Fixed mobile convergence can be promoted and stopped effectively by varying price plans.
Mobile carriers will have to earn money somewhere. Mobile-to-mobile calls within the same network will increasingly be fixed price. With the VOIP wifi service, the user and phone will be able to select between several possible carriers of the voice call when ‘crossing operators’. Although carriers can fight this temporarily with banning VOIP functionality on phones, the major trend cannot be held back.
I’ve been looking for some hardware for an embedded linux project. Wanted to build a device for the cabin that can post webcam pictures on the web of how much snow there is… had to be a low powered unit as the cabin only has solar power.
I came across gumstix.com who make really low powered hardware for embedded linux. They even have en expansion board with a Siemens GSM unit on it and a display one can hook on. So now it’s really easy to make your own phone. Put some trolltech software on it and you have your own greenphone.
It makes me wonder which features I would have liked to have on my ideal phone. I have the N95 now, which is great, but I am as Clayton Christensen may have put it ‘overserved’. I wonder what would really be the perfect features if I could make my own. I think less features than N95, but maybe some additional ones…
Btw: Turns out someone has done this already (obviously). Read about it on www.surjpatel.com and www.opencellphone.org