I recently had an opportunity to play with one of Nokia’s latest handsets, the N95. The phone has several unusual features including: GPS with integrated software, WiFi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 5mp camera and, most importantly, is being sold unlocked.

Cellular phones equipped with Wi-Fi are few and far between, so when I got hold of the N95 I immediately wanted to test all the new applications made available by that feature.  The most remarkable is, without doubt, VoIP.

Fring and Truphone are mobile VoIP clients that provide access to Skype and Google Talk over Wi-Fi, GPRS, and 3G networks. With these applications I can use my skype account to call anywhere in Europe, Canada, Australia, China and North America for $0.021 per minute. It means that I can do it from my cell phone and that I can do it without using my Cingular anytime minutes. Unfortunately, the service is, at the moment, limited to “skypeout” calls.

Fring and its competitor Truphone have the potential to bring VoIP into the mainstream because they reduce cellular fees substantially and it put the protocol into phones thus eliminating the most inhibiting factor – that many people are unwilling to make calls from their computer.

While Fring is written exclusively for phones running Symbian’s
series 60 OS it will presumably launch version updates that include
support for Windows Mobile and other popular mobile operating systems
for 3G handsets.  While mobile carriers don’t admit it this service
constitutes a threat to their current business models, particularly
when one considers the current rates for unlimited data plans.

There is a lot of potential for improved functionality and
additional features here. Seamless integration between pc-based and
mobile calling would be nice and could support a clients with a robust
feature set similar to Skype’s client. VoIP push-to-talk would be
possible over a Wi-Fi connection.

Is there potential to use mobile VoIP as a targeted ad serving
platform or as an incentive for ad delivery on other platforms? I think
so.

Daniel Neumann