Skype for free on Three
Hutchinson 3G (a.k.a. 3UK, or Three – what a stupid name for any business, let alone a mobile network) took the unprecedented step of allowing anyone with a Three SIMcard (pay monthly or pay as you go) to use the Three network and a Skype app to call other Skype users absolutely free, and to pay Skype low fees to landlines both in your home country and abroad.
Here’s the astounding quote (or is it just poorly written copy by an angsty writer for their website?)
Skype is only available for free with 3 because we don’t think you should have to pay for mobile phone calls anymore. (source)
Now, I’ve used Skype on my phone in the past, but the big difference here is that that was over a 3G data connection which you pay big bucks by the MB (or, like me, a £5 a month fee for unlimited 3G data usage). This uses their normal voice network (voice circuit-switch rather than the more expensive 3G/HSDPA data network) – so no need for any data usage or packages.
What this does to the mobile ecosystem remains to be seen. 3UK has been the cutthroat MNO in the UK market ever since its inception, unable or unwilling to compete with O2, TMobile or Vodafone adspend (or in securing the best phone selection, such as the iPhone), but undercutting them on rates (a questionable policy given how opaque mobile tariff pricing is – you can’t undercut rivals if the whole picture is so muddy everyday punters can’t see that you’re that much better value). But this really takes the biscuit.
This is obviously an attempt to get new users, but more interestingly, there may be a deeper, more forward-thinking tactical side to this. The Skype app requires you to have a smartphone. This may finally convince all oldschool holdouts to upgrade so that 3 could potentially start upselling data packages to them, once they start installing data-hungry apps. Indeed, smartphones had been selling well, but global sales growth is collapsing fast (source)
Ovum analyst Steve Hartley:
“Three is caught in something of no-win situation in the UK,” Hartley writes in a research note. “If this gambit succeeds, then Three will have disrupted the market, but only in as far as forcing the other operators to respond. As [the other operators] are far larger and have far deeper pockets, the likelihood is that Three will come off worst in the long-term. And if it fails, Three can only try something even more desperate to attract customers.” (source)
My reading so far around this ignores the possibility that 3 is getting a cut of Skype (the overall winner, as well as the end-users, in this affair) revenue. This would seem logical to me. It’s worth bearing in mind a recent announcement by eBay (Skype’s parent company) that Skype is going to be IPO’d in the not so distant future.
Assuming this move doesn’t represent the involuntary suicide of an interesting competitor in the already highly uncompetitive UK mobile telco industry, I can only relish the disruption this ought to bring (of course, 3 has been offering its SkypePhone for quite some while now to no success, so let’s hope this new move proves more palatable to the marketplace).
Related:
- Is Google using your brain as you browse?
- I just stumbled across a research paper published by a Google employee and a Microsoft employee entitled “A Case for Usage Tracking to Relate Digital Objects“. I have no idea who Elin Rønby Pedersen is but she’s published both on this and on Google’s much vaunted foray into organising your health data. The paper highlights [...]...
- Google Friend Connect – part 2: The largest Social Network ever built
- Having originally assumed that the reason Facebook, Hi5 and LinkedIn (FHL), amongst others, were involved in the Google Friend Connect (GFC) service, I initially wanted to write this post to argue that this was the biggest strategic mistake of their lives. Turns out, Google is involving them whether they like it or not – using [...]...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.