Recently in Wireless Category

Free Wi-Fi access from AT&T on the iPhone?

More like "now you see it, now you don't"?

Or more like, "let's try it for a while and see" -- or maybe "we can change our mind and nobody will notice" -- maybe before the days of blogs and instant communications and publishing that might have held true, but not any more.

If you want to see what all the noise is about, click here.

I've written about T-Mobile's VoIP blocking shenanigan's here, here, and here.  Not to mention their blocking of MinuteWatcher for tracking cellphone minute usage. I also wrote how Truphone won an injunction against T-mobile ordering T-Mobile UK to stop blocking calls to Truphone. T-Mobile's heavy-handed blocking tactics is getting a bit old.

Well, according to TUAW, T-mobile is at it again. Thilo Salmon, CEO of sipgate, told TUAW that T-Mobile Germany has asked his company to cease and desist offering the company's VoIP software called sipgate, which can run on the Apple iPhone. sipgate launched their VoIP app for the iPhone in June.

I busted out laughing when I read, "T-Mobile claims that sipgate is making the jailbreak process appear more attractive, which could lead customers to breaching their contracts."

Yeah, so? If I buy a radar detector does that mean I'm more apt to speed? Maybe, but that doesn't mean I can't legally (in most states) purchase a radar detector. You can't block something just because it might 'entice' someone to do something that breaches a contract or the law.

Now if T-Mobile makes its customers sign a contract stating they won't jailbreak their phone or install VoIP, that's fine. If you catch the users doing so, then you can cancel their service, demand the cancellation fee, etc. But you can't pre-emptively punish your customers or 3rd party applications for something they may or may not do. You have to break the contract first, then you have a breach of contract and not one second before.

T-Mobile's contract currently disallows jailbreaking, running VoIP, instant messaging, and VPN applications. But again, you can't send cease-and-desist letters to 3rd party companies because they haven't done anything wrong. It's not illegal to write software. Just like guns. It isn't illegal to own a gun, but you can use a gun illegally. Do you send cease-and-desist letters to gun manufacturers? No. You prosecute the gun owners who use their guns illegally, i.e. taking it into a school, shooting someone, etc.

The interesting part is that sipgate only works via WiFi (and not GPRS or EDGE), and doesn't run on T-Mobile's wireless data network. So it's not like sipgate is bypassing T-Mobile's per-minute voice service entirely using an unlimited data plan. WiFi hotspots aren't ubiquitous either, where as you can get GPRS/EDGE data service much more readily. You could argue blocking VoIP on GPRS/EDGE/3G has some merits. Even the iPhone blocks VoIP unless it goes over WiFi -- but the iPhone at least permits VoIP over WiFi!

sipgate said it does not plan to comply with the order. The article states that Salmon boldly claims, "we may need to fight this all the way through the courts." and suggested that it's largely a government policy issue for Germany, and wants to lobby for a net-neutral environment for telecom carriers.

Fight the good fight, sipgate! I'm with you all the way.

Not to be outdone by technology, Pope Benedict XVI (yes, that Pope) recently sent his first SMS to thousands of World Youth Day pilgrims who signed up to receive divine direction via technology.

And this text messaging will become a daily deed!

As part of the Catholic festival in Australia, Telstra erected eight temporary base stations to allow young pilgrims to send text messages to family and friends.

Four giant digital "prayer wall'' screens have also been erected at the Sydney Opera House, the Domain, Darling Harbour and Randwick Racecourse.

Pilgrims who sign up will also be able to send a message to the giant prayer walls.

Read all about it here.

I've come across the new ACN IRIS 3000 videophone a few times recently and thought I'd write about them. I'm a big fan of videophones even if there doesn't seem to be any true adoption of industry standards that lets one videophone talk/video to another. Not to mention I reported first how Vonage's OEM'ed videophone, VisiFone, from Viseon hit the scrap heap due to Viseon's implosion. I was hoping to see Vonage's VisiFone interoperate with Packet8's Videophone, which I reviewed back in 2004. Back then Packet8 was the last broadband videophone service provider left standing, but it now appears that ACN has recently jumped onboard the videophone wagon. I hope they do well. Although videophone deployment has been slow to take off, I think offering subsidized, low-cost, or even free videophones to VoIP customers is one way of differentiating yourself from your competitors, especially if you are a single play provider like Vonage or Packet8 going up against Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, etc. that offer Triple Play packages.

