Spaced Out ::

Nice article at The Guardian on using a data contract on your mobile to route all your comms traffic. The introduction fails miserably in what is mean to be a newspaper article… you know what they say, don’t bury the lead! Well they have here. Anyway, given everything is digital, all the mobile operators essentially provide is a data pipe, quite what you put through it is irrelevant and the fairest option is to charge by the Mb. Of course many of the profits come from calls and roaming, so operators are keen to keep this nice top slice.

But the market is changing and what Skype/IM did on the PC is now happening on the mobile through apps like WhatsApp which is available across all smartphone OSes. This is the way the market is headed, although the gotcha is that to use such a service your friends need to be on it as well, although they can also operate as gateways to traditional voice and txt services (for a price!). Skype succeeded by being first to market so its an area to watch closely (and, worth noting it might well be against your contract T&Cs).