-geographic numbers, right? The US carriers would prefer to have a European style caller-pays system, because it's a much easier charge structure to track and bill, and much, much simpler when it comes to cross-charges.