Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Oh damn. I was feeling all good about getting the new iPhone until a short while ago. A bit of background is needed.

I have a contract at another carrier, called Base, and cancelled my contract there, which ends 17th of October 2008 now. I do want to port over my number from Base to T-Mobile though. There is a rule that the number portability can be requested 4 months before the end of the contract, 18th of July in my case. I thought i would be getting a temporary number at T-Mobile then, but as I have just learnt, this is not the case. I can order now, and they can request the number porting on the 18th, but I will only get t he iPhone and the new contract in October. I am not sure why I should order now then

There is a time limited pricing option for the iPhone introduction which might make me order the iPhone sooner but I am feeling a bit weird as I am sure that in 3 months a lot can happen and there might be some price changes again and other new options. I even called Base to see if they would not free up my number sooner, but that does not seem to work, which is another bad thing. The only thing I could do now is use my old number and get an iphone with that one, using the Base number through a Pre-Paid card, but that sounds like a really nutty idea.

Life is hard some times. No iPhone for me for another 3 months it seems. Good that my Parents gave me a gift-certificate for part of the price of the iPhone for my birthday a few weeks back. It will always be christmas until I check that now

Ok, I couldn’t resist anymore after this post on Techcrunch. It talks about the new app that Jajah has just released which is a kind of plugin for your mobile phone, or for my Nokia N70 at least. It simply reroutes my calls via Jajah, making international calling a lot cheaper. I already have a phone flatrate but this only applies for germany. I will have to turn it off while being in Germany and calling people in Germany. But to EU countries and the USA it costs me 69 cents per minute with Base and 15 cents per minute with Jajah. Now that’s nice.

Dear people of Jajah. It would be nice if I would be able to configure the plugin to where it applies. All of +49 should be off limits for the app because Base is just cheaper for me.

Update: Just had a chat with Frederik Hermann, who is currently at DEMO in the US and Marketing Manager for Jajah. When he called it was close to 1am his. After a short chat about the people we are both connected to on OpenBC, and general talk about Jajah, he quickly explained to me how the Jajah client behaves.

The thing is that all my worries are settled. In the main settings you can set your own international prefix, 49 for me. This means that for all numbers that are +49, the Jajah plugin will not do anything. Then there is a kind of include list in the settings. This routing table holds “+*” and “00*” as default settings, meaning that it will handle all calls (ex. those with country code from your own international settings) that look like the above. Very nice indeed. So if I would just like Jajah to handle my calls to certain numbers, I could do that.

Oh the mobile carriers will get pissed at this. But Jajah seems to be developing nicely, and have their development in Israel, who seem to be doing a nice job. As I heard now the founders are not really living in the US… mainly because they don’t live anywhere due to the amount of traveling to exotic countries Looking forward to seeing more from them. Thanks again to Frederik for taking the time late at night, from a conference none the less.

Update 2: Seem like Sarik Weber is going into a similar space. He is leaving OpenBC, having been their first employee, and is starting something in the mobile space around cheaper calls. See more here.

Update 3: Sarik Weber is starting a company called cellity, a least cost router for your mobile phone. Registered.

Technorati Tags: Base, Free Calls, Jajah, Mobility

If you get an error message of 3.0.10:80 in Opera Mini on your Nokia N70 with the german provider Base (meaning you use the ePlus network settings) you will have to go into your setup, then the extended setup via options and remove the proxy server. As long as you have that in there you will not be able to surf with the phone, at least that was the problem for me. Damn automatic settings.

Technorati Tags: Base, e-Plus, N70, Nokia, Settings, UMTS

When I first heard about the 25 EUR Base UMTS Internet Flatrate I was thrilled. Then I really complained because you needed a second SIM card to use it. Ever heard of Bluetooth and UMTS phones? I went as far as complaining to both the support line as well as their press people. In the end, one of their press representatives called, I threatened with the blog of course ;), and explained their view to me, which revolved around the fact that billing it on one card would be harder and that they really saw it as a replacement for internet at the home.

I was however reassured that they would be looking into it and only 3 months later I see a change. If you look at this page on base.de, you will see that the footnote changed, if you speak german. There is now the option to either have this on your normal SIM card or on a second one. Rock on! This is affordable always online! This is where the mobile internet has to move. Add stuff like Mabber, Moblogging via Flickr, SyncML, Bluetooth and lots of train travel and you are having something that the mobile internet can really be used to. Yeah, I am a big supporter of FON, but that is not, and will not be, available everywhere. This will. My second phone from T-Mobile still has two months to go on its included bandwidth plan but I am pretty sure to enable this base thing pretty soon. Thanks Base!

P.S.: VoIP is excluded, but you have to give them something

Technorati Tags: Base, Bluetooth, Flickr, GPRS, Mabber, Mobility, Moblogging, SyncML, UMTS