By Sharla Sikes

Now here’s some intense rivalry for you. In the United Kingdom, T-Mobile and Truphone  are facing off over Truphone’s planned commercial calling service. T-Mobile has blocked access for its users to call a range of numbers that Truphone will dedicate to a commercial service.

“This amounts to T-Mobile being able to veto a new entrant into the market,” said James Tagg, chief executive of Truphone, accusing T-Mobile of abusing its power. “This would put telephony back 100 years, to a time when interconnections were not assured.”

Not so, according to T-Mobile; the mobile phone giant says it is simply still negotiating the price of calls to Truphone’s commercial numbers.

At issue are the rates operators can charge for interconnection to their numbers. The Office of Communications has published rates, and fees must be “fair and reasonable” and “transparent.” These rates, however, only apply to mobile networks, and the door is open for mobile providers to create policy concerning other providers.

T-Mobile argues that Truphone doesn’t have the costs it does, and therefore doesn’t have grounds to charge the same fees—which is what the VoIP provider has asked for.

Vodaphone has also attempted to block Truphone’s commercial numbers.

Is this just another face to the intense rivalry between mobile phone providers and VoIP services? With far less overhead, VoIP may loom as a giant threat to cellular phone companies—who certainly have control over the connectivity.

“Vodafone believes that VoIP-over-mobile is not yet a mature service proposition as it does not have guaranteed quality of service, and would fall short of the customer experience demanded of any service we launch,” a statement from Vodafone says of the Vodafone-vs.-Truphone dispute.

Some companies have begun disabling the VoIP capabilities of the phones they ship to customers.

Where will the debate go next? It is increasingly clear that the customers want the lower-cost VoIP services available over their mobile phones. With mobile phone providers feeling threatened by VoIP “upstarts” and blocking their services, VoIP providers may have to get creative.

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