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T-Mobile UK Blocking Mobile VoIP Start-Up 114

Posted by Zonk from the can't-catch-a-break dept.
wjamesau writes "The war between telecoms and VOIP heats up: according to Om Malik, T-Mobile UK is refusing to interconnect with mobile VoIP provider Truphone, a UK start-up with a mobile VoIP client that enables calls cheaper than mobile. 'T-Mobile told Truphone, that as a result of a policy decision, they don't connect to VoIP-based low cost calling services. T-Mobile UK's decision to block Truphone might have come as a response to the new and radically better Truphone 3.0 client that allows you to send Free SMS messages and allows VoIP calls over 3G. According to M:Metrics, nearly 86% of UK mobile users are heavy SMS users, and that means it is a cash cow that carriers like T-Mobile can't afford to be slaughtered by IP-based SMS services.' Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?"
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T-Mobile UK Blocking Mobile VoIP Start-Up More

T-Mobile UK Blocking Mobile VoIP Start-Up

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  • Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP com? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Bomarc ( 306716 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:05PM (#19524723) Homepage
    Question: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?
    Answer: Yes
    Question: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this LEGALLY?
    Answer: The courts can decied
    - or -
    The customers and decide.... (for or against!)

    • Customers decisions (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      Depends, are they stuck with a monopoly to get service? If so, they dont have much choice.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Bomarc ( 306716 )
        Again, actually they do. Take their losses, and go with the company that will give the 'proper' service. (Proper here is defined as what the customer wants)

        • Re:Customers decisions (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Qzukk ( 229616 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:15PM (#19524847) Journal
          and go with the company that will give the 'proper' service.

          And in a monopoly, that company is......

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Winckle ( 870180 )
            Well actually in the UK there are loads of different companies to choose from, I know of: o2 Orange Vodafone T - Mobile 3 (odd name, I know) Virgin Mobile Various supermarkets offer mobile phone contracts as well, Tesco mobile for example, though I think that is just rebranded Virgin Mobile.

            • Re:Customers decisions (Score:4, Informative)

              by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:44PM (#19525215)
              The network owners are:

              T-mobile
              Orange
              Vodafone
              O2
              3

              The main rebranded networks are:

              Virgin is T-Mobile
              Tesco is O2
              MobileWorld is Vodafone
              Fresh is T-Mobile

              That isn't to say they aren't cheaper than the main networks.

              There's loads of competition all you've got to do is switch, and that's physically pretty easy. The hard bit is working out which network and tariff is cheapest for you. Sites like U-switch are making that easy too. Most people are simply too lazy to get off their arse and bother so the prices can't be too onerous.

               
          • There are 5 network operators and 5 virtual network operators on top of that.

             
            • no, you are right, technically it's not a monopoly.

              It's a cartel. 5 operators that conspire together to maximize their profits. To the end user this has a similar effect as a monopoly, so the parent is, in essence, correct.
              • Now if all 5 operators agree to not connect to Truphone, then you have an effective monopoly. If only T-Moblie refuses, then you have 2 carriers with partial service. T-mobile and Truphone. Now if Truphone does something terribly clever, like marketing heavily to teens (who only need to be able to call their parents and other teens) then T-mobile is the one losing face. T-mobile can't do that because their customer base is already too large. Kids getting their first mobile can be made to see T-mobile phones

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Bomarc ( 306716 )
          Choices include:
          #1 Anyone else....
          #2 No one else....
          #3 Your legal body.... ...3.a break up the monopoly ...3.b to stop the activities that are in question

          If EVERYONE contacts their legislative critter, they won't be able to contact the person who is bribing them.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nurb432 ( 527695 )
          If you would have taken the time to actually read what i had posted, you would have seen that the disclaimer was a question, if they were forced to deal with a monopoly to gain access to the network.

          So take your 'again' attitude and place it somewhere.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Dusty00 ( 1106595 )
      I'm not familiar with the UK's anti-trust laws but I doubt if this is going to fly. The only reason T-Mobile has any interest in blocking them is to prevent them from gaining a market share. I'm wondering if any of T-Mobile stated their reasons for this 'policy decision' because I'd be impressed if they could fabricate anything that made sense and wasn't anti-competitive.

