Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

I’m a wine lover, but I still have a traditional landline, VoIP lines and mobile phones, plus of course Mobile VoIP. So I found pal Dean Bubley’s post about the stats and relevance around "cord cutting" very interesting.

I also now see it in my own home office where my two blogger relations and conference team members Danielle and Michelle have pretty much ditched their VoIP lines and and use the power of GrandCentral or CallVantage to route their calls to their mobile phones, especially since I got them new Iqua Sun Bluetooth headsets.

It’s an interesting phenomenon. They’re both in the 20’s and conform exactly to the point about roommates, yet here at the home office we have no limitations, but the convenience of being able to take the call on their headset, plus the call log on their phone makes it easier.

Services that manage your call routing, like the above two, plus PhoneGnome, PhoneFusion, RingCentral, etc. are ideal for the hybrid phone user. The one number solution of a mobile only, doesn’t give the "adult" business professional though the same level of capabilities. I for one love the call screening that GrandCentral gives me, especially when I’m already on another call.

P.S. Dean’s closing remarks makes it worth reading his post too.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Beyond having the opportunity to catch up with Mobile VoIP blogger guru Dean Bubley and one of my favorite bloggers, Martin Geddes tonight while I’m in London, what makes this such an exciting place is how easy it is to connect with people.

Last trip Paui Amery, Skype’s Developer Relations Chief and I became fast friends over a dinner organized by then VoiPUser.org, now Truphone Platform Director Dean Elwood. I ended up speaking to Skype London at Skype House.

Now its Amery’s turn to talk, as a bunch of local London development types are gathering on Saturday for Plugin-London, the brainchild of Amery. It’s a great idea and it shows why Skype has a large operation her.

Hats off to Paul for his foresight as its clearly showing he’s got thing going for Skype the right way.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

Dean Bubley asks the question “where are the apps for dual mode devices?”

And I tend to agree.

Almost everything out there for Nokia N and E series phones, as well as the new dual mode Windows Mobile 6.0 handsets seems to be geared for either the 3G world or slower, or are nothing more than rewrites of apps for the personal computers.

The few apps I’ve seen have been mostly geared for switching or detecting WiFi (ala Birdstep) or whatever has come on the devices.

When I was at the Symbian Show in London in October nothing really was being shown that answered Dean’s question. Thus the answer falls squarely on the Symbian Series 60 Developers Program and the Windows Mobile Developers to take the lead. The same with Jave Dev teams and even the Brew gang.

That’s where it has to start.

Source: andyabramson.blogs.com

London based Uber Analyst (I rank him alongside pal Martin Geddes as bringing sense to all the hype) Dean Bubley has two posts this week (well actually many more) that are home runs in my book.1) His post of the Comcast packet sniffing soon to be fiasco. I say “soon to be” because you can’t go into continual PR denial, then try to spin things to get the story out. I mean how many weeks passed by when the story first broke in the blogs, then the Associated Press broke it big time.It’s time the publicly traded companies started to realize that this kind of obfuscation (my old argumentation Professor Towne would be proud here) is akin to a forward looking statement and thus as much a SOX issue as it is a truth in advertising issue. Maybe its time the FCC/FTC and SEC all got on the same page and looked closer at Comcast by convening a joint task force to investigate their departmental process of “we have to ask before we comment” type of approach. Heck, just imagine if they brought in DOJ and look at RICO (racketeer influenced criminal organization) statutes too, and you found that process, form and custom all smack of a system of keeping things a certain way that may not be in the best interest of the customer, public or even society. HMMMTo my friends at Comcast–this is too easy of a problem to fix. Just at the outset admit what you are doing by selling or offering tiered service. For the people who want to use P2P services raise your prices and offer it, instead of selling a speed boost package that sniffs.2) Dean’s second post is a beauty. It’s about Pudding Media (the start up with the dumbest name in VoIP) Dean has the same questions I have about the service.The idea of offering a free service in exchange for ads only attracts the no pay crowd unless its done right. Personally, I don’t see the future mash up of Meebo, Tok Box and Pudding by investor Sequoia as being that compelling. Ike Elliott’s post on Free is Not a model pretty much sums up what I’ve been saying for years on Ken Radio..about the “If It’s Free It’s Me, If I Gotta Pay It’s No Way” crowd.I mean, what media planner in their right mind wants a 4-6 percent conversion user base after years of free use? With 4-6 percent conversion, which is what those who know say is normal on the uptake rate for getting someone to subscribe, that means if you go pay only the other 90+ percent either never pay, or go elsewhere to the next free service to come along.