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April 12, 2007

Looks like the Nokia N95 will be missing VoIP Functionality in the UK

Andy Abramson is reporting that the UK Carriers are using their power to make sure that by the time UK consumers get their hands on a Nokia N95, some of it's features will be disabled.

This unfortunate reality does not surprise me. We have already seen this happen in the United States with Cingular and the Nokia E61. The Nokia E61 is a very cool phone. The Nokia E62 just isn't.

Nokia had an opportunity to be the worldwide leader in dual mode phones and the worldwide enabler of the disruption of the wireless industry. Looks like they won't be enabling consumers in the UK with the ability to seamlessly use both WiFI and cellular services.

Given the reality of how much money Nokia makes on an annual basis from companies like Orange UK and Vodaphone UK, if I worked at Nokia and had the sales responsibility for say the Vodaphone account, I would do whatever my customer asked of me to keep and protect their business. And if someone assigned to my own team was responsible for a new product offering which could be perceived as being disruptive to the core business of my customer, it might just make for a very lively internal meeting. And then just imagine being the person responsible for the N95 with all of the cool WiFi VoIP and having to deal with all your own carrier sales departments.

Seems that the Nokia N95 will be available with the complete function set until such time that significant customers speak up and ask for the “disruptive functionality” to be dealt with in their country.

Try as hard as they must, there is no escaping the reality of the coming disruption of the UK cellular industry and the emergence of a significant role that publicly available WiFi will continue to have. At the moment, all of this just means that Nokia might not be the vendor who ultimately benefits when Fixed Mobile Convergence happens in the UK.

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Posted by jeff on April 12, 2007 06:42 AM | Permalink

Additional resources: Internet TV Online Guide @ Network2.tv | Voice on the Net Conference | Video on the Net Conference

Comments

Maybe the mobile carriers really have to be afraid?

I just love to use Wifi telephony on my Nokia E61. I use three different SIP telephony providers at the same time. Two of them ring on my mobile phone and my desk phone at the same time when a call enters. Only Truphone doesn’t do this because it works only on mobile phones.

It’s really easy to enter the data for the SIP connection into the E61. In fact I use about 20 different SIP providers on my mobile phone: Pulver, Gizmo, Iptel.org, Ekiga.net and the like are all tied to my Voxalot account.

(Markus Göbel's Tech News Comments:
Why I use about 20 different VoIP providers
http://www.goebel.net/technews/2007/03/why-i-use-about-20-different-voip.html)

You can dial 20 different numbers or SIP addresses and they all ring on my mobile phone. Great!

I even tried VoIP on GPRS because I have really cheap data prices. It works, only the delay is horrible. But if my carrier provided 3G I would surely use it for VoIP. With HSDPA and VoIP the sound would be crystal clear. Look at cities like London! They will have spotless Wifi coverage soon. No need for using the mobile carrier anymore. Instead my prefered no frills VoiP operator gives me unlimited calls to 40 countries for the price of about 4 dollars a month. This includes my own country, what's of course most important. ;)


"Free calls" like in "free beer" are the VoIP killer app to me. By seeing my low costs for mobile and fixed line calls I understand the suffering of the incumbents and the mobile carriers. But maybe that's just the payback for the former years' rip off.

Posted by: Markus Goebel at April 13, 2007 04:20 AM

Thanks Prashant! I'll certainly give that a whirl.

I'm also trying to remember another similar service/app I saw a few weeks ago.

Posted by: Kosso at April 12, 2007 05:22 PM

Kosso, trying running Truphone (www.truphone.com). If you can set that up your phone is probably fully enabled.

Posted by: Prashant Agarwal at April 12, 2007 11:29 AM

According to Andy, this issue is effecting the newest round of phones.

Posted by: Jeff Pulver at April 12, 2007 08:42 AM

My Nokia N95 from Orange UK (ie: branded and possibly with a custom/crippled firmware) has a 'SIP Client' in the Settings > Connection menu.

It asks me for to create a 'profile' (which I imagine can be set using a 'config' (.cfg) file from providers.

I think, if I was a 'register' an account somewhere, the handset might offer me the option to make an 'internet call', as seen in the screenshots and writeup here on allaboutsymbian : http://urlb.at/1f

My Orange N95 certainly came in different packing than a 'pure' Nokia, I have no idea what is different 'under the bonnet' though.

Posted by: Kosso at April 12, 2007 08:34 AM