If the single play providers were smart, they'd take my advice and make their videophones interoperate. Forget trying to hold your customers hostage by forcing them to stay with your service in order to keep their videophone capabilities. A customer that signs up with ACN and gets the videophone should not only be able to videocall Packet8 videphones, he should also be able to leave ACN, join Packet8's service and continue to use his videophone. With standards such as SIP, H.264, etc. there's absolutely no reason why videophone shouldn't interoperate. Further, with mobile phones increasingly adding more processing horsepower, and embedded cameras, making 2-way video calls from a Windows Mobile phone or Apple iPhone should be quite feasible. It's all about the standards, baby!

This locking of the videophone reminds me of this nugget from my 2006 VoIP Predictions:

VoIP providers will continue to harp that the government shouldn't impose any regulations on VoIP and that the industry should be open & free, while simultaneously VoIP providers will continue to alienate their customers by password-protecting and locking the customer's ATA (analog telephony adaptor), thus preventing customers from easily switching to another VoIP provider and using the same ATA. This is hypocrisy at its worst! Customers will continue to be left with useless ATA "bricks" which eventually will make it the local landfill when they switch to a better VoIP provider.

Analysis: (correct) Unfortunately, more VoIP service providers are still locking their ATAs even though they often charge you a $50 or more cancellation fee if you cancel within 1 year. Often their rational for the cancellation fee is that they give you the hardware for free and therefore since they have to "subsidize" the hardware costs they need to recoup the investment. I say if you are going to charge me $50 to recoup your losses, that's fine, but unlock the damn ATA!

I contacted Huw Rees VP Sales and Marketing for 8x8, Inc. who operate the Packet8 service to get his take on videophone adoption and industry standards.

Huw stated, "Approximately 5% of our residential subscribers are videophone users. Our implementation is standard SIP to the latest RFC, so as long as someone conforms to this standard our phones will interoperate." Huw added, "A good example of this is that we interoperate with Counterpath's soft client. We have recently re-positioned the videophone as a device for use in SMBs rather than just residential and we have seen some significant increase in sales in this segment, but overall the numbers are still fairly small compared to the market for voice services."

5% is more than I thought. I was guessing around 2% customer penetration. So looks like 8x8/Packet8 has made some in-roads. Glad to heard they're targeting the SMBs with their videophone product. Since Packet8's videophone is standards-based as others adopt industry standards this will only help the videophone market.

In any event, ACN's IRIS 3000 Videophone features a large 7-inch digital screen, a light-adjusting camera sensor, digital photo frame for displaying photos, downloadable ringtones, and built-in videomail. It also supports DECT 6.0 Uniden cordless phones and the ability to get news, weather, sports, and other online content. According to their promo video you can also hook up Homeplug Turbo 85Mbps adaptors to your home phone lines to enable multiple IRIS 3000 videophones around your house.

The videophone itself is free. Yeah, you read that right. Of course, you have to sign up with ACN's broadband VoIP service with a two-year committment, but it features unlimited calling to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico. Not a bad deal. They also offer a pro-rated cancellation fee that goes progressively lower if you terminate early.

The IRIS 3000 converts to a Digital Photo Frame when not in use and includes a built-in phone adapter to connect other analog phones to your digital phone service. It also sports video outputs so images from the video phone can be projected onto a larger screen such as a computer or TV. The Video Phone lets you leave VideoMail for family or friends that also own a ACN IRIS 3000 videophone.

They also offer Family Plan Lines which offers discounted video phone lines to your family and friends. Also, you can VoIP or video talk to anyone on ACN's network with no long distance charges.

Features

• Unlimited calling throughout U.S. (including Hawaii), Canada & Puerto Rico
• Video communication
• 7", high-resolution digital screen
• Digital Photo Frame feature when not in use
• Auto-light sensor
• Traditional calling features: Call Waiting, Caller ID & Call Forwarding, 911 Dialing and more
• Enhanced Phonebook

Cool features - now if only more VoIP service providers offered free videophones that inter-operated with other service providers, then life would be good.

Finally, check out the promo video for the ACN IRIS 3000. Donald Trump makes a quick appearance, apparently as an ACN IRIS 3000 videophone user. Wonder if he signed off on that endorsement?

Tom Cross, a TMCnet blogger, is not happy about his iDead iPhone. He's lost all his iPhone songs, contact information, favorites, vmail and everything else. AT&T couldn't even recover his voicemail password, thus he was forced to wipe all of his current voicemails and start from scratch. Ouch!

And don't forget all the iPhone outage issues and activation problems. Maybe it was a good idea I decided to skip the iPhonemania yesterday and wait till things die down a little. iPhone 2.0 can wait till all the kinks are worked out.

