At CeBit tradeshow in Hanover, Germany, Vodafone, world largest mobile carrier (not including China) showed off a new mobile VoIP client, code named Starfish, that allows people to call their Internet chat buddies including those on the Skype service. It supports MSN, AOL and Yahoo as well.
A similar service has been launched by the 3G wireless carrier, “3″ in UK. The “3″ service is being powered by iSkoot. In previous conversations with iSkoot management we had learnt that they were planning to support all IM services (including Skype.) Vodafone’s Starfish looks like a custom version of iSkoot.
We posed this question to Jacob Gudedalia, CEO of iSkoot, but he declined to comment on the news. The Boston-based company that is backed by Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures has been in talks with other mobile carriers for its mobile-VoIP-chat-IM service. It wouldn’t come as a surprise if Starfish is really iSkoot.
“We have not yet decided if we will launch it, or the commercial terms and prices,” Jan Holzberg, the manager for the product at Vodafone Group, said on Thursday.
2 trackbacks so far
5:22 AM PT
Vodafone’s Starfish to defend the voice business?…
Didn’t Vodafone struggle against VoIP and reserve it’s right to block it from July 2007 on? As Starfish uses the voice channel, I guess that it’s to defend its per minute voice business. It could be easily all over IP as Vodafone’s new HSDPA/HSUPA …
1:59 PM PT
[...] es Starfish y que podría lanzar en un futuro no muy lejano. Aunque según se comenta en GigaOM, la aplicación presentada podría ser iSkoot en lugar de [...]
2 comments so far
12:49 AM PT
I found the mention of 3 more interesting in the Reuters report. Looks like the X Series is giving serious competition to Vodafone.
9:35 AM PT
well the problem with iskoot/skpyes version is that since it runs over a data connection - the carrier can block it…since vodafone runs the network tehy have an advantage. but i heard that a company in USA called Switch-Mobile is coming out with something similar that does not use a data connection. you can find out more at (link)