James Cridland

Over the last couple of years we have seen the introduction of free calls via an internet connection for example Skype.  This new technology means that even on your mobile phone now you have the technology at your finger tips that will allow you to make free calls over your internet connection.  However, is this viable for the mobile phone networks?  In other words can they make money out of it?  The technology is there now, but do they want you making free calls on the mobiles that they have given you and over their mobile network?  Well the answer for most of the networks is simple.  No they don’t.   

There are going to be many debates about this over the next couple of months.  As with the introduction of the next generation mobile phones and in particular the Nokia N97, which has the technology directly built into it, the mobile networks are going to have to decide whether they will allow the technology to happen.   We have to remember that the networks are a business and they want to make money.  They won’t be able to make money out of free calls!   However, the 3 network in the UK have launched their Skype mobile phone.  But let’s watch this space.  According to the Sunday Times in the UK, Vodafone are in talks with Nokia to possibly launch the N97 on their network, but there is uncertainty over whether they will allow the free calling technology to run over their network that is built into this particular model of mobile phone. Watch this space!