T-Mobile USA Extends VoIP Features

T-Mobile’s Bobsled service, a VOIP-based communication platform that initially allowed smartphone owners to call their Facebook friends from their mobile device, has been expanded to provide free calls to any mobile or landline number in the U.S, Canada or Puerto Rico from anywhere in the world, simply by using their desktop browser.

The move is one more example of what normally happens in competitive markets, which is that the contestants lagging most in a market are most likely to embrace disruptive changes.

Whereas before, Bobsled would allow you to call Facebook friends from a dedicated smartphone application, the service has been adapted to give users the opportunity to call numbers in North America directly from the browser using their desktop computer and iOS or Android tablets or smartphones.

The Android/iOS version currently only supports calls direct to Facebook contacts, but that will be upgraded soon, one assumes. If an iPhone or Android user wants to make free general calls, users will need to log in through the browser interface instead of placing calls directly from the mobile.

Still, using the mobile apps, users already can make Bobsled to Bobsled calls, cross-platform between Android and iOS, and leave voicemails that show up on Facebook contacts’ walls.

It’s also possible to record a voice message and leave that pinned to someone’s wall, rather than actually talk to them.

In effect it’s a clever way for T-Mobile to potentially get onto hundreds of thousands of iPhone home screens, despite being the only major US carrier not offering the new iPhone 4S. The immediate revenue for T-Mobile is nil, of course, but the potential for mind share and awareness at least is enhanced.

"Bobsled Calling" allows users to make high quality calls to Facebook friends and any number in the United States, Canada or Puerto Rico from anywhere a user has an Internet connection, even when they phone isn't available. Bobsled

To download the application on your smartphone or tablet device, click here.

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Why T-Mobile is Going Over the Top for Voice

It might be seen as a harbinger of things to come, but T-Mobile USA, lagging behind the leaders in the U.S. mobile market, wants to make its Bobsled voice application something users can engage with on any device or carrier, something that would have been a "problem" in earlier days.

Bobsled, originally supporting VoIP conversations between Facebook users, now also supports VoIP calling to telephone numbers.

If you wonder why T-Mobile USA is taking an action that will cannibalize its voice revenues, the answer probably is that T-Mobile USA sees that as an inevitability.

Informa Telecom & Media predicts that North American consumer use of services such as Skype and Google Talk already accounts for 20 percent of all voice activity in 2011.

By 2014, that figure is expected to rise to 40 percent. Messaging also is moving to over the top mechanisms. Some three trillion messages will be sent using over the top apps in 2011, growing to nine trillion messages in three years. By 2015, IP messaging will surpass traditional cellular messaging, Informa predicts.

T-Mobile USA likely assumes that it has less to lose from cannibalizing its voice minutes of use, than it has to gain by becoming an application provider relevant on iPhones and other smart phone devices.

Why T-Mobile is expanding Bobsled