Everything SKO...

T-Mobile... Get a bloody grip will ya!

I'm a T-Mobile US hotspot customer. It was useful when they had the Starbucks deal. They've since lost it to AT&T but I paid a year in advance for a cheaper deal so I've still got it.

I would say that T-Mobile lost it in more ways than one. They own their own public Wi-Fi network and they own one in the UK too. Yet here I am in London and they want me to pay $0.18 per minute ($10.80 per hour) to "roam". Give me a bloody break will you.

That's why I recommend everyone gets a 3G dongle (try 3 in the UK & Ireland) and tell these guys to take a hike. Bunch of out-of-touch fools.

More thoughts on Qik

I wrote about Qik a couple of months ago and I was fully intending to write something more detailed but luckily Bhaskar (Qik's CEO) posted this interview he did with me while we were in Barcelona at GSM World.

And a little Bhaskar factoid. He is an incredibly nice guy for whom I have an immense amount of time. However, I won't be sharing a room with him again. He has one of those snores that overwhelms even the most impressive set of earplugs. He's like a bloody 747 taking off ;-)

QiK

If you've got a Nokia S60 handset (one of these) and a 3G account then head over to QiK and download their most excellent software. It's huge fun. Check it out:

I met Bhaskar from QiK recently at MWC in Barcelona. A very nice guy. I want to speak to him again when I see him in a few weeks. The social implications of QiK are massive actually but more of that later.

Video killed the Radio Star, part 2.

I think public Wi-Fi as a business model is pretty much dead in its current form. OK. So I'm not the first person to say this but having been one of the pioneers of the industry I had a lot of emotional baggage tied up in public Wi-Fi. It took me longer to see the light than most observers.

I'm not saying public Wi-Fi is dead. I think it has a fantastic future. But please! Just unlock every network and offer free access. Provide maintenance services to the location owners.

I think the business model has died because:

a). Complacency, hubris and inflexibility from the myriad group of pubic Wi-Fi operators around the world. Why didn't (wouldn't) you get together and offer access to anyone with a GSM-type roaming agreement? The fact that people have to fill out numerous online forms and get different user credentials is reason enough not to use this service.

b). The price. An average of $10 per day and as high as $40 a day in some places. Give me a break.

c). The Blackberry. What an absolutely superb device. I remember when the impact of the Blackberry over public Wi-Fi first struck me. I was in the waiting lounge at London City airport in late 2004. This is the perfect environment for public Wi-Fi. European business people in transit to and from London to the other financial centres around Europe. However, Swisscom were charging 15 *POUNDS* to get access. On top of that it was an absolute pain in the arse to sign up. I remember the day I noticed. 27 people in the lounge were on their Blackberries and two were connected to Wi-Fi. If you go back to the lounge today you will see 70% of people on their Blackberries and still, two people connected over Wi-Fi.

d). 3G. This is the final nail in the coffin. Most of the carriers are offering broadband wireless -- synchronous 256k service in reality. But that's usually enough for e-mail. For example 3 in the UK offers a fantastic deal: 10 Pounds a month (12 month contract) gets you a USB 3G dongle and about 3GB traffic a month throughout their worldwide network. Why the hell would you bother signing up to a Wi-Fi service if this is available.

G1G1

OK you lot... get your cheque books and credit cards out. November 12th the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) fellas will be going to market.

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Cubic launches at TechCrunch40

I haven't been able to write anything for ages because I've been so busy.

Today we launched our new products at TechCrunch40 in San Francisco. The actual demo didn't go too well as we had no GSM or Wi-Fi coverage in the hall. Go figure! At a Tech demo event!

Anyway... the product is absolutely fantastic. I have to say that of course ;-) But really... even if I didn't work for Cubic I would want these products.

We've moved heaven and earth the past two days to get these ready. Here they are:

MAXRoam
Cubic Mobile

My new gig...

Today is July 1st, Canada Day.

It's also the day I start my new gig. I'm joining Pat Phelan and his amazing team over at Cubic Telecom in Cork, Ireland. A lot of you might know Pat, he is very well known in the VoIP space and is the person behind AllFreeCalls (Yak4Ever), Roam4Free and the very widely read blog by the same name.

I met Pat while I was working at Jajah. What really struck me about him was his combination of clear vision and realistic focus on revenue generation. He intuitively knows what customers want, what they are willing to pay for and how much they will pay. I've been involved with startups for a long time. A lot of people focus on raising money to achieve their vision. Pat doesn't... he focuses on selling stuff. I can't tell you how refreshing this is.

I have been offered a few gigs since I left Jajah. None of them really got me excited. Two weeks ago I went to Cork and met with Pat's team. That got me really excited. What a great group of people. For me the team is everything. It doesn't matter what you do for a living, if you're with a strong dynamic team and you're having fun, any ambitious vision can become reality.

So what am I/we going to do?

Well I can't really tell you the specifics just now. We will launch our product in September and there is a lot of work to do before then.

However, what I can tell you about is Pat's vision. He wants a world in which you can pick up your mobile anywhere in the world and call anyone in the world for as long as you like and not worry about the price.

The real beauty is that the solution is not technical. No downloads, no special numbers, no websites. It's a simple service that anyone can understand yet surprisingly, nobody has done it yet.

Given my background and experiences over the last seven years I have seen just about every proposal in this realm and Pat's approach is the best I've seen. I'm so excited I can barely stand it!

Why IPTV still has a long way to go... a very long way

First of all a correction. In my earlier post I said that cycling.tv would be covering the Tour of California live. I was wrong about that. In fact you can watch the event on the official website here.

The website is an absolutely excellent marriage of new technology with a live event. Satellite images courtesy of Yahoo!, still images posted onto Flickr plus GPS tracking of the event provided by Garmin. Having said all of this, many of these components didn't work today as they had some technical problems. I can only imagine the extremely complex logistical issues involved with putting on a live event like this. Kudos to the team for even trying.

My issue is not with this hugely ambitious undertaking but with the IPTV feed. It just isn't up to the job.

Despite Joost and YouTube and all the coverage over at GigaOm/NewYeeVee it still seems way too early to get a reliable live video feed over IP at any level of quality or consistency that is worth watching.

That is, unless, you are willing to pay for it. By limiting the number of streams the quality will be much better so the paying viewer will be happy. People who aren't paying for it won't get pissed off about poor quality.

So please, someone, anyone just ask for my money. I dare you. Charge me for a service. Tell me I can't have it for free because free isn't really that good is it? I want to pay for it... really!

Of course if you live in the US and you have cable you don't have to worry about this issue. If you have *paid* for Versus (OLN) you can watch it every evening. Sounds like a business model that just might survive a little longer.

Technorati Tags:
Cycling, Tour of California, TV

Lost on me?

Andy Abramson over at VoIP Watch posted this story this morning.

Maybe I'm missing something here but I've got no idea what he's talking about.

"If TruPhone, AbbeyPhone and GizmoProject can be made to run on this, and if GoodLink comes out running on it as it does on the E62 already, there may be a real threat to the BlackBerry for reasons that only a user of all of the above could appreciate."

I've got a Nokia E61 with TruPhone's excellent software running on it and push e-mail. I know that TruPhone will most definitely support the E90 when they get around to it.

So I'm using all of the above and why is this a threat to RIM and the Blackberry franchise then? Why does everything have to be a zero sum game where I win, you lose? I think the market is big enough for a few players and I wouldn't be writing off RIM or the Blackberry just yet.

iPhone Envy

In an earlier post I spoke about how I didn't really care about a new mobile from from Apple. I was wrong. I take it all back.

I want one!

This is what it will look like with JAJAH running on it ;-)