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I read today about an interesting iPhone application which basically changes the natural behavior of the iPhone and lets VoIP applications use the 3G network instead of the default Wifi.

This application, Voipover3G, works with the alternative installer Cydia, specifically designed for jailbroken iPhones 3G.

After installing this app, VoIP apps which used to use the Wifi connection, like Fring and Truphone, will be forced to use the 3G data channel. Not having an iPhone 3G I couldn’t test it out, anyway I find it useful in certain contexts even if limited to jailbroken iphones only.

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Technorati Tags: 3G, Apple, Cydia, fring, Installer, iphone, jailbreak, luca filigheddu, truphone, VoIP

A couple of days ago I received a press release by my friends at Andy Abramson’s Comunicano in regards of a recent agreement by Junction Networks and edgeBOX. 

In a nutshell, according to this agreement, Junction Networks has been selected by edgeBOX to be the preferred voice provider for their “office-in-a-box” solution. edgeBOX is “an integrated device aimed at the SMB market and including a full-fledged IP-PBX, wireless access point, router, file, e-mail and VPN server”.

In this story what caught my attention is the following paragraph:

Calls between edgeBOX extensions, whether on-premise or around the world across Internet connections, will incur half-cent-per-minute charges. 

What? IP to IP voice calls are not FREE? Guys, I love this. Praises to Junction Networks and edgeBOX for this brave choice! While someone could see this as a downside of this service, I look at it as a great innovation and potentially the beginning of a new era for VoIP.

On-net VoIP calls have always been offered for free, without any charge. To my knowledge, every VoIP service out there doesn’t charge for IP to IP calls. This could work in the past, but in times where there is a new VoIP service coming out every day and when you offer SMB services to companies whose traffic is mainly on-premise, how can you make money and make your customers happy at the same time? 

This is a great way to lower monthly fees and avoiding long term contracts, something companies don’t always want to deal with. Small companies sometimes don’t trust on VoIP services completely, thinking quality could be an issue. With this approach they don’t feel to be bound to a certain service for a long time, so it definitely helps to shorten the sales cycle. And, we are not talking of a fortune, it’s half-cent per minute

For more information about this new collaboration, take a look at the official press release.

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Technorati Tags: Business, critical links, edgebox, junction networks, luca filigheddu, VoIP

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Yesterday I was talking with an american friend of mine who told me how Wal-Mart became the winner in the fight among low price stores in the US. In fights like this you just need to offer the lowest price in the market, there is no more space for competitors and no alternative ways to win.

Today I came across two new web based VoIP services (Freeringer and Voxofon) who are offering PC to phone/phone to phone calls with a lot of free calls to specific destinations.

To be honest, I didn’t loose much time to pay attention at their offering, for me this was just another YAWN. I learnt there is nothing free in our life, especially when it comes to business, someone has to pay at some point. Many different models have been tried out over time by different services in various parts of the world, but aside from some exceptions, most of them have been a complete failure.

How can they sustain a credible business model? How can they (these two and any new entrant) deal with competition? I’m sorry, but I do firmly believe the space for new VoIP players is over. Market is full of offerings and services, all of them mainly fighting just in terms of price. Where is the value? What’s the strategy to take full control of churn rate?

New services who want to survive, must offer something new and different, something which provides final users with a different perspective, users who are not looking for money saving only. From this standpoint, Ooma is an interesting example (unlike some premature signs of failure, it seems to be still alive and well).

If your new VoIP service you are proud of and that you are going to launch and make it compete in this tough market, is not offering something DIFFERENT, SPECIAL, UNIQUE to your target customers, please refrain from spending time and money, you’re gonna fail. Period.

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Technorati Tags: Business, freeringer, luca filigheddu, Voice over Internet Protocol, VoIP, voxofon

I didn’t meet Scott Wharton of Vidtel in person, but I just watched his face on the Vidtel DSL video telephone they were showcasing at the Plug and Play Expo last week.

Vidtel’s big challenge is becoming the world’s first DSL video telephony service. For a very cheap monthly fee (can’t remember the details, but in the range of $30-$50) you get unlimited video calls and landline calls worldwide (almost) plus the device. Moreover, the service will not be limited to a certain country only, but will be available everywhere.

During the P&P Expo they were using a Grandstream video telephone which was working really well. Unlike mobile video calls, which wide adoption is prevented by some usability issues as the difficulty to be involved in a video call while on the go as well as for privacy issues, I think video calls at home might potentially become a major trend in the future.

All that said, my only concern is about the lack of match between their potential users’ demographic and the “normal” people. Advanced users would rather choose Skype or Sightspeed (both free) over a solution like Vidtel (BTW, Asus just announced the first Skype video phone ever). On the other hand, a grandpa who wants to see how cute is becoming his new grandson is likely not willing to use a service like that because of the lack of DSL connection in their home, probably (or a router…).

Anyway, the service is now in closed beta and should be available in December through selected channel partners (undisclosed at the moment). BestBuy?

In conclusion, aside from some reasonable concerns I have, it’s definitely a great service and, at first sight, a very challenging goal. Good luck to Scott and Mariette (his wife, VP of Marketing) for this new adventure (prestigious analysts wrote about them already).