      • Re: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP c (Score:4, Insightful)

        by russ1337 ( 938915 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @05:00PM (#19525503)
        It's one of my pet hates when "as a result of a policy decision X cannot do Y". And I've encountered it where the 'policy' was 'written(?) by the very person telling you.....

        A number of times I've asked 'where is this policy written?', or 'does the person/committee that wrote the policy have the ability to make an exception?'....

        Saying "as a result of a policy decision" is a cop-out. In this instance they should say "We don't want to lose our market share or go out of business by opening up to competition"
    • T-Mobile ironically are the least restrictive when it comes to use VOIP over the data service. It's "discouraged" but not barred. Vodafone on the other hand bar it - even if they don't have a mechanism in place actually to detect it : http://leavingthedayjob.blogspot.com/2007/06/does- anyone-at-vodafone-understand.html [blogspot.com]
    • Other VOIP service providers do not have the problems that Truphone have. I regularly use WiFiMobile and Fring on different networks without problems. The real problem is that Truphone expect the operators to ship their phones with the Truphone software so that their customers can use the Truphone network. This is entirely unreasonable and will never happen. It would be like saying Sky have to ship their set-top boxes pre-configured for the Virgin Media network. Presumably the other VOIP service provider

    • Question: Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this LEGALLY?
      Propably yes, they can randomly delay some packets, so making voip virtualy useless. As for IM mesages, they propably cannot as long they let you browsing web, you can always use some jabber client like bombus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombus_(software) [wikipedia.org] and log in via http proxy

  • Yup (Score:2)

    by ls -la ( 937805 )

    Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?
    Yes. Everyone already has a cell, and few people are going to switch if it means getting cut off from everyone else.
    • of course they can do it.

      the REAL question is, can they do it without getting smacked around by the courts?

    • Re:Yup (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Golias ( 176380 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:19PM (#19524887)
      Only if the other providers play ball.

      "What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."

      All it takes is a critical mass of users of these new phones, say 5 percent of poor teenagers who don't want expensive phone plans. Then it switches from "VOIP phones can't call T-Mobile users" to "T-Mobile phones can't work with VOIP users", which would pretty much spell the end of T-Mobile in the UK.

      Technology is on the verge of surpassing the cell phone business model. All it will take is a few tiny third-world countries to take a small chunk of WFO money and build a nation-wide free Wi-Fi network, supporting VOIP phones for anybody who can afford one, and soon a lot of slightly bigger countries will see that proof-of-concept and start asking, "why not here?" Things could really snowball from there. In fact, were I a Rich Bastard trying to launch a service like that, I'd probably bankroll some infrastructure myself in a couple highly-visible small nations... say Dubai, South Korea, or the like. Let everybody see just how good we could all have it, and see what that sets in motion.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by weston ( 16146 )

        "What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."

        "What's that? T-Mobile won't let you sign up without a two year contract? Come to OUR phone service. We don't have them. You can start and stop anytime you like."

        Of course, there's no point in being pessimistic about it. The providers might not choose to collude on this particular point.

      • "What's that, T-Mobile won't let you talk to VOIP users? Come to OUR phone service. We don't cripple our phones. You can talk to anybody."

        "And you only have to pay ten times the rates". If nobody uses the service they make money of, they will increase the rates on the data service. And what have you gained then?

        On the Wi-Fi network. Here in Germany nationwide frequencies were auctioned by the state and some providers are building networks. The traditional cell companies were not even interested. All of th

    • Currently t-mobile is the only UK operator that lets you use 3G to access the internet anyway. All the other operators just give you "walled garden" access to the web. They don't realise that internet != www.

