Our second ArcticEvening this year in Stockholm will be held on 18th of November 2009.
The theme of the evening will be Mobile smartphone solutions and trends – how to strategically build business around the different native application platforms and mobile web.
Discussion around delivering content and servics to Android, iPhone, Symbian, and different app stores is stirring up the mobile industry, and there are lots of different views on how to approach the smartphone market. In our evening’s panel discussion, we have representation from three firms: one that provides their service using mobile web browser and SMS solution (Traveas), another that uses a native application to complement otherwise “app-less” service (Rebtel), and third a cloud computing firm making it possible to access your documents and virtual computer on any device over-the-air (Cloudo). Each of the firm will surely bring interesting viewpoints into the discussion.
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Rebtel, the Sweden-based VoIP company, is being blocked again in Germany by E-Plus. Rebtel is letting E-Plus bypass their foreign calling rates by giving a cheaper alternative to calling expensive foreign numbers – through VoIP. Alexander Drewniak wrote about the incident in the company blog.
It seems this is an annual issue with Rebtel. They were blocked in Germany last year as well, exactly around these times of the year. Last year it was O2. Needless to say, but this sort of activity is against EU regulations and also the consumer contracts with E-Plus.
E-Plus is the third largest operator in Germany, so the problem isn’t a small one. Furthermore, Alexander has written the blog post that Rebtel has some 3 million customers who will want to defend their rights for cheaper phone calls. I’m sure E-Plus will get their fair share of contacts from consumers in the coming days if they won’t resolve the situation to Rebtel’s favor.
We wrote about Rebtel, the Sweden based VoIP company, a while back how their phone numbers were blocked in Germany by O2. Today, Alexander writes they no longer are blocked in Germany. Alexander thanks the individuals who blogged about this, tweeted, sent Facebook messages, e-mailed and personally called the CEO of O2 about issue.
He does not give out details on how the problem eventually got resolved, but I believe the large amount of consumer action that ignited around the issue did result in the positive outcome.
Rebtel, a Swedish and Luxembourg based startup offering cheap international calls over internet, is pushing itself hard to conquer the VoIP market. Some might say that even a bit too aggresively as their phone numbers were blocked in Germany by O2.
However, as Alexander Drewniak writes in his blog post, this sort of activity is against EU regulations. He is also asking customers of O2 to send an e-mail or contact Jaime Basterra the “boss in Germany” about this and let the company know how the customers feel about this sort of activity. He goes on to make a Churchill type speech regarding the future:
The fact remains, old operators will always cling on to their decreasing margins, lock-in contracts, hidden charges, big offices, expensive TV-commercials, and out-dated methods but they cannot stop the future of calling. When internet now meets telecom, operators are going to have to change or die. Internet stands for transparency, consumer value, openness and change. Values that clash against the business models of all telecom operators.
It’ll be interesting to see how this works out. We’ll be following the activity closely.
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