Technorati Tags: Add new tag, luca filigheddu, scott wharton, sightspeed, skype, Videophone, vidtel, VoIP

I just got an email today by Boaz Bechar, co-founder of PokeTalk, a new israeli-based service aimed to offer FREE calls worldwide through the web. The free service’s costs will be covered by showing ads during the call.

The service is very easy to use. It’s a callback VoIP service through which users can call any mobile or landline phone without the need of new devices or handsets and completely for free. Premium services will be available upon the payment of a fee, too.

The service, just out from a private beta period, is currently available in the following countries.

• USA
• Canada
• Israel
• UK (landlines)
• Germany (landlines)
• Singapore
• Japan

Parrot Media, the company behind PokeTalk, declares to provide very tageted ads to their users, which will be shown on the screen to the caller, according to his/her profile. The approach reminds me Pudding Media, the company which launched an innovative platform to offer rich-media ads during phone calls.

The question here is whether this could be a valid model or not. My company launched Chocophone in 2000, a service through which, at that time, we offered free calls by showing a video ad at the beginning of each call. It was not the right period to do this unfortunately (due to the bubble), but we only succeeded to cover costs for one year, no more, even if we built a solid user base of over 700.000 users very quickly.

The problem here is how to attract advertisers without having a huge user base to work with. I guess one of the possible approaches is to offer this platform as a white label solution to companies who really have a huge user base they want to leverage and to share revenues with them. The downside is that those companies will likely make your percentage of revenues very tiny, since they are bringing the users to you.

Anyway, time will tell, and I hope one of this new ad-based VoIP services will finally succeed and will find a viable model to grow up. In the meantime, a big “good luck” to Poketalk!

Technorati Tags: callback, free calls, luca filigheddu, parrot media, poketalk, VoIP

Martin Varsavski surprised me a little bit when I came across his post about honesty of italian people and, in particular, people from Sardinia where I was born, live and work.

But if Spain has been doing so much better than Italy over the last 20 years, I believe that this is mainly because on the average Spaniards are more honest than Italians and this shows all the way from the guy who rips you off in the Porto Cervo bar, because he argues that you sat in the VIP section of his mediocre bar (50 euros for a mineral water) to electing Silvio Berlusconi as President.

The funniest part of the story is that his examples are about Cala di Volpe, a place located in the middle of the “emerald coast”, very well known as the place where all billionaires go and well known as the most expensive part of Sardinia (if not Italy).

Martin is complaining about a 30 euros taxi and about a 50 euros mineral water, basically saying that italians are not honest and want to rip tourists off. They don’t rip tourists off, it’s all about tourists who have been so stupid to go there as well as very bad travel agencies which didn’t advise/warn them. But most tourists are savvy enough to get a hotel 10km far from that place and to get there for sightseeing only.

The point is that it is an area of Sardinia where rich people go and everyone knows you can easily pay 10.000 euros for a night at the Cala di Volpe hotel or 30 euros for a coffee. So why did Martin take that place as an example to state that Spanish people are more honest than Italian ones?

Martin, while you are free to start a discussion about this subject, I have to say that the example you are using to sustain your thesis is completely off topic and doesn’t really fit with what you are pointing out.

I hope you haven’t been so “stupid” to pay such amount of money for hotels or coffee. If you did, you cannot complain about that, since soccer players who earn 1 Million/month really don’t complain but just have fun while they stay there. You made the decision to go there instead of other more beautiful places in Sardinia, where you pay 70 cents for a coffee and 1.5 euros for mineral water, not me. Not far from there, you can easily find out that someone (who usually remains anonymous) paid for your coffee because you are a tourist and that’s a way to tell you “welcome”. Did anyone tell you about that?

This is just to highlight that people from Sardinia are not only honest, but even more kind than what you can ever think of. I’m sorry Martin didn’t get it.

But, again, Costa Smeralda is not Sardinia (ant it’s far from being Italy!) but an area originally built by the Aga Khan for rich people like him.

Technorati Tags: honesty, luca filigheddu, martin varsavsky, sardinia, VoIP

After the birth of my 2nd son, me and my wife decided to move most of our daily life in the underground floor, where we have around 120 square meters, a kitchen, a dining room and a bathroom (fortunately with big windows on top, so it’s not dark even if we are under the ground). Being the kitchen and the living room an open space, our sons can easily play around with less hassle for us who can keep an eye on them more easily.

All that said, a big problem arises: it looks like the GSM signal strength is very poor there, so it is basically impossible to receive calls as well as to make calls from our mobile phones. Not having a landline at home, it’s becoming more and more a painful problem.

On the other hand, our main Wifi home hotspot is there, so we get WiFi coverage at full strength.

I’m working on a couple of solutions that could help us to solve our problems while keeping our mobile phone numbers as our main way to reach us. The big problem is that it’s not going to be cheap, since any forward from our mobile numbers to any other number is not FREE.

Any idea? The easiest one is to install a Wifi phone to be used with Abbeyphone (my company’s VoIP service), but we can’t be reached at our mobile phone numbers. What would you do? Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Technorati Tags: luca filigheddu, Mobile, VoIP, wifi