Pajama Entrepreneur

If there’s anything that ruins a good trip, it’s coming back and dreading the roaming charges on the next mobile phone bill. Since I live in a country the size of a postage stamp (the Netherlands), any trip I make will line the pockets of Orange Netherlands (now a T-Mobile subsidiary), for every phone call and every megabyte I download or upload.

Ever since I started traveling a lot to the US, I decided to get a T-Mobile prepaid there. T-Mobile has the best prepaid rates. When I arrive, I remove the Orange SIM card from my Nokia N80i (a Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone) and pop in the T-Mobile card. Voila! No more roaming charges when I call US numbers (or when my US contacts call me).

Use Skype or Gizmo Project to check email, make Wi-Fi calls

Everyday, I check my Orange voicemail via Skype or Gizmo Project either on my Mac Book Pro or on my Nokia N80i (using the phone’s Wi-Fi capability), again saving on voice minutes. If one of my European contacts left a voice mail, I call them back via Skype or Gizmo.

You can also use Truphone, which you download onto your mobile phone, to call your contacts via Wi-Fi.

It’s been a week since the launch of the iPhone. Walt Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) and David Pogue (New York Times) have posted their very positive reviews. A lot of people in San Francisco rushed out to buy it including my friends. At dinner the other night, I had a chance to play with the iPhone and I’m very impressed by the interface and the quality of the screen. If you own a Mac like I do, a lot of things such as widgets will be familiar. In fact, it feels like a Mac but on a portable device. Web pages are easy to read thanks to the beautiful crisp screen. Video is also extremely impressive. It also has Wi-Fi.

With all that going for it, I am disappointed with the choices Apple has made during this first launch:

- You need to sign a 2-year contract with AT&T. It would have been better if the iPhone were unlocked and you could pop in the SIM card of your choice. More people would have bought it, not just in the US but also in Europe and Asia.

- They crippled the Bluetooth functionality on the phone so you can’t send and receive files from other Bluetooth devices such as laptops. I don’t understand this decision, given that AT&T isn’t even subsidizing the phone. US carriers have a bad habit of castrating mobile devices.

- The first version of the iPhone does not support 3G, only the slower, more ancient EDGE network in the US.

- You cannot put applications on the iPhone. If you like Gizmo Project or Skype, there’s no way you can install it on the iPhone and use it to make calls via Wi-Fi. If Apple had opened it up for any applications, there would be a universe of applications developers making apps designed for mobility. Too bad.

No wonder hackers are already at work trying to open up the iPhone. And there are reports that they are making progress towards unlocking it. DVD Jon claims to have figured out a way to activate the iPhone without AT&T: The point of Johansen’s coding exercise, as he explains it, is that there are many potential iPhone purchasers who do not want to enter into a 2-year contract with AT&T, but do want to use the device for WiFi, web, email, video, music, calendar, contact management, and other features — basically, treat it like a bomb-ass iPod, forget about the phone part. (from BoingBoing)

This weekend, there’s even an iPhone Developer Camp at the Adobe offices in San Francisco! There’s such a demand to open this beautiful, revolutionary device. I don’t understand why Apple has launched it locked, crippled and castrated.

I would have run out and bought the iPhone but I refuse to do that until it becomes a computer in your pocket, as it is designed to be, with freedom of choice for the owner. I want to put MY apps on it, pick my own mobile carrier, and use it as I see fit (3G or Wi-Fi, depending on the circumstances and my budget).

Resources: www.iphonehacks.com

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint Nextel, a US mobile carrier, is sending letters to 1000 subscribers, terminating their contracts because they had the temerity to call customer service “too often”. They called customer service 25 times in a month, mostly on billing matters. The article did not go into detail about what “billing matters” consisted of. I’d think twice about getting a Sprint account - never know when they’ll drop you.

Research firm In-Stat reports that there’s a substantial market niche for Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones:

A recent survey of US early adopters found that almost half of those respondents plan to replace their cell phones want Wi-Fi capability. To meet the growing demand, there is an avalanche of dual-mode phones in the pipeline. By the end of this year, the Wi-Fi Alliance will have certified more than 100 different models of Wi-Fi/cellular phones . . . widespread Wi-Fi deployment and the variety of Wi-Fi/cellular handsets offers Wi-Fi/Cellular based systems a significant head-start in the market,” says Allen Nogee, In-Stat Principal Analyst. “Other technologies, such as WiMAX and Ultra Wideband, are also poised to enter the handset market, but Wi-Fi fills a unique niche that WiMAX and UWB cannot match.”

Here’s why people will be making more calls and accessing Internet applications on Wi-Fi phones:

- by the end of 2007, there will be more than 100 different models of Wi-Fi mobile phones (In-Stat Research);

- the Apple iPhone will drive innovation (and sales) of Wi-Fi mobile devices. It will change the wireless business;

- only 10% of mobile users in Europe use mobile Internet. The high price is the main barrier;

- the number of Wi-Fi networks just keeps growing all over the world and cities are setting up citywide Wi-Fi service.

