No, that’s not a spelling mistake….

To elaborate – recently, in order to get my Three price plan over to 1Gb Data over Bluetooth modem (Mobile Broadband Lite), I had to change from X-Series silver to a non- X-series add-on. As a rule, this was not a problem, as I didn’t really use much in the way of X-series facilities (i.e. podcasts, youtube, etc etc). However, I did use Skype. Not a lot; but it was handy to have it when I needed it.

Anyway, the benefits that the Mobile Broadband Lite brought me outweighted losing Skype. Today, I came across a nice little app called ‘Fring’ (http://www.fring.com/). This wonderful little app allows you to use Skype, Google Talk, MSN, SIP, ICQ and Twitter, all on one client. The benefits of all this are obvious, but how well does it work in practice?

I fired it up and made a few test calls. The first were the obvious calls to the Skype test service and the Fring test service. Both worked fine, though the Skype call did break up a little, but not sure if that was a problem with signal strength. NEx came calls to other skype users, which again seemed to work ok, but were a little broken up. Whether this would be an issue in practice (i.e. enough to stop you using it), I will have to see. I then made some calls to landlines from Skype (via my SkypeOut credit). Again, it seemed ok. You can also chat via Skype, as well as being able to use this at the same time as your Mac or PC based Skype client (it sends a little intro message to the person you’re chatting with to tell them you’re on your mobile and cant type quickly or recieve files or video).

The only real disadvantage of this over the Three Skype service is that the voice to packet gateway is on your handset, rather that at the Three end. This means that in bad 3G Signal areas, you wont be able to call out, as it’s not a voice call as it was with Three. The tradeoff may be worth it though, as being able to call internationally on my mobile for about a penny a minute definitely is enticing…

All in all, it seems very interesting. I’m going to play with it over the next few weeks and report back on my experiences. Stay tuned.