October 14th, 2007
London calling for free: Skype said to be rolling out new branded phone in U.K.
The London Times reports that Skype is expected to announce a deal soon with 3G mobile phone operator 3 to make available a new Skype/3 branded phone.
What’s more, users of this device would be able to make free calls to each other.
Obviously this would be competitive with legacy mobile solutions.
Elizabeth Judge, who wrote the piece, notes comments made earlier this year by Arun Sarin, the head of Vodafone. She describes remarks in which he said said that the traditional (U.K.) mobile operators - Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-Mobile – risked seeing their “lunch eaten” by the big names of the internet unless they moved quickly.”The developments, according to analysts, are a frightening prospect for the mobile operators, which are seeing their long-established business models completely disrupted,” Judge judges.
And you know what? Not only is she right but maybe the traditional mobile operators on both sides of the pond need this type of disruption to get them off their arrogance.
Russell Shaw is an enterprise computing journalist, analyst and author based in Portland, Oregon. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
