Archive for the ‘skype’ Category
Thursday, April 17th, 2008
I want to go on the record. Rebtel does not promote the use of alcohol, tobacco products, guns, other weapons, or illegal drugs. Nor does Rebtel advocate or have anything to do whatsoever with intense profanity or violence, graphic depiction of sexual activity, nudity, or hate speech.
We are not SPAMers or purveyors of fraudulent materials or activities that are restricted by law to those over 18, such as gambling or lotteries.
Nevertheless, if you take the time to wade through the nearly 200 collective pages of legal mumbo jumbo recently filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel and CTIA – The Wireless Association, you might actually come away thinking we are. Or could be.
In fact, the only thing we do at Rebtel is give consumers an alternative way to make an international call from their mobile phone, for which we charge them a few pennies per minute instead of mobile operators’ ridiculous rip-off rates.
As you might guess, the carriers are not wild about our service – even though it’s super simple and very low cost to implement. Just ask our friends at Skype, Jajah and Jaxter which are now blatantly copying Rebtel’s invention.
That, however, is an entirely separate kettle of fish.
The issue at hand before the FCC is very straightforward. And we totally agree with AT&T, which wrote in its filing that it is important for the FCC to be clear as to what this proceeding is about, and more importantly, what it is not about.
AT&T wrote in its filing: “This proceeding is not about the ability of wireless customers to exchange [text] messages with other wireless customers. What is at issue is whether wireless carriers can be forced to enter into joint marketing arrangements with content providers through the activation of short code campaigns.”
But for some reason they got it backward. The issue concerning Rebtel is all about the ability of wireless customers to exchange text messages with other wireless customers, and has absolutely nothing to do with marketing using short code campaigns.
As I’ve discussed here in the past, short codes, among other uses are how text messages (SMS) get sent from a company’s web site to an individual’s phone in the U.S.
What’s happening is the carriers’ customers want to send themselves a text message from the Rebtel web site and they want to receive text messages that their friends, family and work colleagues send to them from the Rebtel web site.
But Verizon and Alltel won’t approve a Rebtel short code campaign that would allow those messages through. And while AT&T has approved Rebtel’s campaign, it transmits the messages as flash SMS so they disappear if you don’t immediately save them when they arrive.
All these games because the carriers don’t like what’s in the messages: local phone numbers where you live that connect you to friends abroad.
Verizon wrote in its filing that it does not block text messages, “except those addressed to its subscribers that are captured by its spam filters, or that are affirmatively selected for blocking by its subscribers.â€
But there is no mass mailing of text messages going out from Rebtel that might be trapped by a SPAM filter. Instead every single messages is 1:1 sending initiated by the Verizon or AT&T or Alltel or whatever customer to either themselves or from a friend.
What the carriers are doing is really no different than if Verizon started listening into customers’ voice calls and disconnecting the calls if someone talks about a better deal over at AT&T.
So, let’s cut through the baloney. This is about business.
We created Rebtel with a very simple vision: Take the phony out of telephony.
Our mission: Create a genuinely good, honest, trustworthy global communications service that saves people money.
And we set out in 2006 to build a company on just three values: Always take the customers’ side, whatever you do must be clear and simple, and have no fear – do the right thing.
That approach has paid off. Rebtel blew past 1 million regular customers months ago and we’re now tripling in size every three months in terms of new customers, revenue and minutes carried.
In contrast, I think Verizon’s approach of trapping customers into multi-year contracts and then milking them for every penny possible is beautifully captured in its request for the FCC to dismiss the petition filed by Public Knowledge, Free Press and other leading consumer advocacy groups.
Verizon argues that the complaints in the petition refer to “isolated instances†that don’t warrant government involvement. “If consumers want to join a short code campaign that Verizon Wireless has not enabled, they may switch to a provider willing to enable that campaign.â€
Okay, Verizon – which providers do you suggest? And, by the way, will you wave the penalty fee on my contract when I do?
Posted in AT&T, Alltel, CTIA – The Wireless Association, Common Short Code Administration, Flash SMS, Free Press, Jajah, Jaxter, Public Knowledge, SMS, SPAM, Sprint, Verizon, blog, federal communications commission, skype, t-mobile, text message, voip | No Comments »
Friday, September 14th, 2007
Over at Skypejournal, Jim Courtney is reflecting on the scarcity of compelling VOIP applications and, indeed, mash-ups. Of course, his perspective is that of the rich mash up culture that exists around Skype Extras, but I have a hard time calling these “VOIP applications”. It’s clear, that the release of the Facebook API has caused a monumental shift, for us, at Rebtel too: we released our first Facebook Application in August and are now planning the release of a further release before October. For us, the question is, and always has been: how can we add value to our users’ experience of using VOIP? Our approach has always been to use VOIP technology in an invisible and transparent manner. Early on we decided that making calls tethered to computers or headsets was not a route we were going to take. The beauty of Rebtel is its simplicity: you use your mobile phone as you have always done, use your address book as you have always done. Simple and elegant. To us, enhancements are refinements of that basic proposition, not adding bells and whistles to what is a bloated product to begin with. It’s all very well that I can open a mobile browser page to initiate VOIP calls, but what if I don’t have 3G coverage? I have tried iSkoot and Jajah’s mobile offerings, but they fail where reliability of service is concerned, because none of those applications enable you to use your phone for what it was intended.
