Indeed truphone on blackberry is a very exciting product launch and we are excited about this milestone.

One reason is that most people these days see the blackberry as a status symbol of employment in a senior position. The device is almost omnipresent in global cities like New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, Bejing and Shanghai. Still it comes with VERY LARGE BILLS (VLB’s) attached. The VLB are a result of our use of the inbuild address book for calls which very well could be done on Skype, or via your landline. But studies show that even in the presence of a landline phone or a computer with Skype installed we tend to use our mobile for convenience. We are addicted to our smartphones - the modern replacement of cigarettes. These days you see more people playing with mobile phones (in particular blackberries and iphones) on the subway, railways into these global cities than inhaling blue smoke. (thanks god).

Why is the truphone blackberry launch so exciting, many analysts will ask , when it does not yet use the full IP communication capability of the Blackberry WiFi chipset to allow end to end mobile IP communication? Yes, you heard it correctly it currently relies on the ((truphone)) Anywhere product specs (also enabled on the Nokia series by truphone (but not yet on the iPhone), meaning it uses for the first leg GSM to connect to the truphone calling servers ((truphone cloud)).

Also many people have enabled pure IP calling with truphone, pure mobile IP to IP calling with your mates, friends and family members makes a lot of sense once they are all on ((truphone)), but in many cases WiFi will not be openly accessible. So even then it is hugely beneficial if one party is on IP and you call him on his truphone number, meaning the leg into the truphone server comes out of your bundles but the termination is provided free of charge by the truphone calling cloud.

A personal anecdote: On a recent trip to Silicon Valley I was stuck at San Francisco Airport. Already on the American Airline flight to Chicago I was unable to access the lounge or Airport WiFi as the cabin shielded the signal. Nevertheless I was able to use my AT&T bundled minutes to call my family via truphone Anywhere back in London, United Kingdom by just using the At&T bundled minutes. The calling leg from the US truphone servers to my home in London was all provided free of charge by truphone. Therefore a telephone call which would have just lasted 4 minutes before my minutes would have been spend lasted 45 minutes.

The essence of the story is that Blackberries like iPhone contracts with huge bundled minutes which are just as good as WiFi. (e.g. in the UK carriers like 3, T-Moile and O2 are fighting over who offers more minutes for 15 Pounds). In my experience 1200 minutes are almost impossible to use up, except if you have truphone Anywhere enabled on your Nokia or blackberry.

Mobile VoIP to IP on truphone is still the most crystal clear connection if the setup is correctly done, but GSM is almost as good as truphone on WiFi, as Om Malik reports in his article at the New York time and his own Blog.

truphone press release:

Global mobile network operator Truphone today launched a beta of its mobile internet telephony service, Truphone Anywhere, for BlackBerry® smartphones. Truphone Anywhere brings simple, easy and cheap international calling to up to 40 million BlackBerry users across the world.

Truphone Anywhere works in 33 countries worldwide. It saves BlackBerry users from those countries money on the international calls they make from their home country. The service works alongside domestic service providers, but reduces international call costs to as little as £0.03/$0.06 per minute.

Truphone works with the user to save them money. Instead of requiring the user to remember what to do, Truphone Anywhere simply asks whether he/she wants to make a Truphone call whenever an international number is dialled. The user simply accepts, and Truphone connects the call.

“There’s no GSM business tariff that gets close to the prices we can offer BlackBerry users with Truphone for international calling,” said Geraldine Wilson, new CEO of Truphone. “And in these days of financial belt-tightening, businesses are looking at every means of cutting costs, which is an opportunity for us. Truphone is a genuine alternative carrier for international calls, with the potential to reduce annual mobile bills for the largest companies by many millions of dollars,” continued Wilson.

Aaron Simpson is the BlackBerry-using chief executive of Quintessentially, a private members’ club that provides a 24-hour global concierge service and is part of the world’s leading luxury lifestyle group. He stated: “Quintessentially has offices all around the world and, as CEO, I’m in constant contact with all of them. I’ve been using Truphone on my Blackberry and its low call rates have enabled me to make those calls at a fraction of the cost of using my mobile provider.”

In technical terms, Truphone Anywhere works by connecting to a local Truphone server, which then connects the long-distance part of the call over the internet. Because most BlackBerry users are contract customers, the local connection to Truphone is, typically, free because it uses bundled minutes from the customer’s usual cellular service provider.

Truphone for BlackBerry smartphones is available to download for free from www.truphone.com/blackberry. Alternatively, Handango users may also download Truphone from www.handango.com. There are no monthly subscriptions or other charges.

truphone, the mobile internet network operator, is pleased to announce the appointment of Geraldine Wilson as CEO.

Geraldine joins from Yahoo! where she was VP and GM EMEA Connected Life, Yahoo!’s Mobile and Broadband division. She was previously with Vodafone where she held key board positions in the UK and Sweden, including CCO, MD UK Content Services and Director of Prepay UK. Geraldine is an INSEAD graduate.

The appointment marks a new phase of growth for Truphone, which will increasingly aim to attract ‘typical’ mobile phone users to its low-cost, mobile internet telephony service.

