Well Skype has been a great success on the iPhone already. My first Skype cals on the iPhone were good, a little quiet but more than adequate, and it has already over taken the Belkin WiFi phone as our main portable Skype phone ….. we both have Skype in our iPhones, and to be honest the Belkin is so rubbish it wouldn’t take much to better it. The poor battery life on the iPhone and the need to have Skype app open are a limiting factor though.
When I posted about the first calls a twitter follower left a message that in Germany T-Mobile were blocking the use of Skype. Well according to Macrumors they may not be the only carrier to have issues!
The release of an official Skype application for the iPhone appears to have been controversial for both mobile carriers and consumers. The Voice-Over-IP software allows iPhone users to make phone calls over Wi-Fi to other Skype users or even to regular landline phones. Obviously, such functionality could complete with mobile carrier’s own voice services.
As a concession, Apple has prevented the use of such applications over cellular data networks (EDGE or 3G) and only officially allows it to run on Wi-Fi. (Strangely, several readers have noticed that the Skype application presently does work over 3G when running beta iPhone 3.0 firmware, but that may simply be an oversight on the part of Apple.)
T-Mobile in Germany, however, threatened that it may take action to prevent its customers from using Skype on the iPhone. On the flip side, an open-Internet advocacy group is asking the FCC to see if AT&T and Apple are violating federal rules by restricting Skype to just Wi-Fi.
Free Press and other consumer advocates want the FCC to affirm that so-called net neutrality protections also cover wireless networks. That would prevent AT&T or other operators from blocking services like Skype on their mobile networks.
On ething is for sure though. With over one million downloads in the first two days Skype on the iPhone is here to stay!!!
Still not available in Canada with out a work around, and the fact that Skype is saying it’s a patent dispute….. sounds really fishy. Since it is available for PocketPC, and windows and mac? What so different with the iphone version?
Still work around worked fine, and it works great 🙂
Apple made a HUGE mistake selling out to the carriers, always said it. They should have gone handset only from day one, on any carrier!