Alex Kinch

Are you fed up with your old mobile? Willing to swap it for a shiny new handsets for a few weeks? We’ve three brand new 3 handsets, three cages, and are looking for three volunteers willing to lock up their old mobile and try 3 and Skype for a fortnight.

Remember the ongoing saga of T-Mobile and their blocking of VoIP applications like Skype? Well there’s good news – they will be allowing VoIP traffic on their network.. but for a price.

Customers of 3’s pay as you go service in the UK will get a bundle of free texts and free internet usage everytime they top-up, the company has announced.

An analysis of consumer spending habits has discovered already hard-up Brits are planning to reduce their communications spending even further in the next six months.
According to Booz & Company, a quarter of the 1,800 questioned have already cut back on their communication and media spending, with a further 26% saying they’d trim the bills further [...]

After the recent news that the founders of now eBay-owned Skype wanted to buy back the company comes the announcement that eBay are planning to IPO the division in 2010.
“Skype is a great stand-alone business with strong fundamentals and accelerating momentum,” said eBay Inc.’s President and CEO, John Donahoe. “But it’s clear that Skype has [...]

The founders of Skype, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, are apparently planning to buy back the service from current owner eBay.
The service, which was sold to the Internet auction company in 2005 for over $3 billion,has more than 405 million registered users, and bought in $145 million of revenue for eBay in the last three [...]

A report published by German newspaper Handelsblatt says the EU Telecoms Commissioner is planning to take action over mobile operators who block services like Skype from their network.
The publication says EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that action should be taken against the carriers to stop them blocking ‘innovative services’.
At present it’s up to each [...]

It’s been a hectic few days, so perhaps I forgot to post something about AT&T, Skype and the iPhone. I’ve already written about T-Mobile blocking the app on their German network, but it appears AT&T is going to be doing the same.
At a Q&A session last week at CTIA their CEO tried to clarify the [...]

Both Truphone and Skype have iPhone clients now. Both claim to have ‘unlimited’ packages. So who should you go with? Putting narrowband-versus-wideband, open-versus-closed codecs, shiny websites and PR spin aside for a minute, let’s look at pricing and terms and conditions. For comparison, prices are in British Pounds and include VAT where applicable.

Service

Truphone [...]

Sparked by the recent news that T-Mobile Germany will block the installation of Skype on their customers iPhones, Reuters reports that an industry group has called on the EU to adopt policies to allow open access to mobile networks.
The Voice on the Net (VON) coalition Europe, whose members include Skype, Google, Microsoft and Intel argues [...]