I’ve been using Nokia’s Wi-Fi enabled N80i (read my review here) over the past six months. I downloaded Gizmo Project and Truphone onto the phone to avoid the horrible roaming charges imposed by my carrier, Orange Netherlands (acquired last week by T-Mobile). The phone’s Wi-Fi capability lets me make calls free of charge.

Although I have a data plan with Orange, I rarely use it. They charge 15 EUR per megabyte when I am outside the Netherlands. I’d be crazy to use it to upload and download files, browse the web or check email. It’s Wi-Fi again to the rescue. I certainly won’t be making the mistake that a friend made when she videoblogged the Le Web 3 event in Paris and got a 10,000 EUR bill from her mobile provider one month later.

T-Mobile’s dirty war against VOIP providers

So you can imagine my disgust when I heard that T-Mobile UK is messing around with Truphone. T-Mobile has refused to interconnect with Truphone so that T-Mobile customers making a call to Truphone’s number range (07978 8xxxxx) will not be connected. T-Mobile refuses to interconnect with operators offering VoIP as a matter of policy. Read all about T-Mobile’s plans to squish Truphone here.

The operators want to own the customer but as more devices and applications allow the customer to escape from the clutches of their bill-you-till-you-bleed walled gardens, they become desperate.

I am thinking of dumping my Orange subscription after T-Mobile acquired the company from Orange France. Unfortunately, it’s not as if the other providers have clean hands. All of them have at one point or another deprived their customers of choice (e.g. castrating Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones).

Links:

In-Stat

Gigaom on T-Mobile versus Truphone

Andy Abramson

I have been a Mac user since 2002, when the first generation of newly designed iMacs were introduced by Apple. Before that I used Windows on a boxy Dell desktop and a heavy Dell laptop. Today I have an iBook and would never even consider going back to Windows.

First, Macs are just more stylish. People like to be surrounded by beautiful objects and the Mac, in its desktop and laptop configuration, is a beauty.  Second, I never have to deal with malware, spyware and all other types of horrible-ware that Windows users have to wrestle with everyday. Macs are a big timesaver. Third, Mac software is easier to use, again, a big timesaver for busy entrepreneurs.

If you have a small company or are operating on your own, you have no IT department to call on when Windows starts acting up. Macs are easier to maintain.

But when I try to convince people to switch to the Mac, they say Windows machines are cheaper. That’s the conventional wisdom. But are they really? According to Scot Finnie, in his Computerworld article, Macs are cheaper than PCs with the same features. What makes Macs seem more expensive is that there are not as many mid-price range Macs as PCs. Read Scot’s article and doubt no more.

The member states of the European Union approved the cap on mobile roaming rates. The cap takes effect this summer. For enterpreneurs who travel a lot, the high roaming fees imposed by the operators when you leave your home country, have been a financial burden. Worse than that are the roaming rates for data (not affected by the regulation, unfortunately). My operator, Orange Netherlands, which was sold to Deutsche Telekom this week, charges 15 EUR per megabyte transferred.

The excessive charges for voice and data roaming have spawned startups that get around the cellular rip off. Companies like Jajah, Truphone, Rebtel, and Fring have been successful in getting customers who hate paying large phone bills. For those who have Wi-Fi enabled mobile phones, Gizmo Project is very popular. Skype does not have a Symbian client yet for the Nokia phones but when they release it, people will find another way to make free calls via Wi-Fi.

I am heading back to Amsterdam from Boston after the Muniwireless New England conference. After two days of discussions about the quality of citywide WiFi services, I am confronted with Logan Airport’s absurd WiFi portal (note: Logan wins my vote for worst airport).

When I started my iBook, it detected a WiFi network and asked me “join open WiFi network?”, so I looked on the list and there it was, loganwifi. Except it’s anything but open. You are confronted with a busy web page which is poorly designed, and you have to pay (or be a member of one of their roaming partners — still have to pay).

This is not OPEN. And if I had a Nintendo DS gaming device, I would not have been able to use it. This is exactly what I mean by poor service. It starts already at the login procedure.

Continental Airlines lounge has an open network

By contrast, the Continental Airlines lounge about 50 meters away, has great WiFi service. No login at all. You are on the network right away. Busy people in a hurry don’t have time. You’d think airports would get this, but they don’t. Continental does. At Newark airport, I used the Continental Airlines lounge WiFi and there’s no login procedure either. This is great if you are using a WiFi enabled mobile phone such as the Nokia N80 or the N95.

Read my earlier post on browserless access desperately needed.

UPDATE: Bob Frankston pointed out to me after I wrote this piece that Logan has been battling with the airline lounges that do provide free Wi-Fi. Here’s a piece from the Boston Globe.