Fring Allows iPhone 4 3G Video Calls to Other Phones over Skype. Skype Blocks Fring!
By: Hillel Fuld
One of the many disadvantages of the new and wildly successful iPhone 4 is the FaceTime scam. Why do I call it a scam? Quite simply because Apple is marketing it (quite brilliantly I might add) like it is something new. Not only has video calling been around for a decade, but phones released close to eight years ago did video calling a whole lot better than the iPhone 4. OK, maybe not better but they worked on 3G and you could call any 3g phone you wanted. The iPhone 4 allows video calls over Wifi only and only to other iPhone 4s. It never ceases to amaze me what Apple can get away with.
Enter Fring, a company who has always innovated in the instant messaging/VOIP calling space and enables video calling over Skype on the iPhone 4. That means video calls to all phones and over 3G. Huge announcement and serious FaceTime killer, right? Well, apparently many people thought so with the Skype traffic absolutely skyrocketing as soon as the new update was released. In fact, the numbers got so high, Fring had to put a limit in place to the amount of Skype calling that can be done via their app.
As soon as Fring was able to, they tried to reinstate Skype support for their users and were met with a shocking and uncharacteristic response from Skype. They were banned. No more Skype support in Fring? What about all those millions of Fring users? What about the ability to video call on the iPhone 4 to other phones? Skype does not seem to care too much about that and that sucks.
Skype issued an official response. Something along the lines of “Fring really blocked US and not us them”. I have to be honest, I am not expert on the topic of VOIP and Skype, but seems to me that the motive lays with Skype blocking Fring and not vice versa. What interest does Fring have to disable Skype? Seems kinda ridiculous to me, but at the end of the day, as Fring points out, Skype, the company on the cutting edge of open standards and openness in general is now actively blocking one of its competitors…
After all is said and done, Fring and Skype will fight it out in the best case scenario, the worst one being Skype just ignoring the issue, but the people that end up losing are us, the consumers. Fring enabled Skype calls from my mobile phone and recently enabled video calling as well… It was a great step to combat Apple in its ridiculous jail-like mentality, and ironically, it is being met with another dictator who is trying to silence the competition in the most cynical possible way. Not cool, Skype.