I think it is Jeff Pulver who raised the stakes by offering a reward for “cool” VOIP apps. It’s true, there is a quest for coolness here, coolness meaning anything that is not “Call Forwarding and/or Voicemail” in Jeff’s words. So, what would be compelling then?. Jeff writes:
(…) after listening to Brian Whitton speak, it became clear to me there is still a great opportunity to disrupt the communications industry, if for no other reason, than because of the amount of business processes in place at Verizon (and other incumbent Telcos) before a new service is deployed. In fact, in the time it takes for the financial analysts at Verizon work out the operating budgets for doing a voice over ATM rollout and the time engineering spends trying to justify the “risks†for deploying an IP Voice solution, the seed of a communications revolution could planted and sown. All it takes are like minded people who want to change the way we communicate and the guts to take on the status-quo. And what is better than the present time to reboot and restart the Internet Communications revolution?
Well, yes. However, rebooting in this business to us means giving people the easiest means to accessing VOIP from their ordinary phones. After all VOIP is but a technology for transferring Voice over IP: it’s not a service in and of itself. I would guess that more than 90% of mobile calls are initiated from our phones’ address books. Increasingly, people have free local minutes included in their calling plans. We figured it would be cool to turn those minutes into local calls, especially if you want to call internationally.
Sometimes I think “compelling” services are only compelling for those already in the know, the inner circle of VOIP watchers, so to speak. Twitter and Facebook are often mentioned, and Jeff mentions them too. If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that those services are so successful because they remove clutter and simplify things, while offering a wealth of access options to their basic service offering. It’s true, there’s a wealth of opportunity in VOIP, but it is through simplicity that the revolution will happen. Rebtel: simple stuff: use your address book to call your international contacts for next to nothing, or even free if you make smart calls. That’s cool enough for us.
Posted in 2.0, blog, disruption, facebook, facebook apps, mobile, mvoip, rebme, rebtel, skype, telephony, voip | No Comments »
Saturday, August 18th, 2007
Over at Disruptive Telephony, Dan York writes about the impact of Skype’s recent massive log-in outage.
The seductive aspect of Skype is that it makes it very simple and easy to use the product. It has (at least for the moment) a massive directory of users. It has APIs that let it be readily integrated with other web sites and services. It’s easy to use… and I expect that probably many if not most users will simply go back to using it as they have always done once it comes back into full operation. People have short-term memories…
Certainly, Skype has become an infrastructure layer on the net, as so many services are built on top of it. It was interesting to see
how much functionality I was personally unable to use. Crazily, as I was still logged in to Skype through iSkoot on my cellphone, that was the only way I could gauge whether Skype was becoming available again. “Are my contacts there yet”. Skype’s prolonged unavailability also raises questions about reliability of such software, as it was not the service itself, but merely access to it that was disabled. Important to keep this in mind: it has convinced me, that adding a layer to control access to a VOIP service is not the way I wish to have my VOIP needs met. SIP based protocols are becoming more available now, and I consider that a good thing. Meanwhile, for my international telephony needs, I gladly trade add-ons and plug-ins for Rebtel’s elegant simplicity: assign local numbers to my contacts, call them using just my mobile phone, done. No web based software, no log-ins.
Posted in 2.0, In the media, calls, cheap, disruption, mvoip, rebtel, skype, telephony, voip | 4 Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2007
We’re about to launch our new Facebook app, Reb Me. Developer Ola Sundvqist takes a moment to fill me in on FBML, server loads, data protection and how Rebtel plans to fight ‘app fatigue’…
Can you briefly describe Reb Me?
OLA: It’s like a web service that converts your mobile or international number into a landline number. When calling this generated number our servers connect you over the internet, charging almost nothing for it so you save tons of money calling abroad with mobiles or landline.
Why should Facebook users be excited about the Reb Me application?
OLA: Facebook is a huge global community expanding with some 100 000 users per day. People are connecting and nothing beats calling a person and communicating in real life. With this application any Facebook user can create numbers and call any of their Facebook friends really cheaply. The Rebtel website is super-advanced and quite heavy to load. The Facebook app is sleek and lean to use. We even provide free minutes to the Facebook users to try it out. Charging your account won’t be needed until those run out, and charging your account is the only thing you can’t do with the Reb Me application due to security etc.
What safeguards are in place to protect theft of data or other similar problems?
OLA: When signing up with Facebook you sign up to allow your information to be sold. This is one of the major revenues of Facebook. Rebtel don’t sell information and have a strict policy of privacy. No information is saved into the Facebook database when using the Reb Me application. When logging in to Rebtel.com, security socket layers are always used to protect information.
Can you talk a little about the technologies used to create the Facebook app (FBML, FQL, etc.)