      If you want to use putty to access your servers, then the choice is already down to t-mobile or tough.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hughk ( 248126 )
        I have used Vodafone 3G, HDSP in the UK to access various internet services in addition to http/https including Skype, ftp and ssh and it has worked fine at rates of up to 1.8 MB/s. The plam I used gave me 1GB/mo flat and was taken out *before* they introduced any restrictions and it suited me well when in the UK. The access was from a data card and supported all protocols I threw at it. I was also able to bypass the Vodafone Mobile Connect software when working from Linux and drive the card directly.

  • Of course HUGE and MONOPOLISTIC mobile providers are going to be able to eliminate the younger and smaller competition out of market, ESPECIALLY if it heavily threatens their profitability.

    Why do you think that it has taken forever for a mobile phone manufacturer to include some kind of Skype-enabled consumer phone? It has been shown that mobile providers are not willing to allow even the smallest cracks of "the different" to enter the surface.

    Plus, even if this company were to get some kind of an edge

    • Of course HUGE and MONOPOLISTIC mobile providers are going to be able to eliminate the younger and smaller competition out of market...

      TMobile doesn't have a monopoly. So you don't like their business practices, but it's their network, and there are alturnatives.

      • In the United States, there are only four major cellular phone providers. There are alternatives, but most of them are off-shoots of the already well established Big Four.

        That's what I meant.

        • In the UK we manage 5 mobile networks. And yet we still have some of the highest mobile termination rates in the world. I can make cheaper calls to the other side of the world than I can to a friend's mobile in the same town as me.
          • Depends on whether you make them from another mobile. Calls from my mobile to another UK phone cost the same amount, whether it is too a mobile or a landline. I ditched the landline a year or so ago, because it wasn't cost-effective, and use VoIP from my computer for international calls.
            • Well the other way of looking at that is to say that your mobile price plan makes local calls as expensive as calls to a mobile ...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by hughk ( 248126 )
              How do you manage data without a landline? I thought that to get data in the UK, you needed to have a telephone line for ADSL. I have used Skype over 3G, but have to be very careful of my monthly usage.
              • You need a telephone line for ADSL, but not for cable. We have an Internet connection from Virgin Media (formerly NTL). They offer bundles with telephones and TV, but since we didn't use either of those, we eventually moved to their Internet-only service. Interestingly, it's the only way that cable is still competitive with ADSL. ADSL + telephone costs less than cable internet + telephone, but cable alone costs less than ADSL + telephone, and you can't get ADSL without a telephone.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by hughk ( 248126 )
                  Interesting. I was staying in the UK for 4 nights a week max but didn't want to enable the phone line + data because of minimum contract lengths. I would guess that cable would have given me a similar issue. It tuned out to be a good idea because the project was canned after three months and I moved country. Unfortunately although rental property sometimes comes with a phone line, it is still quite rare in the UK to find an internet connection. I guess that will change though.
                  • If you're in the same situation again, NTL (now Virgin) had special deals for students which gave them a shorter minimum contract. Since most students are only in their rented houses for 9-10 months of the year, they allow them shorter contracts. If you told them up-front that you were likely to only be in the country for a few months, then they are likely to offer you a similar deal, rather than have you not buy anything from them.
  • Fuck yeah! SMS and Voice over IP! Keep it up Truphone. No more 10 cents for a single 100 byte message!

    Fuck the monopolistic telcos in the arse.

  • oh they will (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The big giants will keep trying to crush the little guy all the way to the bank, until a judge finally realizes what's happening, and how the consumers are all getting stifled.

    In other words, it'll keep happening until a judge pours a big jug of frosty piss on the big monopolistic company.
    • If I as a company build a network, why shouldn't I be able to control traffic on it? Why should I build a network just to allow others who do not have the capital investment to undercut my business? On my network?

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by MadUndergrad ( 950779 )
        Because it's against the interests of our society and so we say you can't, and if you don't want to play nice you can find a new society.

        • Because it's against the interests of our society and so we say you can't...

          Is it? If there is no competitive incentive to build networks, companies will be inclined not to. It makes no sense in a capitalist society to allow competitors to use your capital investments.

