Hutchison Whampoa’s carrier 3 is testing Skype on mobile phones, with plans to offer the service later this year. It’s unclear exactly how the service will work (more details later), although 3 Sweden offers Skype bundled with a 3G data card and flat-rate data plan. It certainly sounds like they’re using mobile phones, though: “Trials will be carried out using enabled mobile phones from leading phone manufacturers.”
Watch the hype explode around this, with people heralding it as the beginning of the end for carriers, etc etc etc. But there are a lot of unanswered questions at this point, primarily concerning how 3 will price things. Stay tuned.
Skype on Hutchison Mobiles…
Hutchison 3 Group started what will surely be a growing fire at 3GSM in Barcelona by announcing it formally plans to put Skype on 3G handsets throughout its 3 empire. Trials have been ongoing in Austria, Australia, Hong Kong,……
I’m currently testing skype on my 6680 running as a client developed by http://www.useful-apps.com/ the carrier is orange 3G in the Uk (on datacard in laptop) and the call quality varies between bearable to appalling, the worst part being intermittent echo at the other endpoint - the one you’re calling.
How is the situation now? I mean…Do you know if this new client VoIP for Symbian is already present on the network?
Where can I obtain a copy of the (beta?) software?