When it was only rumors, it was hard to know what to say regarding the Truphone vs. T-mobile situation. Now that Infoworld reports a T-Mobile spokesman officially stating that T-Mobile is not accepting calls from Truphone until the two companies come to an agreement regarding termination fees, I feel more comfortable chiming in.
It still seems like a bit of he said/she said, but it is an interesting and potentially important story to follow for the industry. First, it’s a score for Truphone that they made it to T-mobile’s radar in the first place. That’s kind of like how they say getting sued is the first sign that you’ve made the big-time.
T-Mobile is making the case that because Truphone hasn’t built a network, they should not receive termination fees. However, such a claim is essentially arbitrary. Why Truphone? Why now? Why should T-mobile even be allowed to not route calls their customers are trying to complete? Doesn’t this have a restraint of trade aspect to it? Since when can a telco be so arbitrary?
It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I recently moved from Vodafone to T-Mobile. Clearly my account is straight moving back to either Vodafone, O2, Orange or 3. Great a customer has a choice. 😉 I LOVE truphone and will never give up using it! It has the best call quality of any service I have used in the Voice over IP arena.