Cellular companies that are taking their good old time to implement WiFi offload of traffic, including calls, may have to worry, especially those with heavy penetration levels in NYC as Skype is beating them to the punch when it comes to Wi-Fi calling.
Today's news from FIerce and others of a deal with Towerstream, and Towerstream's 1000 hotspots is on top of Skype's Boingo relationship. But what this means to the carriers in NYC is there is yet another operator taking another route to bypass the mobile operators network for those using Smartphones (Android, Apple, RIM, Microsoft and Nokia) as they are already Wi-Fi enabled and have been for years. Add in Cablevision's network which is open to Comcast and Time Warner Cable Internet users and you have the makings of a roaming network via Skype without the mobile operators even being involved.
Now, add in what I've seen in Europe where FON's technology that allows customers to latch on to anyone's WiFi who is also a customer, and where you have pseudo-roaming, and less and less traffic is going to stay on the mobile operators networks.
Now, lets look at one other point. Outsmarting the legacy folks. Almost two years ago Skype and Verizon Wireless made a big deal about working together. Back then Josh Silverman, then CEO of Skype, waxed on to me about why the relationship with Verizon Wireless was so important–to get to the handset folks…well Skype did that, and more, but now, and once again, Skype has shown that they can work around their existing business relationships to keep THEIR users connected. That kind of thinking is what wins and why Skype was able to command the price they got from Microsoft and why the Verizon offer to buy them was dismissed out of hand when it was made.
If you go back in history, Verizon tried to turn phone booths into hotspots. But Verizon Wireless yelled, so the wireline guys stopped. Now I bet the people behind that proect are liekly saying—see, we should have kept that going….Well what Skype and Towerstream has done is turned 1000 locations into those phone booths. All without Verizon. Ouch.
