Earlier today I was reading Susan Crawford's gloomy post on impending problems for the Internet. Yes, everything she lists is an issue, but none are certain and some are certainly not long term problems.
Case in point -- her third subject, walled gardens. Just a moment ago, I saw this on Reuters. T-Mobile is launching their "web'n'walk" open Internet service in the UK. They launched in Germany and Austria earlier this summer and there, web'n'walk users are already generating more ARPU than T-Zones (walled garden) users.
As I commented a month ago, all it takes to break down the walled garden is a competitive market. Yes, more 3G capacity and more applications, useful on a mobile, are needed to take us from early adopters to mass market, but open Internet access (no walled garden) will be the norm in the competitive US and EU markets within a few years.
Enjoy your blog a lot. Just a thought/question that I am sure has been
answered (I am but an amateur in this area). It may not even be a sensible
question.
Web 'n' walk offers 'full internet access for £9 a month'. Can we use Skype
on this service? If so, does this mean that all our phone bills can be
limited to £9 per month?
Best regards
Chris Johns
Posted by: Chris Johns | October 07, 2005 at 11:00 AM
Chris,
Thank you! Glad to hear from you.
In the short term, T-Mobile is only offering "web 'n' walk" with specific
handsets, so it's unlikely you can use Skype right away. However, this is
the first step. Already in the US you can get flat rate data service that
supports connections to the public Internet from several mobile carriers.
And I know of techies who have already made Skype calls over Verizon's EVDO
3G service.
So Skype can work today, as long as the 3G service is not heavily loaded.
Voice calls are bidirectional. The problem with 3G today (and for the next
few years) is that W-CDMA (or EVDO) provides reasonable downstream IP
bandwidth, but rather limited upstream IP bandwidth. So it's unlikely you'll
get more than a very few Skype users in a cell. And their calls will be
glitched if there are heavy data users in the same cell. These problems will
be dramatically reduced with upcoming revisions to 3G radio technology
(HSPDA and especially HSUDA). So within 3-5 years, we should see quite a
bit of Skype (and the like) over mobile IP access services.
Meanwhile, I expect to see a variety of interesting handsets (3G plus WiFi)
that can run applications like Skype. These will become quite widely
available over the next 1-2 years.
Posted by: Brough | October 07, 2005 at 11:03 AM