Date: 2008-03-23 09:23 Subject: Video on the Net Security: Public Tags: maxroam, qik, seesmic, ustream.tv, video, von, vonx08

At VON last week it seemed that everywhere I went there were people videoing and taking snaps, and a lot of this material has been tagged and blogged, and facebooked and flickr'ed and is available online.  Jeff Pulver suggested the tag VONX08, so use this if you're searching on Technorati or some such, this is what to look for.

One particular phenomenon this year is QIK.  This is a service that allows you to live stream (via 3G, GPRS or WiFi) up to the server, where QIK users can view live online, and then the video is stored so that you can tag it and leave it for posterity.  Jeff used this to good effect a number of times, for example at his social media breakfast, but several people also caught Ken Camp proposing to Sheryl Brooker, which Maxroam's  Pat Phelan has posted on his blog.  QIK is also enjoying attention from Robert Scoble at the moment, who appeared on stage with Jeff and some other video service companies like Ustream.tv and Seesmic.  Scoble was videoing the session from his place on the podium, and althoug I haven't found it yet, I imagine that this is also online.

I dabbled with QIK myself (this works nicely on Nokia smartphones), and uploaded a couple of short videos from the VoIP User dinner.

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: 2007-09-23 17:19 Subject: How to Travel without "Roaming" Security: Public Tags: blognation, martyn davies, maxroam, sim4travel

SIM4travel are among the best known (at least in the UK) in the “roaming SIM” business, or in other words, SIM cards you put in your mobile when travelling in order to sidestep excessive cross-border roaming charges from our cellcos. SIM4travel first entered my consciousness through British Airways, which now sells the SIMs on-board their aircraft, but they now have a lot of UK outlets including high street shops WH Smith’s and Dixons. Their latest partnership is with Expedia travel, which is giving away a SIM4Travel card with booked holidays from Expedia.



The roaming-SIM business has grown pretty fast, and google will reveal at least 20 companies that offer essentially the same product, all at pretty similar rates. A lot of the companies involved have been in the calling card business for years, and in essence the business is really the same, being all about least-cost routing to get competitive call rates for each country. It’s surprisingly low-tech too, in many cases not even using technologies like VoIP, but simply making calls using the PSTN. Most of the SIM-roamers are using a callback technique, where two calls are originated centrally from their network (so your cellphone takes an inbound call instead of making an outbound one) and then joined together (“tromboned”) for the duration of the call. Because it’s cheaper to terminate an inbound call then to initiate a long distance call, the call cost is cheaper, and some of this saving can be passed to the customer.

There are a couple of problems with this. Firstly, call-setup is not always seamless, as the callback does require some functionality from the cellco that your are roaming with. In some places, it just doesn’t work, and even when it does work, it’s not quite as easy as making a “native” outbound call using GSM. Some recent efforts (notably Jajah and more recently Gizmo) have tried to make call setup a bit more seamless by using the data channel of the phone initiate the call, rather than rely on the tricky callback procedure.



The other problem is numbering. Many of these roaming SIMs give you a new number, which has often been a number in Estonia, Liechtenstein or Iceland. This is a psychological barrier to people calling you, since we are conditioned to avoid calling other countries. Interestingly, it seems that SIM4travel have stopped issuing these numbers, and now seem to be allocating UK mobile numbers. We haven’t seen the full story yet, but MAXroam from Cubic Telecom launches this week, and this is also a service along the same lines. MAXroam was shown to some acclaim last week at the TechCrunch40 conference.

Recently, the EU introduced new regulation limiting the roaming charges that cellcos can levy on their customers. This good for customers, but paradoxically bad for companies like SIM4travel and MAXroam, since lower mainstream call costs means that we have fewer reasons for buying a roaming SIM, at least for travel among the EU countries. It’s notable that the regulation doesn’t talk about SMS though, so this is still a reason for owning a roaming SIM, and avoiding billshock.

First published at Blognation.com