Cherry, The Mobile Operator That DoesnÂ’t Care Whether YouÂ’re On Wi-Fi Or
Not
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/cherry-the-mobile-operator-that-doesnt-
care-whether-youre-on-wi-fi-or-not/
The chances of me being genuinely amazed at something I see a Belgian tech
company achieve are rather slim. But occasionally, it happens. Last week I
went to local entrepreneur meetup BetaGroup and saw five startups pitch
their stuff to the 200-person audience.
The last one to get its five minutes of fame was Cherry, a new mobile
operator that promised to “revolutionize the telecom world”. Needless to
say, I was as curious as I was skeptical.
Then the companyÂ’s CEO got up on stage, introduced himself, took out his
Nokia smartphone, called some random guy in the audience and had him call
him back on his phone afterwards. Projecting his mobile phone screen on a
bigger screen for everyone to see, he demonstrated how he didnÂ’t need to
launch an application and just browsed his contact list to call the other
person. Standard functionality, sure, but the cool part of it was the fact
that the phone was lacking the presence of a SIM card, which is supposed to
identify you as a subscriber of a telephony service.
I was intrigued. By now youÂ’ll have guessed that the calling was done over
Wi-Fi, which I suppose isnÂ’t really unique even if it made me wonder how
they did it without launching a third-party app like Skype. Looking to learn
more, I went to their official coming-out event the evening after, when they
presented the newly founded company to a host of local geeks in more detail,
giving them the chance to beta-test the service for a couple of weeks to
iron out bugs before launching publicly.
HereÂ’s how it works: Cherry – which is essentially an MVNO – pre-installs
software (so yes, in the demo there was actually an application running in
the background) on smartphones which it will sell as a packaged product,
starting with a Symbian version for Nokia E-Series phones and expanding to
other platforms later. Once activated, Cherry lets you call your contacts
either over Wi-Fi or the GSM network when you insert a SIM card. Take out
the card, and you can only call over a wireless Internet connection.
The funky part? Cherry automatically switches you from one to the other.
This process, called a handover, can seriously cut into your current calling
and roaming costs when youÂ’re a frequent traveler or on the road often, and
it doesnÂ’t even require you to change numbers. You could easily dial your
office number from your home over Wi-Fi, leave the house and have the
software automatically have Cherry switch you over to a carrierÂ’s cellular
network once youÂ’re out of range. ThereÂ’s no interruption of service during
the handover, which means you wonÂ’t even notice – until you receive your
bill, since itÂ’s obviously cheaper to call over Wi-Fi than the GSM network.
Please correct me if IÂ’m wrong, but I think this automatic handover is a
quite unique value proposition.
I did a short interview with Cherry CEO Bernard Noël De Burlin and Telco
Service Manager aka mobile guru Davy Van De Moere after the event (apologies
for the abrupt ending, my FlipÂ’s batteries ran out of juice).
And just in case you donÂ’t have a couple of minutes to watch the video, let
me save you the trouble of asking: support for iPhone and Android are on the
top of their list and a Windows Mobile-compatible version should be
available soon.
(Full disclosure: the company gave me a Nokia E51 and free calling minutes
so I could try out the service under normal circumstances on a daily basis.
I need to return or pay for the phone end of August 2009.)
