Wireless Industry Cozying Up To the Disruptors

PreacherTom writes, "As recently as a few months ago, the wireless industry showed little apparent interest in partnering with companies like Sling, Skype, and ISkoot. After all, they make products that threaten to compete with services that mobile-phone companies are eager to sell. Times are changing, at first in Europe and perhaps soon in the U.S. A few days ago, Sling Media's CEO sat down with execs from Hutchison Whampoa, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson for discussions. Skype isn't far behind, while ISkoot is in 'advanced discussions.' According to analyst Krishna Kanagarayer, 'This could turn the U.S. wireless industry on its head. The advent of mobile access to full-blown home PC and TV applications could lead to a revamp in pricing of wireless service providers' data plans, possibly to tiered pricing. And as applications such as mobile Skype take hold, data and voice use will become indistinguishable.'"

No one wants to be last

[drinkypoo]

The mesh-network internet is coming, sooner or later (my money being on later, especially in this country, but my point still stands) and any wireless provider who doesn't have a piece of it will be irrelevant. When WiFi connectivity is as ubiquitous as the cellular network, or frankly even before that, people will go to WiFi+VoIP in droves because it won't require that you, like, spend any money. What could be better than that?

This is of course why providers are willing to sell cellphones with WiFi. At least that way they get some money out of the hardware.

The grass is not all green, of course ...

[ScrewMaster]

And as applications such as mobile Skype take hold, data and voice use will become indistinguishable.

Not if the Baby Bells and the likes of SBC/AT&T have anything to say about it.

Not quite true re wireless industry

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think the blanket statement regarding the wireless industry not being interested in alternate solutions is at all true- not as a whole industry. For the wireless carriers, it's 100% true; for handset manufacturers (who are the prisoners of the carriers, especially in NA), they'd absolutely love to make inroads on any other services. They have a tightrope to walk though; go to far (ie be to threatening) and the carriers will just refuse to buy that model, or other models, or just slow their acceptance of new models from said handset manufacturer.

Isn't it already starting?

[CFD339]

I have Verizon's EV-DO broadband for my laptop. For $60/mo I have 'unlimited' access that in most places is about comparable to average home DSL service. It sounds expensive, but if you consider that I travel -- take off hotel access fees, airport access fees, starbucks/borders/other hotspot fees -- or the hassle of war driving -- and it starts looking very good.

I use it several days a week. It still has downsides - like all cheap service it suffers from "Gravity Well" syndrome. Inbound data is free, fast, and cheap. Output data is difficult, slow, and expensive.

My point is, I'm already using the cell networks for more data than voice. A lot more. I could (if I wanted) make voip calls over the cell networks but why? It's just as cheap to do it by cell phone "out of band".

What I really really wish for -- what would be WAY better -- is if telcos and wireless telcos would make use of DUNDi lookups. That would allow those of us with VOIP phones to receive calls which never transit the public networks. The cell carrier would check the DUNDi service and see that when dialing my number they could bypass the public network and just connect with a voip call directly.

Most don't do this now. Even though it would save them money on cross-connection (after all, they have to connect to the PSTN as well) they're more afraid of being bypassed themselves then of spending the extra money.

As a result, I have to pay a monthly fee essentially for the address routing which is my PSTN telephone number.