S60 Open to new features

Mobile VoIP clients are not perfect. I have been using Eseries and Truphone for few weeks and I must say that solution is not ready for mass market yet. Many problems point to device itself so I’m not here to blame service provider.

Plusses:
+Truphone has the best ever SIP "out of box experience". Sis file fixes settings right, which is total nightmare otherwise.

+Calling to traditional numbers, both fixed and mobile, works fine. Giving 2$ credit is an excellent idea.

+Integration to familiar phone calling UI. Dial number, select VoIP or cellular (under reserve, finetuning needed, see below)

Minuses:
-VoIP doesn't work seemlesly at all, if you want to use it only over WLAN at home (or in hotspot). Use case: home access over WLAN is enabled and you go out of that zone. Later you return but SIP client can't connect back to home WLAN. Phone has to be rebooted to get back logged in.

-Lack of presence function and name search is a major issue. How I can know who is having truphone service and minimize my calling cost with he/she? There is no search function by name on device. This is basic stuff and one of the success factors of Skype.

-S60 lacks context sensitivity. If I'm not logged in to truphone, I'm out of WLAN zone and I try to make phone call. There is no way I can make internet call, I haven’t configured VoIP settings for GPRS or WCDMA or paranormal 5G satellite network. Why is device giving this option for me then? It means one more click and very often it happens that I dial number press green button and take phone to ear. I’m waiting and nothing happens because phone is asking this question and waiting my selection (select call type: cellular / internet call).

-Battery consumption is a real issue. Eats battery too much, even on standby.

This is the current situation. Somebody has to fix the total user experience before mass VoIP on mobile will happen. I don’t care is that solution proprietary or SIP or what, but mobile VoIP is still geek stuff. Luckily so many companies are working in this area. Go Packet Mobile, Barablu, Skype, Truphone, SIPphone, Nimbuzz, Nokia…! Just do it.

When somebody finally puts user experience right, knows how to do marketing and distribution, things start to change. People start to minimize phone calls over cellular network and use VoIP as much as possible. It will happen over WLAN. It can happen over packet data, if flat fee data is available and has reasonable price (for example TMO 10 gig monthly fee is 22.5£=34€ which is not really squeezing down monthly bill if you are average user and VoIP is the main driver for data). So I think price of flat fee might be initially too high for real optimization if we talk about average users which are not making many international calls. Next step comes from operators and they will introduce more competitive flat fee packages for voice (domestic calls). Then there isn’t much incentive to play with VoIP and make life more complicated. Operator voice revenues decrease but customers are kept. Then MVNOs could have interesting play. MRKTNGman MVNO comes and provides minute charges again. Some consumers will start to optimize again. “I just call few minutes over cellular so I go for MRKGTNman”. They use VoIP over WLAN and cellular is only backup. “I use instant messaging on the road and call when back home.”

Different markets have different dynamics. Regulation prevents real competition in some cases. Regulation might even prevent VoIP to happen if governmental ownership is high enough.

Competing with VoIP over unlicensed spectrum will be hard. Flat fees for domestic CS calls are doable but for international calls it’s difficult. How about roaming and competing against VoIP/WLAN. “Calling charges will go down to zero anyway”, said someone in Telco 2.0. No need to repeat. It won’t mean that business goes down to zero. Or if it goes, you have been sleeping. Never have been the devices so capable to create innovative services and create new revenues than today. Plain only voice is important and big driver, but voice is just one element. Multiplayer games with VoIP, browsing & click to call. When it’s all just IP, things get more simple. Not necessary more reliable, but definitely more exiting.

I’m back home in Helsinki. 3GSM Asia in Singapore was held earlier this week. Event is much much smaller than 3GSM in Barcelona and honestly I was worried after the first day that being there is not a good investement. But we got more and more visitors on second and third day and it was ok event. Operators and developers were the biggest visitor groups. When I went around the exhibition, I was surprised about the amount of companies developing instant messaging solutions.

Operator IM solutions seems to be hot thing, but interesting to see how things are finally developing with famous internet instant messaging providers. There is already 2nd Edition Yahoo messanger for S60 (inbuilt to Yahoo Go), Tencent QQ is available in China and other big will follow. Most of the S60 users, which are going to use mobile IM, have already experience from PC IM clients. They belong to certain community and just want to be in touch to this community with mobile. In my opinion it will be very challenging to make successfull operator IM service. IM heavy users won’t start from zero community. Why people who haven’t taken PC IM into use suddenly want to start with mobile and go to operator IM service? Certainly operator IM can be some interoperabilitywith famous internet IM services, but users are looking for good IM user experience which is familiar to them. Also generic IM clients are making offering even wider. Remember Agile messanger.

We had new devices on display, demos about browser, office apps, GPS and maps, Flash Lite and video broadcasting. Nokia N95 attracted most of the interest in device showcase. I’m sure that new Samsung SGH-i520 and LG JoY would have been a big hit, but unfortunately we had prototypes only for Symbian Smartphone show in London. 4 million N-Series devices sold on Q3 + many many other E-Series and older Nokia S60 phones. Next year will start with beautiful new devices from LG and Samsung and let’s see what is coming out from Nokia in Nokia World Amsterdam 29-30 of November.

Last week I took part to very interesting conference in London called Telco 2.0. Wasn’t sponsored by Nokia. Our dear competitor Motorola had taken that role. Good choice. It truly was a different telco event. Lot’s of interactivity, because of Crystal interactive’s equipment. Speakers were mostly good or even excellent and presentation didn’t have too much marketing BS or own product information.

James Enck from Daiwa has done good work earlier and compressed 2 days to few pages. My favourite speaker came from operator side. Norman Lewis from Orange was incredible. Totally getting thinking to new level. He was talking obout young consumers and their way of using technology and sociological and behavioral aspects. Think about user created content, yes fine we have integrated cameras on mobile and Flickr client but that’s quite nothing. Vision has to be enabling user created content but also user created applications. We are so far away from this with Symbian, Java and Flash Lite. Nice developments are in the pipeline but they tackle more to the developer environment, which is needed indeed, but so much more is needed in few years.

Things really will get interesting with Wi-Fi. Mostly people use it at home or office but public Wi-Fi is real pain in general. Buying air time to hot spots is complicated and pricing is hefty. Boingo is changing this. You pay monthly fee and you get access to 55000 hot spots. Price is 22$ in US now and they are entering to Europe. Expect to see even below 10€ monthly fees and more hot spots. Welcome VoIP, welcome smaller world.

Quite many inspiring speeches and ideas which I will utilize later on. Sling Media deserves some attention, but now I have to run.

The next Telco 2.0 even is end of March. Keep tuned to Telco 2.0 blog.