          • I'd argue that cell networks are part of the shared infrastructure. There's only so much spectrum to go around. Thus companies, while being able to recoup investment, shouldn't be able to completely block competitors. It's not very feasible for every company that wants to offer cellular service to plaster the nation with their own set of towers.
          • I agree, but I think that digital communication networks should be provided just as postal and roadway communication networks are. Sure it would probably suck, but at least it could help prevent companies from monopolizing the networks, and you could always choose a private network if there were things you wanted that the government infrastructure failed to provide.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cdrguru ( 88047 )
          Then the government better step in an take over, because under those rules nobody is going to want to play. This is precisely the sort of move that has happened before and any company that isn't forced to stick it out just folds up and goes home.

          This is how copper mines in (I believe) South America were just abandoned. The companies that owned them were subjected to enough hostile regulations (or so they thought) that it was a better move finacially to just fold up and take what they had rather than try t
          • You know, there are worse things than being forced, even if due to excessive regulations, to move away from a non-renewable resource-extraction economy. The sooner that South Americans (disclaimer: I'm half-South American and have lived there on and off) are forced to find more viable economic options, the better for them.

            If you want more information about that, just research the the "Dutch disease" for a start.
          • What are the primary reasons copper prices have increased so much? I wonder if now that the price is high enough, those mining operations are underway again? This would show that while regulations increase the cost of business, if a society decides the regulations are worth it, then business will happen anyway.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nevali ( 942731 )
        Because in the telecoms world, it's not just your network.

        Telecoms are a tightly regulated industry to prevent monopolies (which are very easy to create, especially given historical and geographical factors), and if you operate your network in a manner which classifies you as operating a public network, you need to play by the rules for running public telecoms networks.

        If you don't like those rules, build a network just for yourself and your friends and keep it private.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by SirLars ( 871223 )
        ~~If I as a company build a network, why shouldn't I be able to control traffic on it? Why should I build a network just to allow others who do not have the capital investment to undercut my business? On my network?~~ because if you don't... I will. No phone company will EVER survive with the motto "you can't call there from here"
      • That's all fine and dandy, but don't be surprised when your customers eventually leave you for someone who will allow them to call up Aunt Jenny to make sure she got home OK from the family outing at the beach.

        • That's all fine and dandy, but don't be surprised when your customers eventually leave you for someone who will allow them to call up Aunt Jenny to make sure she got home OK from the family outing at the beach.

          Exactly, this is what "free enterprise" is about. Market forces, and all.

  • Not in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)

    by denoir ( 960304 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:14PM (#19524835)
    In an unregulated market system the mobile companies could do exactly that, but given that this is the UK, I doubt it. Even if it by some miracle would pass UK legal scrutiny, it will be shot down at the EU level as breaking a number of anti-trust laws.

    The mobile operators are already in the EU's cross hairs and they've been forced this year to essentially remove the roaming charges for calls between EU states. The commission also indicated that that was just the first step of bringing the mobile operators under control as they are today running wild and ripping off their customers.

    Personally, I hope they come down on them like a ton of bricks as they really are ripping of their customers. For instance locally, here in Sweden I pay an acceptable 20/month for limitless 3G data traffic. If I take my phone to Belgium, my gangster of a mobile operator charges 10 per MB. It's quite absurd what they have been getting away with so far.

    • Not quite true... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lanoitarus ( 732808 )
      Youre almost certainly right that the UK courts wont allow these actions by T-Mobile. But the REAL question here is whether these actions can crush this (probably poorly funded) upstart BEFORE the slow-turning wheels of government and justice get a chance to stop them? Im betting on no-- The government will say "oh gee that was illegal" and slap them with a nominal fine, but by then it wont matter anymore. Or maybe im just a cynic.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )
      One reason why mobile services are so expensive in the UK is because the UK government auctioned so few 3G licences off they knew there would be a huge bidding war between the major mobile operators to grab the ones that were on offer. There was. They ended up pissing away £22.5bn [zdnet.co.uk] on licences, all paid to the government.

      And Gordon Brown still manages to not have enough money to play with.

    • as they are today running wild and ripping off their customers.

