When VOIP first hit the bottom of the hype cycle, I had a bunch of conversations knelling the death of the mobile network.
It was a pretty simple thought: peer to peer VOIP is free over the internet. So, if you had a handset that was WiFi enabled with a VOIP client installed, you could make calls [to anyone else that had a VOIP client on a handset or otherwise] for free, if you could find a free WiFi hotspot.
Now, this obviously didn't happen for several reasons, mostly because it is a massive threat to the mobile networks primary revenue stream and they own the consumer relationship, not handset manufacturers, especially in the subsidised UK.
WiFi still ain't free, mostly, although we are gradually moving towards it.
And not enough people are on Skype, which is necessary for the network effect [Metcalfe's Law] to kick in and make it really useful.
Having said that, some nice dudes sent me the new 3 Skype phone to play with.
First of all, let's talk about the 3mobilebuzz for a second. This is clearly an 3 agency blog, developed as part of a social media outreach programme.
But that's not a problem - that's a good thing - because it's been done well, it primarily looks to aggregate conversations from around the web about the new handset, it's updated regularly, it's pretty open about its affiliation [3mobilebuzz is sponsored by 3. Comments and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of 3] and they sent me a free phone, having read the blog and being very polite and personal and so on.
Now then, the handset. Like the O2 Cocoon before it, 3 have developed this handset themselves [since 3 have historically had issues getting hold of the best handsets this strategy makes a lot of sense, as does the Skype branding on the phone] and very nice it is too.
It follows the dominant technology aesthetic of our times, the imprint of Jonathan Ive's ergonomic whiteout - it's iPod like.
[It is perhaps a measure of how important this design is - anything that that is white now, especially but not only technology, can be described as iPodesque].
The phone does all the stuff a phone should do nowadays: take pictures with 2 million tiny dots in them, wake you up in the morning, send a 160 characters of text, and connect to the internet: the launcher application is a cool little web menu that takes you straight to facebook / youtube / google /ebay/ Msn Messenger - which is much easier that the still bizarrely annoying web mobile interface most phones seem to have. [Can someone please explain this to me]
And you can make Skype calls, using a data connection to the network. So it still costs you some money, but nothing like the obscene international phone rates that networks charge.
So, if you make phone calls to people in other countries regularly, you should already be using Skype, and this is an ideal phone as it combines the functions you want.
I've said before we live in accelerated times. And it's true - the world's technology has never advanced so quickly. But as I said in that post, it also leads to this constant awareness of what is to come just around the corner:
One of the cultural effects of this absurd acceleration we are currently experiencing is what I can only describe as this incredible weight I feel pushing back on us from the future. It's almost as though we are feeling the pressure from the future to catch up, which is what I think contributes to our fascination with what is to come and the existence of futurology as a science, of sorts.
It's this that I think also leads to the whole transhuman movement, and the obsession we have as planners with being 15 minutes ahead of culture.
In some ways we live in Interim Times - between yesterday and what we can always see just out of reach on the horizon. I blame Tomorrow's World.
Although we've always done this [50s futurology is famous for its depiction of robotic households - reflective more of the domestic obsession than the technology of the time] it's far more pronounced now as you can literally see things leaping forward, one iPod generation to the next.
This 3Skype phone, on it's web 2.0 reflective base [see picture], is the ideal device for these Interim Times, straddling the gap between the legacy mobile networks and pervasive internet future, whichever technology eventually allows us to blanket the world in bandwidth, which will completely change the way telephony works and is paid for, the kind of disruptive upheaval that destroys, and creates, entire industries in its wake.
But, in the interim, the 3Skype does a good job.
[UPDATE: There's been a comment discussion about the how free something is if you have to use the network for data calls - 3Mobile Buzz clarify the issue - it is completely free to use Skype - as in no data charges - as long as you've got credit on your phone.]
