IN TECHNOLOGY the next big thing usually starts small and scrappy. Incumbents ignore it, trapped in their ways of doing things, until it is too late. This is what happened with Skype. Telecoms carriers at first dismissed the internet-telephony service, but it has taken a chunk of their most profitable business: last year users made 248 billion minutes of international calls on Skype, compared with 569 billion minutes on conventional networks, according to TeleGeography, a market-research firm.
A string of wireless startups are hoping to trigger a similar disruption. Their bet is that over the next few years mobile phones will switch to sending most calls, texts and data via Wi-Fi hotspots, relegating the cellular network to being a mere backup. If this eventuality comes to pass, it could change the economics of the industry and cut users’ bills drastically.
Going “Wi-Fi first”, as the concept is called, was pioneered in 2012 by Free, a French mobile operator, to fill the gaps in its cellular network. The idea has since been refined by three American startups: Republic Wireless, Scratch Wireless and FreedomPop. The...
from The Economist: Business http://ift.tt/1G7a24P
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