Date: 2008-02-14 15:33 Subject: Mobile World Congress - Barcelona Security: Public Tags: 3gsm, bluebox, fring, iotum, maxroam, mippin, mobile world congress, segala, spinvox, truphone, voipsa

I just returned from two days in Barcelona at the Mobile World Congress (formerly known as 3GSM).  That really is a big show now, and the sheer breadth of the mobile industry is quite amazing.  Everything was there from different wireless technologies to content providers, operators, handsets, service delivery software, security.  Just staggering.  For my money 3GSM was a cooler name for the show, but there you go.

As ever, though, the people make the event.  I finally got to meet Jonathan Zar of the Bluebox podcast, and also outreach chair at VOIPSA.  I've been collaborating with Jonathan at a distance for a couple of years, but this is the first time we were ever in the same place at the same time.  I've failed to meet him in America, in Asia and in Europe, and now finally we got to spend some time together.  Weird in our modern social-media connected world, that when we met in person we discovered that we were already friends.  Great to meet you Jonathan!

Other notable folks were James Tagg, James Body and Ali Khan of mobile operator Truphone, Alec Saunders of iotum, the irrepressible Pat Phelan of Maxroam, Paul Walsh of Segala (who by fortune was on the same plane on the way out), James Whatley of Spinvox, Prashant Agarwal of Mippin, Avi Schechter of Fring, and mobile journalist extraordinaire Markus Goebel.

Date: 2007-06-26 12:33 Subject: Telco 2.0 - The Big Push? Security: Public Tags: fring, google, grandcentral, jajah, skype, telco 2.0, truphone

The whole "Telco 2.0" area seems to be really heating up at the moment. Jajah are rumoured to be heading for IPO, and with impressive investors like Sequoia, T-Ventures and Intel, people are already valueing the company at $2.9 billion dollars. I was interested also by the rumours (from Pat Phelan and Techcrunch) that Google are in talks to buy GrandCentral. "No comment" says GrandCentral's COO.

I've written before about GrandCentral, and what a great job they're doing outperforming traditional telcos on mobility services. I guess under Google we could look forward to a more global rollout, since GrandCentral is currently only for US customers.

One obvious synergy is GrandCentral services merged with GoogleTalk, which would give you the same functionality as SkypeIn, but with much, much, more. For example, you can imagine your one number being able to ring softphones on a number of different PCs in different locations based on a set of rules that you specify. Or perhaps, like Truphone or Fring, calls to your geographic 'one number' could be diverted via VoIP to your mobile SIP client, defeating international roaming charges.

Google have already been linked with a mobile handset from LG, so is this the time for Google to push forward into the telephony business?