Free mobile-to-mobile calls

A mobile phone is a miniature telephone exchange. It accepts incoming calls, initiates outgoing calls and can act as a repeater by forwarding calls or as a switch through teleconferencing. These are the basic features of a telephone exchange.

TerraNet, a Swedish firm, has exploited these features to facilitate free mobile-to-mobile calls. Using peer-to-peer technology, a cluster of mobile phones can communicate without the need to go through a base station (switch) provided they are within 1,000m of each other. This technology, being trialled in Ecuador and Tanzania, is perfect for developing countries where infrastructure is as limited as disposable income. Because mobile phones can forward calls, the effective communication distance can be extended from a 1 kilometer radius to about 20 kilometers. That is sufficient to cover most rural communities and, for example, university campuses.

Like Skype, this is a subvertive, effective and disruptive technology. While manufacturers of mobile phone handsets stand to gain should the technology take off, this may well be a network operator's worst nightmare.

Not all handset manufacturers will benefit from this technology. Most established handset manufactures such as Nokia have strong business interests with carriers and most supply base station and other switching equipment to operators.

You can read more about this technology in a recent BBC news article here.

Comments

Anonymous said…
There will be high resistance from vested interests. The mobile telephone market is too lucrative to give away for free.
September 27, 2007 at 5:12 PM
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