Mobile Phone Business Deal - the secret to the best deal

The first step towards getting the best mobile phone business deal is to shop around for an unlocked WiFi cell phone and ignore offers of free mobile phones from the carriers. As we all know, there is nothing "free" about those handsets. We pay for them several times over during the term of a contract.

The key to the best mobile phone business deal is Voice over WiFi (VoWiF). The mobile phone carriers have identified it as a threat. Their concern is that subscribers will discover its elegance and simplicity, not to mention the cost savings. In the same way as VoIP phone systems were responsible for the wire line carriers losing millions of subscribers, VoWiFi threatens the mobile phone carriers ability to charge a premium for a cell phone call.

The mobile phone carriers have good reason to be concerned about the potential impact of VoWiFi on their profitability. Their concern is such that the handset manufacturers are being discouraged from releasing devices that include WiFi chips. For example, China Mobile which is the largest mobile phone company in the world, negotiated aggressively for an iPhone 3G that had neither WiFi nor 3G. Nokia met the same demand and released a version of the 5800 XpressMusic into the Chinese market without WiFi or 3G. But it's not only in China that the carriers are using their muscle. The Blackberry Storm or "iPhone Killer" was released to the market through Verizon and Vodafone sans WiFi. Evidently RIM was persuaded to disarm the "Killer."

VoWiFi is also referred to as mobile VoIP. It's the ability to make and receive phone calls using a WiFi enabled handset. There is no requirement to sit in front of a computer to make a call, but the user has to be within 300 metres of an Internet connected WiFi access point. That may sound restrictive, but WiFi networks have become ubiquitous over recent years and most of spend at least 60% of our time within the range of at least one network.

The potential of VoWiFi to deliver a viable alternative to existing mobile phone networks has been identified by dozens of innovative private companies including: Fring, DeFi, Truphone, SiPGate, Gizmo5, Skype ... Each successive product launch increases the viability and credibility of VoWiFi as an alternative to the traditional mobile phone business deal.

WiFi mobile phones are an especially attractive option for business people who need to travel overseas regularly. International roaming charges don't apply to their calls and call rates are small fraction of those levied by the cell phone carriers.

But getting the best mobile phone business deal involves more than just cheap voice calls. It's also about being able to upload and download "data" without incurring penalty charges for breaching a cap. It is an issue because business phone users are upgrading their cell phones to smartphones with WiFi such as the iPhone. They are using them instead of laptops when they travel inter-state or overseas. They are used to access email and up-load / down-load files as well as synchronize with other devices for backup and recovery purposes.

Unfortunately there are gaps in WiFi coverage that necessitate buying a SIM card for those rare occassions when no signal can be located. As more people discover the secret of the best mobile phone business deal those occassions will become less frequent.

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