OLA: I have used FBML as much as possible, and when it was not possible I studied the source HTML and CSS of the Facebook website to keep things as similar as possible. This makes the application to melt well with design and what Facebook users are used to, keeping it tidy and simple. FBML is converted into HTML that matches out-of-the-box classes provided by Facebook. This saves loading times and whenever there’s a minor bug in the FBML code, the page won’t work at all. This keeps things in good health as everything has to be perfect to run at all, much like the C# that needs to compile before it can run.
Was it tricky to conform to Facebook guidelines on appearance and content while still maintaining a Rebtel identity? Or did you find the restrictions to be useful in any way?
OLA: I love restrictions. This keeps things in place and working on majority of all platforms. It was tough keeping a balance of the company brand and the Facebook layout. In the end we stuck to keeping it look and feel like Facebook with our logotype and symbol for branding on all pages. In the profile the branding of Rebtel is with emphasis using a rounded corner box as container for the shortcut links where the links are also coloured with the “Rebtel blue†colour. In order to make the pages branded and more fun to look at, we also included most of our “Hippiesâ€. This makes it feel a bit personal and lightens up all that textual content. Learning the FBM language was quick as I’ve worked with markup languages since the mid 90’s and there were not that many tags to learn. We had to do a little workaround to put all custom styles in once place using a master template rather than including and external stylesheet document as this is not allowed on Facebook.
What do you feel are the main concepts that entrepreneurs and investors should understand about the Facebook platform? Do you think Facebook apps are set to replace consumer-facing websites?
OLA: Remember, Facebook is just another website. It’s popular today and I agree it’s as good as it gets by 2007 standards. With some time and skills, anyone can set up something similar based on Open Source platforms like Joomla and Community Builder. Any company should build an app on Facebook as it can be done in days. It’s also important to profile your company on Facebook with your CEO having a page and a company that can be selectable from the lists as employers on Facebook.
Facebook has 24 million active users – any worries about server load?
OLA: So far we have been worrying too much about server load and to little about spreading the word. We have a nifty load balanced solution and any issue can be solved with hardware. According to my own guess Rebtel needs about 1 million users to look good and 2 million to get those happy 2.0 vibes going.
Any concerns about timing? It’s been suggested that Facebook users are already suffering from ‘app fatigue’… how does Reb Me plan to work around this?
OLA: There were about 2000 apps on Facebook when creating the Rebtel app and that will likely grow fast from now on. Good apps will succeed anyway. I still believe the purpose of the Reb Me app is unique and that it’s a great service we are providing for people. There may be fatigue about all those ‘fun’ applications with never about anything as useful as this.
Do you think that Rebtel on Facebook is better for the consumer? How is Rebtel functionality improved through Facebook integration?
OLA: I think we are improving our usability and flows. People internally almost prefer using the Facebook app rather than the real Rebel website as it is so lean and clean. I believe Rebtel will have to improve on letting users increase their personal privacy security levels when putting external applications out like this.
What do you feel differentiates Reb Me from its competitors’ Facebook apps? (Jangl, SkypeMe, etc)?
OLA: I’ve always felt that Jangl and SkypeMe are very connected to a computer while Rebtel is connected to a standard phone. I don’t even see us as competitors. Rebtel has a unique angle in the market. When it comes to the Reb Me app, the Jangl and SkypeMe apps seems like hasty jobs where not that many features have been put into the app. We have focused on putting as much real functionality as possible into it. A large focus has been on copywriting and icons as well, constantly improving the app.
Posted in 2.0, disruption, facebook, mobile, mvoip, rebtel, skype, telephony, voip | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
The US market is highly regulated when it comes to sending text messages to consumers. Due to the fact that users there pay for receiving SMS messages, to be able to send text messages from a service like Rebtel we’re required to go through a certification process by each mobile operator in the US.
This is great, as it protects users. But two of the largest operators are declining our application because we’re cannibalizing on their international call revenue. Yet another example of network operators abusing their dominance in the market preventing new entrants from bringing value and innovation to the customer.
However, it does look as though some small headway is being made. T-Mobile has just been ordered to stop blocking WiFi rival Truphone’s calls. Truphone, which routes calls via WiFi when handsets are within range of wireless hotspots, accused T-Mobile of abusing their dominant position in the market, and yesterday the High Court granted an intermin injunction, forcing T-mobile to connect calls made to Truphone numbers.
James Tagg, Truphone’s chief executive officer, says:
“The injunction is good news not only for Truphone but for every company trying to develop internet-era services and for every consumer wanting freedom of choice and lower prices. We are determined to bring better-value mobile calls, text messages and other innovative services to mobile phone users, and it’s right that we should not be prevented from doing so.”
Over in the US, meanwhile, Skype are petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (under the “Carterfone†rules) in an attempt to force US mobile operators to loosen controls on what kinds of hardware and software can be connected to their networks. If the rules of the upcoming Federal Communications Commission auction of 700MHz spectrum (probably due to take place in January 2008) are written in such a way as to encourage ‘open access’, the wireless market might finally be able to evolve into an open, thriving, innovative network, free from the stranglehold the mobile operators currently have on it. With Truphone’s case set to continue later this year, it looks like this winter might be an interesting one…
Posted in 2.0, In the media, blog, disruption, mvoip, rebtel, skype, t-mobile, telecom cartels, telephony, truphone, voip | 1 Comment »
