Monday, May 08, 2006

Here comes the VON surge

One week ahead of the VON kick-off, and interestingly on the same day that Vodafone announces cuts to roaming charges, along comes Truphone, which just sent me a press release laying claim to being the "world's first 4G network operator." Truphone has developed a client in Symbian which runs on Nokia E Series phones, as well as a SIP architecture built entirely from open-source components. As I understand it, the company is also working on a client for Windows smartphones. I guess this sort of thing must prompt some level of debate within Nokia, along the lines of: are we an arms merchant for telcos, or are we a technology platform which enables innovation at the expense of our legacy customers?