New mobile phone plan to offer no minutes.

Don’t let the name fool you. TextNow aims to be a lot more than just another over-the-top texting app, and on Tuesday it demonstrated its ambitions by becoming first in the U.S. to offer an IP-only voice service over a smartphone, beating its virtual operator rival, FreedomPop, to market.

TextNow began selling refurbished versions of the Samsung Galaxy S II ($120) and Nexus S ($90), both with their standard phone features disabled. In their place is TextNow’s voice and text app, which lets you make VoIP-based calls and send IP SMS, just as you would on a normal mobile phone.

TextNow is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) on Sprint, but instead of buying bulk minutes and messages from its carrier partner, it’s sending all traffic over Sprint’s 3G data network.
The advantage of this approach is much lower costs. For its baseline service, TextNow is charging $19 a month, which includes 500 MB, unlimited texting, unlimited inbound calls, and 750 minutes of outbound calls. TextNow assigns you a standard telephone number, making the service look like any ordinary phone to outsiders—think Vonage on a smartphone. Sticking to its OTT roots, however, all calls to other TextNow users are free.

Essentially, the service is TextNow’s standard OTT app featured on a dedicated smartphone, with an access plan included. When Derek Ting, co-founder and chief executive officer of TextNow’s parent company Enflick, gave GigaOM a preview of the smartphone strategy in June, he explained that TextNow has always targeted younger consumers who couldn’t afford—or simply didn’t want—to pay for a monthly mobile service plan. Consequently, the typical TextNow customer uses its app to connect such devices as the iPod Touch or tablets with no mobile connection.

TextNow felt that those customers didn’t just need an app they could use on Wi-Fi but a full-bore mobile service that took advantage of IP communications to offer cheap voice plans. It started out selling a 3G Wi-Fi hotspot that could connect customers to the wider mobile network, but its ultimate goal was to offer phones following the same principle. That’s why TextNow is targeting older Android smartphones and refurbished handsets, Ting said: Not only can it offer a cheap service, but cheap devices as well.

TextNow isn’t the only company with an all-IP mobile strategy. Mobile broadband MVNO FreedomPop has promised to deliver its own VoIP service this summer, using Android phones and its unique freemium business model. MetroPCS has been supporting VoIP on its LTE systems since August, augmenting its traditional 2G network (though that service will quickly disappear as customers migrate over to T-Mobile’s (GSM network). And all the major carriers plan to offer voice over-LTE (VoLTE) in the next few years.

The difference is that the major carriers aren’t necessarily using VoIP to make their services cheaper. They’re tapping VoIP to make more efficient use of their networks and to build new IP communications features around their core voice services.

Source: Business Week

BlackBerry users rejoice...Skype is finally available!

BlackBerry announced that Skype will be available for both the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 sometime next month. The exact timing is unclear; BlackBerry said only that Skype will pop up in BlackBerry World at about the same time the Q10 goes on sale. The Q10 is expected to go on sale in the U.S. by the end of May (with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless).

Skype's main calling point (pun intended) is that it lets users make free Skype-to-Skype calls through the Internet. Though it's not all that important a tool within the U.S. now that long-distance fees (and to a lesser extent, mobile voice minutes) are a thing of the past, Skype is essential for controlling costs when traveling abroad. Using local Internet connections, travelers can dial up Skype users at the home office for free and avoid paying for costly roaming minutes. Skype also lets users conduct live two-way video calls and instant-messaging chats.

These features are already available on the Z10 and Q10 without Skype; BlackBerry's own BlackBerry Messenger does all three. Some of these features are duplicated by yet other apps, including Facebook, LinkedIn and Viber. Skype, however, has far more mindshare when it comes to providing VoIP-based communications: It boasts some 280 million monthly users, many of whom are mobile. Source: Information Week