Global Neighbourhoods

Win a free ticket to TechCrunchh40

    [Pat Phelan (l) & Irish wannabee companion.  Photo by Paula Israel]

My friend and occasional client Pat Phelan at Roam4Free is just giving it away.

The  first-everTechCrunch40 conference in the SF Palace Hotel is fast approaching and is likely to sell out, even though tickets are $2500 a pop. Pat is launching is long-awaited products at the conference and I guess he wants as many supporters as he can get.  I'll be there and I'm one of them.

Not only is Pat trying to get people to talk internationally nearly for free, but now he's giving away one free pass to the conference. All you gotta do is tell Pat a story.

It figures.  He's Irish and he loves a good story. BTW, I'm pretty good at story-telling and I know what Pat likes pretty often.  For a small fee, I'd be happy to help you write to Pat on why you should get the free ticket. And you can afford it, with the money you will save if you win.

Google Acquires GrandCentral

Through Pat Phelan, I also learned that Google has acquired the very promising startup company GrandCentral Communications, a VOIP player that let's you integrate and manage all your phone numbers. In the VOIP community, many observers had tagged GrandCantral as the most promising of the very promising current class of VOIP player.

Google does it again. While other big companies create their own business barriers or spread peanut butter too thin, Google is watching and cherry picking the best and the brightest of entrepreneurial efforts.

Andy Sernovitz Gives Vonage the Customer Relations Slimeball Award

Is Vonage learning relationship marketing from Pay Per Post? Nope.  They have lowered the bar further that PPP has yet to contrive. Apparently Andy listed 18 friends in a one-time referral program back in 2004.

Since then, Andy writes, "Vonage crossed all lines of good taste, privacy, and ethics.  They send a mass email to my friends -- USING MY NAME -- in a shameless promotion.  In fact, my name was used in the email 3 times, as if I had endorsed the message and gave permission to use my friends' names.

Why is it that half of the really ugly marketing ethic violations stories I know, seem to involve telephony companies?

Technorati Tags: andy semovitz, vonageAndy Sem

The resurrection of AllFreeCalls

Now it's called Yak4ever, which is how long they expect the service to last.

Here, according to Pat Phelan, is how the service, resurrected from the TechCrunch Deadpool works:

Go to Yak4ever or our old site and register your phone number along with those of ten of your friends, allocate each friend a number (1-10), your numbers will be registered which may take up to 24hrs. We will email you your access number and your friends short code immediately.

A little background: AllFreeCalls started several months ago, giving US users unlimited free international calls. They were doing this by basing the service in Iowa, where they were among a few resourceful companies taking advantage of a rural phone connectivity subsidy service, one of the few times that little guys could use the law to the advantage of themselves and their customers.

The incumbents, particularly AT&T did not like this and litigation and legislation are often the primary tools of large incumbents. In this case, AT&T, using their roomful of lawyers, filed suits asking for a sum about equal to the Irish GNP.  Right or wrong, the legal costs  to a tiny startup like Pat's Cubic  Telecom  would have  choked David to death before ever getting to see who customers in the market preferred (free v. ripoff rates).

Pat is just about the most tenacious entrepreneur I've ever met. He decided to fight another day. He changed the location of the service and just how it works. He has lawyers who feel the new case is rock solid and he is offering you the chance to Yack Forever to ten international pals.

I think its an offer you cannot refuse.

Pat Phelan is looking for a Bizdev ace

My pal Pat Phelan has landed $1.5 in investment dollars and is starting to invest it in talent. He just put up a call for a BizDev ace and if you have the talent, I can vouch for both the integrity of the team and the acumen of the business plan. The pay starts at $135,000 USD and you'll probably have to live in the People's republic of Cork, where it goes a bit further than in California.

Maybe next, he'll start re-engaging some of his California social media and communications consultants.  I'm sitting by the phone, Pat ole buddy.

Skype goes legal on a blogger; blogger edges onto another blogger's brand.

Through Pat Phelan, I've learned that popular blogger Jan Geirnet has taken down  two blogs skype-gadgets and skype-watch to comply with a legal letter from Skype.

While Pat feels outrage over Skype's action, I feel mere disappointment. Corporate attorneys write this sort of letter all the time under the name of copyright protection. In the past I have been told the corporations need to send such letters even when they do not intend to enforce a cease and desist or they can lost their copyrights.

My disappointment comes that Skype has now reached the height and weight where they find it necessary to act like any other major corporate entity.

Jan lost a good share of my sympathy by choosing  Voip-watch.com for his new blog name.  This is way-too-close to Andy Abramson's highly regarded  Voip watch. Unlike Skpe, I doubt Andy will threaten litigation. but if you ask me, he has every reason to be very pissed off and I think the less of Jan for this latter decision.

