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Wireless Utopia

The journey towards a free wireless world.

Vodafone and Skype

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Some news about the mutiny of the smaller operators. Vodafone has demo'ed a prototype called Starfish which allows you to use Skype and other Internet VoIP calling services! The reasoning given by the article is that Vodafone is the market leader and it has to keep up pace with its rivals. Which in turn means that X Series is a successful product and is drawing customers away from Vodafone. It might not be launched but this but at least 3 has managed to force Vodafone's hand.

The X Series launch had drawn a lot of opinions from everyone around. There was speculation that this might be the watershed in Telco. history. That was followed up with news of Sprints intention to build an Open Mobile WiMAX network. No updates on that one yet. But going by the trend, it seems a more open minded approach is picking up. And its ultimately the business factors which are forcing them to do it. Dont you love the way free markets work!

Its been long overdue. The operators really need to stop thinking about "subscribers" and start thinking about "customers".

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posted by Rajiv, 12:36 PM

1 Comments:

I think your comment about customers vs/ subscribers clearly shows the differene in mindset.

Telecom suffer a lack of customer focus and rather think in terms of a "pipe" and how many people can they get to subscribe to their "pipe". This has created a commodity market for "plans".

Some are now just getting creative with "offerings" as a differential but this create a copycat mentaility. The Vodaphone/Skype deal is indicative of further disruption to come..

This is an open invitation to visit Wireless Factors at www.wirelessfactors.com and connect with like minded industry professionals

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