Andy Abramson made the local news in Santa Clara this past week, when he was part of a KTVU segment on VoIP and cellular phones. It’s worth a view.Â
Andy is actually talking at the beginning of the segment using Sightspeed. Sightspeed is a great product, but what’s it doing in a segment on VoIP and cellular phones? And why’s he doing that when he’s got a perfectly good Nokia E61 (a WiFi / Cellular device) sitting on the table beside him? As it turns out, the E61 couldn’t connect to the public WiFi network in the hotel. He needed to go through one of those ubiquitous login / charge screens that you see at every hotel and public hotspot out there today. So he made the demo call from Sightspeed for reporter Pam Cook.
When asked about this later in the segment, he made the statement that the cellular carriers weren’t ready, and didn’t want to do this. Ms. Cook then spoke with AT&T VP Melba Muscarolas who made the statement on air that AT&T, in fact, would provide a converged network, and that it would be available, initially only on AT&T hotspots, next year.
Geek trivia: Andy reveals on his blog that all the phones in the segment were his. Jealous? Nope. Not me. Never. Unh unh… not at ALL. Besides, who’d want his bill?
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry make Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Its interesting that AT&T are getting into it. Intel invested heavily in Clearwire as well.
Sprint/Nextel will also be investing $3B on WiMax technology in the states. I wrote a couple articles on it if you are interested!
{ 1 trackback }