T@lkster: A New Voice 2.0 Company
The preferred attack point for cellular VoIP plays today seems to be disintermediating mobile long distance from the handset. For the last few weeks I’ve been playing with an alpha release of T@lkster, a new Voice 2.0 offering which does exactly that.
T@lkster’s promise is that you will be able to make inexpensive long distance calls from any mobile handset to anyplace in the world without downloading new software. Unlike Jajah, T@lkster allows the call to be originated from the handset (without a downloaded client) which is much less expensive in Europe. Unlike Rebtel, T@lkster requires no special numbers to be created and mapped. The service operates transparently. In addition, unlike either of the above services, T@lkster lets you terminate your calls on literally any client you can think of — IM, a PSTN handset, or VoIP. Moreover, it gathers presence information from your contacts IM accounts to show you whether or not the recipient might be available to take that call.
To use, you simply browse to an available contact and initiate a call. You can see each user’s online presence, and then choose to make a call to that user. The first photo below shows T@lkster running in the Blackberry 8700 window, with “available” presence indicated for Janice, and the T@lkster helpdesk, but not Andy or Howard. What you can’t see is that Janice is reachable either on MSN, or via her home or cell phone lines, while Andy’s contact record is set to reach him on either his Gizmo project number, or his GrandCentral number.Â
The second photo shows the two modes that T@lkster can operate in. You can have it perform a callback, the way that Jajah does, or have it initiate the call from your handset,as Rebtel requires.Â
  
T@lkster came out of stealth at the recent Voice 2.0 conference in Ottawa. After CEO James Wanless’ pitch, I had a chance to catch up with him and CTO Mark Gelman at the Voice 2.0 conference.  Gelman let it casually be known that one of the “hidden under the covers” features of T@lkster is a web services interface, allowing the T@lkster system to be driven from an application. That feature alone has tremendous potential, and the ability to make T@lkster into a true long tail player in the Voice 2.0 ecosystem.
This company has a lot of promise. Watch for the open beta coming soon. Their blog is at http://talkster.wordpress.com/.
October 18th, 2006 at 8:27 am
I feel the same. I think is one of the most promising services in the mobile VoIP scenario.
October 18th, 2006 at 8:44 am
i saw your post Luca. I think the biggest impact is going to be in europe. These VoIP on Mobile plays aren’t going to take off in the US, because most of the carriers don’t unbundle the LD minutes anymore. But here, the Web Services angle could be big!
October 18th, 2006 at 11:07 am
Its a great product
We gave a bunch of Cork Bloggers test accounts and demoed the service last night.
http://blog.roam4free.ie/shel-and-ricks-amazing-thai-tour
My only concern is the high wholesale termination cost to European mobiles, I think this could be actually huge in Asia where you have a very tech savvy population and mobile termination costs very similar to fixed termination costs.
October 18th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
[...] This story originally posted October 18 on Alec Saunders .Log. [...]
October 18th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
[...] Alec has a write-up on Talkster. The service might be of interest to Ken Camp, who doesn’t want to be forced to have more phone numbers, and to others who would sure love to save on LD if only it was practical for them to do so. Alec includes a couple of photos of the service in action–they appear to be web-page-driven user interace elemtents but I could be wrong. [...]
October 18th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
[...] Colleague Alec Saunders has a nice writeup this morning - [...]
October 19th, 2006 at 6:10 am
Alec - you think that the biggest impact of mobile VoIP is going to be in Europe? I am not so sure about this - wherever there is high cost of use of cellular voice services, then mobile VoIP has a clear advantage as infrastructure costs are much lower.
It is clear that Europe and US markets will have to operate on completely different tariffing models; in Europe the model is calling party pays and calls to cellular numbers are expensive, in N America the called party pays (mainly) for the call and mobile numbers are overlaid on the normal geographic numbering scheme. However, in both markets the total cost (whether paid by caller or callee) is still much much higher than calls to wireline phones - and it is this cost differential that makes mobile VoIP such a viable commercial proposition.
By embedding the mobile VoIP capability into a cellular handset, users can enjoy the best of both transmission means (cellular and internet). One player that has done an excellent job of this (using WiFi capable Nokia handsets) is Truphone ( http://www.truphone.com ) Truphone has been release (in beta) in UK and US and offers different business models for each market.
Whilst it is still early days for mobile VoIP, the writing IS on the wall - the large MNOs honeymoon period where they have been able to extract extortionately high revenues from cellular customers is drawing to a close, driven principally by the widespread availability of cheap, high bandwith internet services with wireless local distribution.
If I had Vodafone shares, I would probably be selling them now!
October 19th, 2006 at 6:48 am
James — perhaps I should have said that differently. I don’t believe T@lkster will gain a large following in the USA because it requires you to use minutes on your handset, and (at least in the USA) these are generally nationwide minutes. Certainly here in Canada, the value proposition for T@lkster will be compelling.
