Italian Mobile Plan Insight

Blogs, Skype and Facebook help people find each other. I had a nice lunch today with Luca Filigheddu who’s a leading proponent of VoIP in Italy. He’s been on a learning mission for the last three weeks in the Valley. So we talked VoIP, Wi-Fi mobiles and about our phones. He also shared with me what some mobile operators are now offering in Italy. It really changed my perspective.

Imagine for a moment that your mobile operator came along to you and said. For $20 / month (what I pay now for my landline - locked for long distance) you can now have your home number on your mobile and when you are at home all calls are free. Your mobile will now ring when your home phone rings etc. No more need for the home phone. Your SIM simply responds to a second number when you are home.

So…. They provide the service by triangulation. They know when you are home, in fact your home phone will ring on your mobile when you are at the neighbors too; but that doesn’t really matter. I really thought this is brilliant and wished I’d thought about it before.

It really takes a swipe at all the home Wi-Fi and voip concepts. It fact it could seriously damage them. The perceived value created could be large. Concurrently for all those without home phones they could promise a 911 service tied to when you are at home. Cost to network operator… very little. We aren’t home when they are charging for minutes now.

What we have now is a minute plan (here in the US) with free nights and weekends. Extending that program to include “anytime - your home” minutes would be pretty neat. From my point of view it makes my mobile more valuable when I’m home (well it would be if coverage was adequate). There are some other bonuses too. It would appear to solve a 911 issue. As the operators database now knows I’m home, so dialing 911 is likely to go to the right destination. Something that’s difficult for VoIP services.

I could imagine some variations for the family plan; depending on who’s actually at home. Press 1 for Stuart etc. Single voice mail boxes etc. Sooner or later we’ll give up that home phone number. Many already have. In the meantime making cellular calls from home for free (local dialing area) would accelerate change. Of course this effectively could go even further. If everyone took it out then it would make all calls home to home free. Then on weekends they already are.

Net net. Another opportunity it would seem. Another plan possiblity. Now what does this really say about TMobile’s hotspot at home program? How geeky do you have to be to remain true to Truphone?

I still like talking on Skype. The voice quality is better and conference calls are simple to set up. My mobile minutes come nowhere close to the number of minutes I use Skype to Skype each day. The difference is most of those calls are international, and often small conference connections.