Free Phone Information at 800 GOOG 411

Through Convoq's Chris Herot, I was pointed to a new Google free automated phone information service, at least for business numbers. It even has a neat SMS feature. The number to call: 800 GOOG 411.

You may not realize it, but every time you dial information on your cell phone you are being charged between $1 and 1.25. The only hint that this is happening is when the service offers to connect you "at no additional charge." How nice of them.

I spend maybe $200 a year, using Cingular EasyConnect services while driving. Thanks Google.

AT&T's Dwarf Stomping in Iowa

Alec Saunders writes this morning, that he loves a good fight and chronicles the recent events of AT&T and it's tag team of steroid-puffed carriers, against an Iowa-based upstart, FreeConferenceCall.com, whose name tells you exactly what they are trying to to.

Alec provides a good narrative. As an associate of AllFreeCalls, another temporarily dormant Iowa-based company, I am well-acquainted with this  dustup of the incumbent Goliaths assaulting the agile Davids.

In one corner you have these big monoliths using the financial stockpiles they've amassed by ripping off customers who make phone calls.  On the other, you have  small companies, taking advantage of legal anomalies to give people the same quality phone service at either extremely low price or no  price at all.

The Goliaths use their traditional weapons of litigation and legislation. They use the litigation to pin the little guys down onto the mats long enough to get legislation that will ban what is currently legal and in the public interest.

In the long run, new companies offering new services at better prices may win, because they are more agile and because they are real crowd pleasers once the crowd sees them in action.

But in these early rounds, it looks like AT&T is having it's way,using these weapons to crush, mutilate and destroy. Sometimes they succeed.  Sometimes they don't.

In the case of AT&T and those in their corner, it may be a longer, bloodier fight than they think.

Technorati Tags: ATT, freeconferencecalls, allfreecalls

Telco Incumbents, Challengers and Trojan Ducks

[Walt Mossberg interviews AT&T Top Lobbyist James Ciccioni at Tech Policy Summit]

This was a telco kind of week for me. On Monday I spent a few hours at the Tech Policy Summit, a well-run event, where I got to see several of my friends from the traditional media. However, I found myself muttering in the hallways after listening to senior executives from Verizon and AT&T explain very logically why they had both the power and the right to restrict what connects to their lines--even if it screws the customer in both terms of costs and functionality.

[Iotum's Alec Saunder's flexes his challenger's muscles.]

Then Wednesday night, I had the great pleasure of joining a blogger dinner that VOIP maven Andy Abramson assembled in connection with eTEL, an O'Reilly event  focused on emerging telephony. Andy had assembled some of the risingest stars in a rising industry segment, top folk from companies like Grand Central, Roam4Free, Talk Plus, and as shown above Alec Saunders, who should follow my lead an pout the words "nice guy" on his business card. This is a baby industry and the Telco giants are blissfully ignoring these guys so far.  Big mistake.  Andy had assembled a roomful of disruptors. Wednesday night it was Indian Food in a nice Burlingame, CA restaurant.  Tomorrow, it will be better functionality at lower rates for people all over the world, while incumbents like AT&T and Verizon run to the government nearest them and try to make us eat continue to eat their overpriced and stale cake.

[2 Irish guys, some would say we are telephony revolutionaries. The incumbents would say we are just revolting.]

But the capper for me was last night's dinner with just Pat Phelan, whose Cubic Telecom Group has launched Roam4Free and AllFreeCalls. It's hard for me to realize I first met Pat only eight months ago. he has become such a good buddy.  During these eight months, I've done a bit of work for him, but mostly I have learned about this nascent, promising new industry by listening to his passion.  I have watched him as he has zigged and zagged with passion and frustration toward his dream of giving people everywhere--and on all economic levels-extremely inexpensive telco services.

Last night, I learned and for the first time, really understood just how well all the pieces involved in making his vision more reality than hallucination. Pat is getting his ducks lined up very rapidly. Don't tell the incumbents that they are Trojan Ducks. 

AllFreeCalls adds Antartica and 8 more countries

Pat Phelan has announced AllFreeCalls is available in eight additional countries, plus Antartica, which is a very cool place--but it's a continent and not a country.

Pat says that his goal is to make free calls avialbe in all countries and you can expect him to keep announcing new service in more places about once every week.

I'm still waiting to get a Roam4Free SIM card that let's me call Pat cheaply from a cell phone so I can tell him he needs to pay his fabulous American consultants more money.


Technorati Tags: patphelan, allfreecalls

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