Truphone's mobile VoIP and SIM card combination catches attention

Last month at CES, Truphone CEO Geraldine Wilson spoke of the company "punching above its weight" within the telecommunications services industry. This week at Mobile World Congress, the mobile VoIP provider swung a couple of punches that caught the notice of media in a big way, adding support for AIM and PayPal with a left hook and throwing a hard right with a single-SIM multi-country mobile roaming service expected to be available in the second half of 2009.

On Monday TruPhone announced it had integrated AIM into its Apple iPhone and iPod touch applications, allowing users to IM the AIM community via an AIM identity. The company had already integrated IM support for Google Talk, Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger into its apps for those platforms; voice calling for AIM, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo will be added "within months," according to the company.

In addition, the company announced it was accepting PayPal credit as a method of prepayment for calls out of its network, an ironic tweak of sorts to Skype, since PayPal and Skype are both divisions of eBay.

Tuesday's announcement of Truphone Local Anywhere stirred up the biggest buzz. The company plans to launch a single-SIM, multi-country mobile service later this year that will make any mobile call within the set of supported countries into a local call. Truphone Local Anywhere is expected to deliver low rates on any supported country, eliminating the need to maintain separate phones, switch between multiple SIMs or incur expensive roaming chargers. Inbound callers can use whichever number is most convenient to the caller, making every call cost the same as a local call.

Additional features of Truphone Local Anywhere include number portability of existing mobile and landline numbers to Truphone, multi-language customer support, the ability to manage their caller ID (Hmm, that alone might be worth the price of admission), competitive rates on domestic calls, SMS and data in the home country, up to 80 percent savings on roaming charges when visiting other countries, and a laundry list of other features.

Combining a mobile VoIP service able to leap across country boundaries tariffs with a SIM card is an out-of-the-box solution that will have significant appeal to internationally traveling workers, students and tourists. It may also have significant appeal to one or more mobile carriers who may either try to clone the solution or buy Truphone outright.

Truphone is likely trying to co-opt the cloning option by appealing for strategic partnerships around the globe, seeking out operators and retailers who want to partner with the company via a global franchise model. Stay tuned as this service is likely to provide a quandary for Skype and others in the mobile VoIP space.

For more:
- Go read the details at Truphone's blog [1].