Truphone raised over US$30m in its 2008 B Round after having raised the largest European Series A funding of 2006 with support from Straub Ventures, Eden Ventures, Wellington Partners, Independent News & Media and Burda Digital Ventures, together with significant angel investors. John McMonigall of Apax is Chairman of the board.

About Truphone
The first true mobile internet network operator, Truphone allows users of Wi-Fi-enabled mobile phones to make and receive regular telephone calls, and to send and receive SMS [text] messages, using only a Wi-Fi connection and the internet. Although still in beta, it has already attracted tens of thousands of users in 149 countries. Truphone is the trading name of Software Cellular Network (SCN). SCN is privately owned, funded by both venture capital investment and angel investors.

For more information, please visit www.truphone.com

This shows how we can improve our marketing. White text in front of Yellow just do not work.

A short summary on where we are:
Truphone launched almost 1.5 years ago an application on the Nokia E and N Series phones. We are now on 14 Nokia phones. The installation process is theoretical as easy as SMS to +44 7978881111 word TRU download app from WAP push. However here the striking difference between Nokia and iPhone starts. Even truphone being one of the highest quality providers we had in our best days hundreds of downloads globally for the app. iPhone in comparison has seen more in the range of thousands per day. As of yesterday tens of thousands of apps had been downloaded. However even more striking is success rate of app to completion ration: When downloaded the Nokia users are highly incapable to make the apps work on Symbian (because it is just to complex), most people do not even find the apps, while the success rate is about 5 – 10x higher on iPhones. All of this success on iPhone even the truphone Nokia app is capable of much more (receive calls, app is constantly running in background, Truphone Anywhere calling outside of WiFi (coming on the iPhone next), VoIP over 3G, SMS over WiFi, SIM updating for forwarding when abroad, etc). Nevertheless the user wants the app and can make the app work on the iPhone.

In fact I made yesterday my first FREE call between a Senior Yahoo exec (from US) using truphone on his iPhone to my truphone number running on my Nokia E51 (in London). All FREE of charge, a call which I normally would have done on GSM now went seemless over IP. In addition before getting to my home we had initiated the conversation with him on GSM. What was striking was that the WiFi bandwidth and IP connection was clearer and better to understand than GSM / 3G. I switched upon reaching my home in Notting Hill to the house IP / WiFi network and we continued for another 45 minutes.

Some background:
In theory truphone is capable to authenticate 40 million subscribers globally on IP offering and offer to the same group very high quality Voice and SMS over IP services. Something the traditional carriers like Verizon, AT&T, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefonica, China Mobile are offering now, GSM services to large subscriber numbers, using HLR’s costing hundreds of millions of dollars. However the per sub cost in all IP for truphone is 10 – 100x lower, provisioning is a software download, (a virtual SIM), network building has been done by the users (WiFi), truphone components are all taken from open source using some of the wolds best network engineers at truphone to build something so far away from the Vonage experience set on mobile. Nevertheless 40m mobile subscribers would be a sizable mobile company even in mobile VoIP, effectively a global carrier build out of software, with a very highly non country specific footprint, able to challenge incumbents everywhere. Clearly the question I am asking myself, was Skype only the first stepchild to the telecom industry challenging a low margin fixed line network. What is is going to happen to the mobile carriers once truphone takes off with growth rates we have seen in recent days on the iPhone. (a country like Germany (80m people) signs daily about 3000 new subscribers, truphone has been signing 5000 – 6000 new subs per day globally.

Let me give you several example of call patterns I encounter as an intense truphone user.

My office at PIXSTA where I am the CEO is on a VoIP network. My Nokia E51 has a SIP number and I call 2464010@sip.gradwell.net to reach them from anywhere in the world FREE over IP using the truphone app, I call my wife or SMS her from my office to our home informing her about being late for lunch or dinner by dialing her Nokia E65 on her truphone number FREE of charge. I call my associate on Straub Ventures on his truphone number free of charge in his office. Clearly not all calls are yet within the IP network, however when I travel the truphone call forward finds me in China, Germany, France on my local SIM even when I am not in WiFi if my employees keep dialing my truphone number (which once in IP will follow me anywhere on GSM/ 3G). After 18 moths I have been able to convert my sister doing a PhD in Spain on truphone, my parents in Germany, even the great grandparents to take an IP mobile phone with truphone on it. No mobile phone people can still reach me using Google Talk dialing ext+447978800012@truphone.com or the facebook call me FREE button. So about 50 – 70% of my calls are now carried in the FREE IP versus the GSM domain. Even it is called mobile.

As you know we have been live from day one on the iPhone and Steve Jobs has publicly said that WiFi calling will be allowed. I believe this represents a threat for incumbent carriers, but equally a fantastic opportunity for consumers to break free of a century of switched networks, moving the last frontier, the mobile phone on to IP networks (end to end) (handset to handset).

I believe the iPhone not the cumbersome Symbian based Nokia E and N phones will the the catalyst. This is also heavy reflected in the share price when you compare Nokia previous 9 month tumble from 40 to 25, while at Apple it has risen from 120 to 180. Nokia has lost almost half of its value even they are selling more handset currently per day as Apple is selling iPhones in a year.

I agree it is not the phone itself also it helps it is the Apps which will revolutionize the mobile industry. I predict 20 million iPhones to be sold by the end of the year, not 10 million.