Truphone, is it the new MVNO 2.0

Mobile VoIP is definitely changing the game. Truphone announced today that they raised £16.5m ($32.7m) of Series B venture capital funding. So far, truphone has raised close to 60 million dollars. That’s a lot of money for Mobile VoIP. I think truphone has a bigger strategy than cheap Mobile VoIP calling. They recently acquired SIM4travel . With this acquisition, they want to get into low cost GSM calling game. From their press release, it’s clear that they have already built a huge network of SIP gateways, with SIM4travel and additional partnership with some operators; they can become a virtual MVNO for those users that want cheap/free voice and SMS messaging. Of course, in future they want to support lot more Voice 2.0 applications.

Here is the interesting piece from their press release:

“We aim to provide ultimate price and convenience, wherever you are. One world, one SIM,” commented James Tagg, Truphone’s CEO. “Beyond that, as a ‘Voice 2.0’ company we can start to develop and introduce new internet-based features and applications that give customers a richer mobile experience.”

The company has developed a carrier-grade, global operator infrastructure including a global network of SIP gateways, a Nokia Siemens Networks mobile network Home Location Register (HLR) and a GSM identifier. The infrastructure is capable of supporting 40 million customers worldwide.

This is all enabled by a series of global agreements with PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network) and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) providers.

“One world One SIM”, Interesting! I still feel Mobile VoIP is all about cheap/free voice and SMS messaging. I don’t see any great innovation in this technology. We already have so many players (fring, mig33, Skype etc) in this arena. Om Malik also echo’s my feeling.