Mobile VoIP

CounterPath Launches Bria on iPhone

by alec on June 15, 2010

Today CounterPath has launched Bria iPhone Edition, their first softphone for Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.  Think of this feature rich VoIP client for iPhone as being the mobile equivalent of a business desk phone.  With enterprise class features ranging from speaker phone to hold / unhold, swap, mute, conference, and security, this softphone is a credible tool for the road warrior. Moreover, with a strong focus on usability as well, CounterPath VP Todd Carothers proudly says “it could have been developed by Apple themselves!”.

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Priced at $3.99 in the iPhone App store, with a $8.99 option for G.729, Bria is an inexpensive way for road warriors to connect with IP PBX back at headquarters.  It even supports 3G VoIP calls to allow users to conserve those expensive voice minutes on the mobile cellular network.

In a 30 minute interview with Carothers yesterday evening, I learned that:

  • This is CounterPath’s first iPhone application, and indeed their first mobile SIP application period.
  • This release supports G.711, G.729 and GSM codecs – all narrowband.  The next release, targeted for August of this year, will add support for wideband codecs as well. Expect G.722.
  • Expect to see an Android version of this application in September.
  • This release is a pure iPhone application.  When they incorporate support for iPad, expect to see an XMPP client, with contact lists and rosters supported.

In other words, CounterPath is making a big move into mobile VoIP clients by extending their Bria franchise from the desk to the handset.

Mobile SIP clients on iPhone today are a bit of a novelty.  As with every mobile VoIP client on the iPhone platform, the lack of multi-tasking on iPhone is a major impediment Bria also. Expect to see Bria really come into the spotlight once it can be run full time in the background on iOS 4.0, acting as the user’s full time phone rather than simply a useful tool for making cheap outbound calls.  In the meantime, if you need a mobile SIP client on iPhone, at $3.99 you really can’t go wrong with Bria.

And isn’t it ironic that so many years after CounterPath debuted x-Lite,  mimicking the cell phone UI when running on the desktop as a soft client, Bria now exists as a soft client running on a cellular device.  Karma perhaps.  Who knows?

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Skype’s “small fee” is noise guys.

by alec on May 30, 2010

iPhone 3G Calls With Skype 2.0
Image by Photo Giddy via Flickr

Sometimes you have to really shake your head at the quality of the commentary on the internet.  Fact: Skype has finally released a version of Skype for iPhone that supports calling over 3G networks.  Never mind the fly in the ointment that all the commentary is  stuck on – the fact that Skype wants to charge a “small fee” for you to use it on a 3G network.  Frankly, that’s noise.  People will pay for the ability to make a high quality Skype call on 3G, and not pay their carriers long distance termination charges in foreign markets.  So long as the fee is reasonable, nobody is going to object.

There’s no point in getting your knickers in a twist over the fee.  Skype needs to make money, like any other business, and the fact that they’re charging for this service is irrelevant to the larger story it represents.

So, what does this really mean?

  • The carriers, by permitting this use of Skype on their networks, are finally coming to grips with the fact that data is now more valuable than voice.  I wouldn’t care to speculate about whether or not the carriers will receive any of Skype’s small fee, but you can be darn sure they’re licking their chops over the data plans they’ll be selling.
  • Andy Abramson wrote last week that analyst firms are predicting mobile VoIP to overtake traditional telephone service. Mobile VoIP just got a huge shot in the arm. Any skepticism about that claim as been roundly dismissed today.
  • Skype’s SILK codec just gained dramatic credibility as it proliferates to millions of handsets.  This will put serious pressure on royalty bearing wideband codecs, as vendors will find Skype’s royalty free approach increasingly attractive.
  • When iPhone OS 4.0 finally ships, minute revenues for carriers may take an even greater hit as millions of Skype on iPhone users keep Skype running continuously in the background to receive incoming calls as well as making outgoing calls.

All in all, this one small change by Skype is a portent of a huge potential shift in the power base of the communications industry.  Not bad for a five year old band of bad boys from Estonia.  Not bad at all.

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T-Mobile bitten

February 14, 2007

In the world of PR, sound-bites are the sliver of seared foie-gras adorning your steak.  Having carefully constructed a story and a position, your hope is that a clever sound-bite will hook the reporter, and provide the flourish, the finish, that will really make the story fly.  In my days at Microsoft, we used to spend [...]

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