Showing posts with label mobile voice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mobile voice. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Latvia's LMT digging the grave for tariffed mobile voice?

Latvian Mobile Telephone (LMT) has announced a flat rate, unlimited useage mobile internet plan for LVL 19 a month. The iBirojs Open (iOffice Open) plan was made public May 7, a day before Triatel, a wireless internet and CDMA mobile services provider was to hold a press conference on having finished what it says was 95 % coverage of Latvia.
That, however, is not the point with the LMT plan (well, maybe one of them) nor the fact that LVL 19 undercuts the LVL 23 (?) price for Triatel (the speeds of both networks match at "up to 3.6 Mbps, with LMT saying it will jump to 14.4 Mbps "soon".). Even though iBirojs is a package for use with laptops and only for mobile data transmission, it effectively opens the way for "free"voice using Skype or other IP telephony services anywhere on the LMT network. While the iBirojs SIM card apparently comes installed in a HuaWei dongle modem, it can, theoretically, be removed and put in an HSDPA capable business class phone. Then you are ready and probably able to make free Skype calls to any other mobile phone on the internet (whether via HSDPA or WiFi). Once the phone is on a 14.4 Mbps link (or even one that is far slower), the way is open even for video calls from a mobile over the internet. It is a matter of time before white-hat Latvian hackers turn the iBirojs into a flat-raid based platform for mobile voice and video.