      I rarely delight in the misery of others, but i'm glad its not just us canadians getting bent over in the mobile market (with the US market getting penetrated to a lesser extent).

      Hopefully this means that more and more people are realizing that the pricing schemes of mobile companies are completely out of whack, even taking into consideration capital costs of network construction (especially here in canada where Bell was able to pump a LOT into mobile R&D while they were still a government backed monop

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by uradu ( 10768 )
      > they've been forced this year to essentially remove the roaming charges for calls between EU states

      Well, not removed, but capped at something like 49 Euro cents/minute outgoing and 24 incoming, last I read.

      Speaking of gangsta mobile operators, SMS charges are an utter racket, there's really no other way to describe that. At 15 cents per 160 byte message we're talking orders of magnitude higher fees than voice. The costs of transmitting a single SMS message are barely calculable, yet they're treated lik
      • To add to the insult, SMS messages used to be a byproduct of early mobile phone carriers internal communtications with the phone. It's just part of the protocol. It was never meant to be used by the end-user at all. Some people figured out how to use it for their custom messages and after a while it became hugely popular. At that point hey charged a small nominal fee but soon realized that the customers were willing to pay much more for it and it became the cash cow it is today. For a while, the open SMS pr

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by pgrb ( 121829 )
          T-Mobile bought what was Mercury One-2-One when the parent company of Mercury (Cable & Wireless) needed cash when the telecomms bubble burst.

          At launch, the One-2-One service offered free SMS 24x7 and free (local) phone calls evenings and weekends. It was only later that the mobile operators realised they could monetise SMS, and prices rose. I think one tariff even offered free local phone calls 24 x 7 and there was a thriving market in re-selling subscriptions without changing the name of the subscrib

  • txting and 3G (Score:5, Informative)

    by bloosqr ( 33593 ) on Friday June 15, 2007 @04:15PM (#19524845) Homepage
    charging to txt and having 3G simultaneously makes no sense.. it just is a matter of time until everyone tunnels through the net if they dont make txting free or a token amount. W/ any sort of idle/push based email, it makes more sense to tunnel your txt messages via your email client (to other peoples cell phone numbers via the gateways) than to pay the ludicrious per message rates. W/ cingular/att unlimited data is $20 and unlimited txting is $20, so its better to pay $20 once and tunnel. This has the added advantage of logging your txt messages in your imap folder.
    • For Text, you're absolutely correct - text message pricing is left over from when it was new and cool and the signalling network didn't have much extra capacity, and with 3G around, charging pager-network prices doesn't make sense for a consumer. (For the carrier, it makes lots of sense, just as charging people $2/month to rent the black wireline phone they've had since the 1970s makes sense for wireline carriers :-) Unfortunately, here in the US most of the cellular companies want to charge that kind of
      • SMS was added to the GSM spec as a way of sending notifications for voicemail. It was never intended to be used as a communications mechanism, and so used a side-band channel that had quite a low total bandwidth, and was also used for other control messages. It made sense to charge a lot for them then, because they used a scarce resource.

        With the advent of GPRS, there was a data channel that could be used instead. In Japan, SMS is effectively dead, and everyone just sends emails from their phones for ex

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hughk ( 248126 )
        I don't know how much experience you have had of quasi-realtime over 3G (using 1.8MBb/s HDSP). It can be jittery as you say, but skype quality is usually quite acceptable.
  • I'm going to get modded down for this, but so what;

    Basically yes, large companies will crush small companies with new ideas with whatever means they can. Either interupting the supply chain or by interferring with their customer base. The idea being to demolish the capital behind the company, reduce its value, and then buy up the remains when it's done. Particularly, if its a competitor which introduces competitive pricing which will drive down the companies margins.

    This sort of behaviour is precisely wh

    • I was right there with you until

      But big companies have convinced the world that patents are evil; and thus their effectiveness are being destroyed through FUD.

      Big companies love patents. They only dislike certain patents that make it difficult to sell a product or limit their ability to enter/influence/control a market.