Truphone, as you point out, has the potential to be impactful globally. I have yet to get my hands on a Nokia handset with WiFi that supports TruPhone (they don’t support the N91 at this time) but rest assured, when I have one, I will write about it.
October 19th, 2006 at 11:31 am
globedialer.com is already doing this…
October 19th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Thanks for the tip, Bingo!
October 20th, 2006 at 6:46 am
[...] Leemos en VoipNovatos la aparición de un nuevo servicio de Voz sobre IP: Talkster. Este es un servicio todavÃa en pruebas que parece prometer mucho o simplemente vender mucho humo según la revolución que plantean en su blog. Una inicitativa más en la explosión de la VoIP que estamos viviendo. [...]
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:25 pm
[...] I’ve mentioned T@lkster (Talkster is much friendly in my view, and how I’ll type it more frequently) a couple of times. First in T@lkster - Are they Me Too or Voice 2.0? Maybe another Voice 2.0 Entrant in the Game here, I took a somewhat dim view triggered by some nice comments from Alec Saunders in T@lkster: A New Voice 2.0 Company. I wasn’t terribly impressed by what little I could see. But they responded quickly and I noted their responsiveness in How a Startup Shows they “Get Itâ€. [...]
October 23rd, 2006 at 5:25 pm
[...] I’ve mentioned T@lkster (Talkster is much friendly in my view, and how I’ll type it more frequently) a couple of times. First in T@lkster - Are they Me Too or Voice 2.0? Maybe another Voice 2.0 Entrant in the Game here, I took a somewhat dim view triggered by some nice comments from Alec Saunders in T@lkster: A New Voice 2.0 Company. I wasn’t terribly impressed by what little I could see. But they responded quickly and I noted their responsiveness in How a Startup Shows they “Get Itâ€. [...]
October 23rd, 2006 at 8:24 pm
[...] I’ve mentioned T@lkster (Talkster is much friendly in my view, and how I’ll type it more frequently) a couple of times. First in T@lkster - Are they Me Too or Voice 2.0? Maybe another Voice 2.0 Entrant in the Game here, I took a somewhat dim view triggered by some nice comments from Alec Saunders in T@lkster: A New Voice 2.0 Company. I wasn’t terribly impressed by what little I could see. But they responded quickly and I noted their responsiveness in How a Startup Shows they “Get Itâ€. [...]
October 24th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
[...] Our positive news streak came to an end after blogger (and iotum CEO) Alec Saunders wrote a great piece about Talkster, then invited his colleagues at other blogs to likewise post stories about their service. Many of these bloggers echoed Alec’s sentiment. Two did not. [...]
November 6th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Alec\’s Talkster Review…
it\’s so new that you\’ll have to wait until the beta release before you can try it yourself…
December 6th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
[...] Talkster.I haven’t written about Talkster for technical reasons, but loads of other VoIP bloggers have. It’s VoIM on mobile phones, with some additional exciting upcoming features. Though I’m still waiting for that followup interview, James [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 1:34 am
[...] Alec Saunders was an early beta tester of Talkster - read about his experience here. [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 2:26 am
[...] Alec Saunders was an early beta tester of Talkster - read about his experience here. [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 5:34 am
[...] Talksterã¯å¤§ä¼æ¥å‘ã‘ã§ã‚ã‚‹ã“ã¨ã‚’大ããªå·®åˆ¥åŒ–è¦å› ã§ã‚ã‚‹ã¨ã—ã¦ã„る。コンシューマーよりも大ä¼æ¥ã«é©ã—ã¦ã„ã‚‹ç†ç”±ã‚’æ£ã™ã“ã¨ã¯ã§ããªã‹ã£ãŸãŒã€ 2007å¹´ã«ã¯ä¼æ¥å‘ã‘ã®æ©Ÿèƒ½ãŒè¿½åŠ ã•ã‚Œã‚‹ã“ã¨ã¯ç¢ºèªã—ãŸã€‚一方ã€ãƒ™ãƒ¼ã‚¿ç‰ˆã§ã¯ã‚³ã‚¢ã‚µãƒ¼ãƒ“スã®è€ä¹…テストãŒè¡Œã‚る予定。Alec Saundersã¯Talksterã®æ—©ãã‹ã‚‰ã®ãƒ™ãƒ¼ã‚¿ãƒ†ã‚¹ã‚¿ãƒ¼ã§ã€å½¼ã®ä½“験ã¯ã“ã“ã§èªã‚る。 [...]
December 13th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
[...] You may have already read about Talkster elsewhere, so instead of repeating that Talkster is a cool mobile-to-VoIM voice service, I’ll quickly synopsize what James told me about what’s happening with the company. [...]
October 27th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
This is not working.
Only for 10 sec, and only after a lot of work !!!!!!!!
October 27th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Working for ONLY 10 sec