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September 29, 2006
Another Look at Rebtel:
Google Video: A Conversation with Greg Spector from Rebtel
Friends of mine have pinged me during the past few days asking me “so what is so cool about Rebtel?” Now while I find Rebtel’s current offering of what Om calls "Callback 2.0" interesting and innovative, what hooked me about the company when I met with them back in August was their the team and their vision for SIP and what I would call "consumer empowered fixed mobile convergence.”. It turns out the folks from Rebtel are well positioned to be one of the companies that provides communication services inside of hot spots to the millions of dual-mode SIP enabled handsets that Nokia (and others) are planning to sell over the next 12-18 months. While some friends who service the mobile side of the industry have been trying to sell products targeted to mobile operators to help switch a subscriber's call seamlessly from GSM to Wi-Fi and back again, Rebtel is able to offer consumers a similar sounding service without the need to own such hardware.
With their current service offering, Rebtel is using SIP URIs to manage the legs of their customer’s phone calls. Now imagine what happens when one of their customers who switched from using a regular cell phone to using a dual-mode phone is connected to a wi-fi network and wants to place an outbound phone call? Rebtel gets to deliver the call and avoid having any mobile connection charges for at least one leg of the call. This becomes the next phase of mobile disintermediation.
I found a video from an interview that Rebel’s Greg Spector gave back in July. To hear a hint of what Rebtel’s post "Callback 2.0" strategy is, fast forward the video to the 18 min 25 sec and watch the interview until 20 min, 20 sec. During this time frame, Greg talks at a high level about their Wi-Fi / SIP strategy and suggests Rebtel as a service provider for Wi-Fi Hotspots for the millions of people who will have Nokia dual-mode phones in the near future (like my Nokia E61).
Tags: voip,rebtel, voip, SIP, skype, Greg Spector , Jeff Pulver
(c) 2006 Jeff Pulver. All Rights Reserved.
(This blog posting is copyright protected by Jeff Pulver. Portions of this blog posting may be quoted or abstracted if attributed.)
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Posted by jeff on September 29, 2006 12:43 AM | Permalink
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Comments
I'll take a look at the video now. What you say regarding the mobile disintermediation is interesting, it's one of the hottest topics for the mobile operators not to pay the interconnection fee.
I'll investigate further. Thanks
Posted by: luca at September 29, 2006 03:39 AM