Check out his post titled iHate My iPhone Because its iDead

Then check out his follow-up post.

8x8, Inc. the provider of the Packet8 VoIP broadband service today announed it has added the Apple iPhone to the list of over 450 mobile handset devices now supported by the Packet8 MobileTalk international calling service. Launched back in November 2007, MobileTalk adds inexpensive calling to the iPhone 2.0 which launched today.

Unlike the truphone iPhone application I blogged earlier today, the Packet8 MobileTalk is web-based interface, so unlike truphone there is no dialer application to download. Instead, it uses a customized web-based dialer, accessible via a standard data plan or WiFi connection, to route calls to a unique local Packet8 access number and then on to the Packet8 digital VoIP network. Once the call has been initiated, the data connection is no longer engaged and the call is carried to completion over the cellular provider's network with only Packet8's low international calling rates applied. So one advantage of Packet8 over truphone is that it also works over the 3G data connection and not just WiFi. (see details as to why)

MobileTalk features mobile international calling rates such as $.01 per minute to China, $.02 per minute to the U.K., $.03 per minute to Mexico and $.059 per minute to India. Not too shabby...

"With the tremendous adoption rate of Apple's first generation iPhone and today's release of the new 3G version, the potential market for the Packet8 MobileTalk service has increased exponentially," said 8x8 Vice President of Sales & Marketing Huw Rees. "The iPhone version of MobileTalk is even simpler to install than our version for other smart phones and our beta users were generally thrilled with its ease of use and quality."

Over 450 Windows, Palm, RIM, Symbian-based and iPhone mobile phone models, including the entire family of Blackberry phones running version 4.0 of the operating system and above, and 25 Nokia models running the Symbian OS, are now supported by the Packet8 MobileTalk service. A complete list of supported devices can be found at http://www.packet8.net/mobile_services/supported_phones.aspx.

Customers can sign up for a Packet8 MobileTalk account at http://mobiletalk.packet8.net.

Want Truphone on your iPhone? Truphone enables you to make VoIP calls on your iPhone over the internet using your WiFi connection (sorry - won't work over your cellular 3G connection)

Truphone's native VoIP client for the iPhone was developed with Apple's own SDK and is available at the online iPhone App Store. Still, I wished it worked over the 3G connection. Wonder how long it will be before someone jailbreaks iPhone 2.0 and allows a truly native VoIP app that works over WiFi AND the 3G cellular data connection. Then life would be good!

Hat tip to Greg Galitzine for the news and image.

As the Apple iPhone ver 2 launches today, Apple had some outage issues with their website.

Late yesterday/last night, Apple users could not access their accounts. Additionally, the TUAW reported today (6:20am Friday) that The Apple Store US is down, though it's up now. The outage last night was a planned outage that was part of the Apple's transition to MobileMe. Essentially, their .Mac accounts' data was being moved to MobileMe, a $99/year service lets people view, update and sync e-mails, calendar appointments & contacts, as well as share files across iPhones, Macs and Windows PCs.

As iPhone mania continues to run rampant today, just take a breather. If you can't access Apple's iPhone web services to download new apps or the Exchange email integration isn't working, just put the iPhone down, go outside, scream at the top of your lungs, "Curses you Steve Jobs for not planning better!", then go back inside look at your precious new newfandangled iPhone and just be glad you own one.

Excited about buying Apple's new iPhone 3G, which goes on sale tomorrow?

Pumped about those blazing-fast 3G Internet speeds?

Hope you don't live in beautiful Bozeman, Montana; Burlington, Vermont; or Des Moines, Iowa...

Those are just a few places where your new iPhone will download Web pages just as slow as the old one did -- because AT&T hasn't set up its 3G network there yet.

And how about just getting decent phone service in Fairfield County, CT?

Take a look at how little blue there is (broadband coverage) in one of the most densely populated urban areas in the U.S. Need I say more?

Silicon Valley Insider has more (much more) on this woeful state, including the full AT&T coverage map, which paints a dreary picture ...

... But enjoy your new phone!

 ... and were afraid to ask!

Or didn't know to ask!

Must reading indeed in last week's New York Times Circuits column by David Pogue, who explores not so much the past, but what the future holds for smart card technologies.

Take a look at how a contactless Smart Card works -- one small (maybe not so small) step forward from contact Smart Cards.

And that may be a time when we indeed have only one card -- or one gadget -- that contains all of the digital information we now need to carry with us today.

Don't miss it here.