Hutchison Telecoms has revealed plans to launch a mobile internet voice service with Skype in a deal that will undercut mobile service revenues. The carrier's 3 mobile division will be the first to introduce Australian consumers and business users to a mobile -enabled version of Skype's free voice and over internet protocol (VoIP) softwareI'm not sure why Mark Jones says that " Skype's mobile service, first launched overseas in November (2006)", as I am aware of it having been successfully deployed in Hong Kong since March 2005, perhaps he means first to go native to 3 mobiles? Was it middleware before - OTA and/or bluetooth?? Ah well, irrelevant. Soooo, anyway, what are the implications for the Australian telco market?
The strategy poses a direct challenge to Australian carriers including Telstra, Optus and even partner Hutchison as mobile phone users will be able to reduce the number of calls made over existing voice networks.What does this do to FMC or FMT or whatever its called?
On a personal note, I became interested in Hutchison's 3G network in Hong Kong and worldwide while based in Milan in 2001 - a very very impressive company.
If the United Arab Emirates have protected local telcos by blocking Skype traffic, what will Australia do? When European telcos broke ranks and offered bulk SMS for less than 1/2 cent per SMS, the rest came down hard on 'em... back up to 4 cents now? I don't see Hutchison/Skype getting away with this. If you are sharing a 3G network with Telstra, you have to play nicely.
One final note - I like the final part in the AFR article about the long tail business model but that's probably a discussion for my other blog.
Telco blogs are going to be all a-twitter about this announcement. Betcha. And no, it's not directly related to location based services, but the implications are huuuuuuge.
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