      Patents are just tools. The true measure is how the tools are used and/or abused. And these days, patents are useful to big companies plenty. Just look at MS and the whole Linux licensing thing.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kebes ( 861706 )
      I agree with half your post. This is the part I agree with:

      This sort of behaviour is precisely what the patent system is meant to stop;

      Indeed that is what the patent system is meant to stop. This, however:

      But big companies have convinced the world that patents are evil; and thus their effectiveness are being destroyed through FUD

      Doesnt' sound right to me. Big companies, currently, like patents. The problem with the patent system is that it is a system. Like all systems, it has rules that can be gamed and

    • "This sort of behaviour is precisely what the patent system is meant to stop; if what the small company is doing is innovative it give them a gov't monopoly for upto 20 years to get big enough to stop the big company from crushing it"

      Patents are designed to deny smaller companies entry to the market. Else why would a whole industry grow up around submarine patents.

      "But big companies have convinced the world that patents are evil"

      Are you living in some alternate mirror universe.

      was: Re:Answer Yes
  • Recently, T-Mobile changed their data settings and basically made it worthless. I'm thinking that this was why. They didn't want VOIP going out over their wireless, and they killed the entire wireless data network to do it. I had only recently signed up for it, so I don't miss it much, but it's got my thinking about another provider if they are going to treat their customers like criminals.

    Of course, maybe unlimited data connection for $5/mo was too cheap. If they can't actually support that, they shoul
    • T-zones was $5/month (web only, ports 80/443). True data service was sold (unlimited) for $30/month. This included unlimited usage of their EDGE network as well as unlimited usage of their wi-fi locations. A steal in my opinion. Unfortunately, most Slashdot users are cheapskates who have no clue as to how much a network actually costs to run.
  • They've stated that they believe voip is a threat to land lines, not mobiles.

    BTW they're the cheapest in the UK for data. £7.50 buys you a gig of date to use within the month. Compare that with Orange, who'll charge you £8 for something crap like 30 or 40 megs. The £7.50 deal excludes VOIP and, bizarrely, instant messaging - I guess they want you to stick with their 10p texts which, despite being the same price as most other networks, are hideously overpriced from a byte-per-pound point
    • BTW they're the cheapest in the UK for data. £7.50 buys you a gig of date to use within the month...The £7.50 deal excludes VOIP and, bizarrely, instant messaging

      Then your £7.50 buys you a gig of data to use only as they see fit!

      Data bits are simply 1's and 0's. They should be in charge of moving that data, and not deciding good data from bad data.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > Then your £7.50 buys you a gig of data to use only as they see fit!
        > Data bits are simply 1's and 0's. They should be in charge of moving that data, and not deciding good data from bad data.

        They should be allowed to do whatever is morally acceptable. They have a duty to their shareholders or owners to make as much money as possible. As informed consumers we are free to form contracts with whoever offers us a product/service we desire at a price and with conditions we find acceptable. I find

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by elyk ( 970302 )
        I agree, and I'd like to think that this is a well-supported principle, but the recent AT&T announcement seems to suggest otherwise. It's for different reasons, but at the base level, they're not that different.
    • I've always thought it comedic that these companies charge money per MESSAGE for what was initially developed to the best of my knowledge as a troubleshooting feature. BALLS. Hurray for accidental free revenue!!
    • Orange have an all you can eat add on for weekend and night (7pm to 7am ) which is 5 pounds a month.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > Orange have an all you can eat add on for weekend and night (7pm to 7am ) which is 5 pounds a month.

        Well, yeah, better than nothing, but it's hardly competitive with tmobile who'll throw in the rest of the month for another £2.50.

