Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news

It's true that WiFi isn't exactly ubiquitous yet, but it's also true that a large percentage of mobile phone calls (I've heard figures ranging from 60-70%) are made from just two cells: the home and the office.

Many people have WiFi now in their office, and more people are starting to get it at home too. So, for quite a lot of people, up to 70% of their mobile calls could probably be made using Truphone, right now.
 

True, yet in an office setting an alternative is to get a GSM or CDMA subscription that's free between colleagues (whether they are in the office or not). That works on all phones on the market.

Truphone could though be a way to move to one phone for all calls. No desktop phone, no DECT phone...

I dropped my fixed line subscription and moved to mobile only. Almost the same cost and no question about which number I can be reached on. For long distance I use Skype, but with the right phone I could use Truphone instead for that.

Can Truphone solve the "one in-number only" issue?

Something tells me telecom operators don't like this very much.
 

Can Truphone solve the "one in-number only" issue?

I think so - the system at present offers a 'forward-to-GSM' feature; this means that if users issue only the Truphone number as their 'principal' number, then calls will be delivered using VoIP if the handset is attached to the internet, or to the GSM identity if not on internet but present on GSM. Truphone is smart enough to recognise if a user is NOT on GSM - and so will not dump messages into the celluar voicemail (which in most cases costs money to retrieve).

If the Truphone service were to be combined with an international roaming SIM (and associated clever backend signalling to do USSD callback) then it would be possible to totally cut out the requirement to have a 'secondary' GSM account to work with Truphone...