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Pal Pat Phelan just announced the availability of a white label version of his popular mobile global calling solution MaxRoam. He already pre announced this to me a couple of weeks ago and I’m happy to see that they are executing according to their plans.

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Roaming charges are one of the main nightmares for anyone who travels very often around the globe. Instead of changing this or that SIM card, changing phone numbers continuously and loosing control of their “identity” (in terms of telephony…), they can now have only one SIM and it could be branded by their own enterprise now. Think of big companies with X thousand employees… what a perfect solution for them.

Pat continues to be an innovator and telecom disruptor and the mobile market cannot but thank him for his contribution. More at Pat Phelan’s blog.

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Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, maxroam, pat phelan, white label

I wrote many blog posts about mobile VoIP and I tried most of the mobile VoIP services available for my handsets (Nokia N-series). That being said, I have to say that all of them are definitely bringing innovation to the mobile market, while mobile operators start watching them carefully as a potential threat.

One of the trends I’m observing is how those services are leveraging their existing infrastructure, investments and developments by offering a white label solution to big companies which want to up-sell new innovative services to their huge potential user base. It’s nothing more than what some mobile carriers are already doing worldwide with the so called MVNOs, but with “VoIP” and “new services” in the middle.

Look at Rebtel with EasyMobile (but I know for sure there is more coming out soon) or FreshTel with Tesco. FreshTel, for example, is a new player operating in the Australian market that I knew during the VoIP World 2008 in Dubai since I was sitting at the same rountable with Rhonda O’Donnell, their CEO. They signed a big deal with Tesco, a Wal-Mart competitor, to provide their customers with a mobile VoIP solution. How long will it take for WalMart or similar groups to look for similar solutions to be sold to their huge audience?

I’m pretty sure there is more coming out from players like, for example, the no-boundaries mobile operator Cubic Telecom and I expect to see something similar coming from other players like Truphone or Fring. The point here is to bring user experience at its best. Customers of big shopping groups like Wal-Mart are mostly “normal” people who look for something cheap and easy to use, without having to struggle with software installation or handset’s configuration.

In this perspective a solution by MaxRoam, Rebtel or Sim4Travel (by Truphone) would fit better with that audience and are more likely to succeed than other services which are more complex for an average user. Most people are not early adopters of new technologies so all the mobile VoIP companies that want to jump into that business through those channels must keep this aspect well in mind.

Besides, I stated many times and I firmly believe that the #1 concern for any mobile VoIP player must be the usability and the overall user experience delivered by their services. They can offer the cheapest rate ever, but It becomes useless if a “normal” person needs to attend a software engineering class to install their software or needs to buy a $500 phone to use it (mmm… how many “normal” people have a Wifi access at home?).

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Technorati Tags: Cubic Telecom, freshtel, fring, luca filigheddu, maxroam, mobile voip, rebtel, Tesco, truphone

A few months ago the UK-based mobile VoIP operator Truphone bought Sim4Travel, a company which provides an international sim card to cut costs of international roaming.

Today they sent me an email with a promotional offer by which I can get a free SIM card by paying for 10 pounds of talk time credit on it.

I have to say that their offer looks really interesting and their rates very cheap. The good point is that I don’t pay to receive calls in over 50 countries so I can even keep that SIM in my mobile phone even while I am in my country without having to pay when someone calls me.

Together with the SIM you get a +44 number (unlike MaxRoam, no other country codes unfortunately) and most outbound calls cost about 0,25p (pounds).

Unfortunately, for certain use cases, there are solutions much cheaper. For example, going back to my tests while I was in Palo Alto, a solution involving a local T-Mobile SIM and Rebtel or Jajah Direct are still MUCH cheaper.

Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, maxroam, Mobile, sim4travel, truphone, Voice 2.0, VoIP

I read today that UK-based mobile VoIP operator Truphone just acquired Sim4Travel, a MVNO which provides a global roaming solution to save costs for international roaming thanks to their SIM card.

According to the announcement, it will take months to integrate Sim4Travel technology into Truphone and we still have to wait for the availability of a Truphone SIM card, but it will surely be a completion of their current service, much limited right now since it works on Wifi-enabled devices only. This is the missing thing. I’m trying to figure out what iPhone + Truphone SIM card could mean, since Truphone has been the first company to get VoIP working natively on the iPhone.

When I talked to James Body from Truphone during my latest trip to the US, he told me that major announcements were in their pipeline. This is definitely one of those, even if I am a little bit surprised that a major competitor of Sim4Travel, MaxRoam, from friend and irish entrepreneur Pat Phelan, is not involved in such deal.

I know Pat and Truphone had many opportunities to talk each other so I’m a little bit surprised about that. I look forward to Pat’s comments on this deal even because I bet Pat’s strategic vision surely helped Truphone indirectly, since MaxRoam had a great visibility during the last months.

Another guess? I also bet that new fresh money hit Truphone’s bank account too. Will they also announce a new round of financing soon?

Technorati Tags: acquisition, luca filigheddu, maxroam, sim4travel, truphone