        Lets hope that £5 gets you more than the 4meg you get for £4. It says `unlimited` but it's qualified with `fair use` which to me reads as `not unlimited`, and given that Orange has just been told off for lying about unlimited broadband usage (http://news.zdn
    • Actually 3 offer X-series for £5, which comes with a gig of data *AND* a network supported Skype client with 6000 mins a month. Neatest thing is that calls arrive and go as normal mobile calls to their server so latency etc is far less of an issue. Skype out is not supported but *looks around* I run truphone's 3.0 client for that. So that's £20 a month for 500 all network mins, 1 GB of data that can be used for email, Truphone and general netting, and 6000 skype-skype mins. Did I mention that I

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Threni ( 635302 )
        > Actually 3 offer X-series for £5, which comes with a gig of data *AND* a network supported Skype client with 6000 mins a month.

        I considered 3. I decided, though, that I didn't want to go with a network with a shocking level of customer support, terrible reception and a crap range of phones.

        > So that's £20 a month for 500 all network mins

        You can't get that promotion any more. Why are they still advertising a deal on radio and posters today which ended on the third of June? Isn't that
  • As long as you keep paying them, yes they can crush voip services to dust.
    It's their network. They own it, and therefor they can control it.
    As a user of their network you are subject to their rules.
    They only way to stop them is by government regulation which can mandate network neutrality.
    Because the only rules they are subject to are those of the law.
    This is just another reason for network neutrality to be made law.
    If you have it, use your right to vote to make changes in your governments.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrguru ( 88047 )
      If T-Mobile's facilities are being used to compete with them, then there isn't anything that can be done about their refusing to support and supply a competitor. Phone companies have been beaten up by selling their services cheap in bulk only to find a competitor is taking their customers away by reselling service. They do not need to enable, support or supply competitors.

      It's like negotiating a bulk discount with McDonalds only to open a hamburger stand in their parking lot. Sure you got a good price fr

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hughk ( 248126 )
        T-mobile is the mobile daughter arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. These guys have already been forced to allow network interconnection for land-lines even having call-by-call vendors accept calls out of DT and route them back into DT and eating their lunch. Mobile carriers aren't in such a monopoly position as fixed line vendors but competition is limited. I can see T-mobile and the other major carriers being beaten up over this by the regulators as they are holding back advancement.
  • With cell carriers doing stuff like this, I wonder if an analog SMS system would be practical. Data are sonically encoded as they are with a modem. Since cellphone noise levels are generally higher than landline noise levels, I suppose a slower (but more reliable) transmission system would be necessary. Chorded tones à la existing touchtone systems could work, or perhaps series of pulses (à la Morse code). Although an analog SMS system would use cellular minutes, it's far cheaper to make a 5-1

    • It's far cheaper to make a 5-10 second phone call than it is to send a text
      Not in the UK it isn't - a text message costs on average 10p whilst a phone call will have a 5p connection charge plus a few pence for 5-10 seconds. Plus we don't have to pay to receive like in the US.
  • Please think of the CEOs! They have to put bread and water on their plates too :~(
  • T-Mobile should be told they'll lose their radio spectrum if they stop providing universal service (i.e. you can call anyone, and receive calls from anyone, regardless of the technology involved), since that's what the "publicly owned airwaves" were sold to them for.

    And then take it away from them if the don't immediately drop all blocking! Nothing less will do.

  • "Can mobile companies successfully crush VOIP competitors like this?"

    shakes magic 8-ball
    Signs point to yes

    What's up with these cheesy-ass questions at the end of summaries? Of course the /. crowd will be up in arms against it!

  • text messages (Score:1, Interesting)

    by rhinokitty ( 962485 )
    Tmobile also refuses to deactivate text messages for any reason. I receive a few unwanted text messages every month and never use text messages myself. They are only about ten cents each, but the fact that Tmobile refuses to turn off text messaging is annoying, but makes perfect sense.

    Nickel and dime has a new meaning when you multiply that small fee times the number of subscribers they have globally. I know it is technologically possible, but they pretend that it isn't. Cingular was able to turn off te
  • What if the company in question responds by offering emergency services agencies low bids on their phone systems. Remember they're the government, they have to take the low bid. Then all they have to do is wait for someone to be unable to call the fire department and watch T-Mobile get eaten alive by the lawsuit(s).

    I did say it was evil.

  • "The war between telecoms and VOIP heats up: according to Om Malik"

    I don't known if anyone pointed it out but VoIP is telecoms. Voice is what telecoms still continue to make their real profit from. VoIP is the standard for all NGN Telecom and network providers. The 3GPP Group defines Ethernet IP infrastructure as the long term next generation plan. Providers will support multi-play services over IPv6 networks. So businesses like T-Mobile will run all of their services over IP.

    It almost makes me laugh

  • This is interesting, because I just bought a T-Mobile contract phone. The retail grunt told me in no uncertain terms, in reference to the Web'n'Walk package, "You can use VoIP over it." Maybe he meant, "You can try and use VoIP over it."

    This doesn't particularly bother me, I've got more free minutes/texts than I'm ever going to use, and I'm not in a 3G coverage area anyway. I just don't like being lied to.

    Oh, and there's an inaccuracy in the article:

    Since then, Vodafone has introduced a new policy

    • Since then, Vodafone has introduced a new policy which makes it more expensive to use data plans for anything other than browsing and email. This was true up until two weeks ago, when they returned to an agnostic approach. In the process, they broke services for existing customers (such as my company) because they now use lossy compression on some of their connections. It's possible that we might actually move our services over to T-Mobile because their connections are usually more reliable.

      Vodafone UK

      • We've managed this for our contract phones, but as I understand it there's still an issue with pre-pay phones. I will confess that I don't know the full details, I'm just a lowly grunt myself.

  • it's a bit of a mess really (Score:3, Informative)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Saturday June 16, 2007 @03:46AM (#19530327) Journal
    The UK mobile phone companies (like many around the world, no doubt) face a dilemma - they offer phone technology that supports VoIP services but some (Vodafone with the Nokia N95) disable to VoIP bits, yet some (BT) offer their own combined 3G/GSM/VoIP services (BT Fusion).

    My company has 14 phones on contract with Vodafone and the phones run Windows Mobile 5, so support a VoIP application - I have tried this and it works fine, but the data charging structure makes its use expensive. Vodafone offer us free 3G/GSM calls between our mobile phones and also to 10 designated landline numbers - two of which connect to our Asterisk server so we can dial in free and then use DISA to get a dial tone and dial any landline number we want - in effect giving us national and international calls at the rates charged by our VoIP service provider. Vodafone know we have connected to an Asterisk server and have not passed any comments about it, but being the cynic I could imagine that sometime the terms for their '10 free numbers' could easily be adjusted to exclude numbers that terminate at VoIP service providers.

    From my perspective, the much-maligned BT have understood that they are a carrier for comms and no longer a 'telephone service provider' so they have made it possible to support (and charge for) any comms done by their customers, rgardless of protocol and type (voice and data).

    Banning the use of SIP/VoIP from mobiles will hopefully fizzle out as customers realise that they can port to 'another provider' who has taken the bold step of offering a contract that keeps the customer happy and makes the company money regardless of what their phones are used for.
  • What ever happened to competition in a free market place. You know, the place where us consumers are supposed to benefit from. Unlike those inefficent state run monopolies of yore. Oh wait, they didn't really mean it.
  • Now whilst I agree T-Mobile is the sporn of satan of carriers, surely all mobile carriers will be blocking VOIP?

    I mean if your main income is from charging 10p for sending a few bytes of SMS, or a Pound per minute for international mobile calls and someone comes along with a system that will do it for free and all you get is a few pence from a 3G data call, aren't you going to be pissed?

    The mobile phone industry is the biggest rip-off racket since Microsoft selling protection from Linux patents.
  • The article is wrong on many levels but the main point is that T-Mobile are not banning VOIP, they are merely charging £14 more for plan that allows it, presumably to offset the loss of business they will suffer by not having calls routed for them.

    T-Mobile offer 2 different UNLIMITED 3G data plans (http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/mobile-phones/inte rnet/laptop/ [t-mobile.co.uk]):

    £29.99 inc VAT = without VOIP

    £44.00 inc VAT = with VOIP

    By comparison, Vodaphone's cheapest unlimited 3G data plan cost

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