Typically, when people ask me “What was <some exotic place> like?”, I have to answer that it looked like an airport, taxi ride, hotel room, and an exhibition center.  This was my first trip to Barcelona, and my take was that the airport, taxi ride, and hotel room were all pretty much what you would expect.  The exhibition center, on the other hand, was something really special. 

While the picture here doesn’t do it justice, the Fira Barcelona is set up on top of a hill in the middle of a bunch of beautiful old buildings.  This is the upper courtyard, which is a decent walk from the main exhibition halls.  The mobile application hall was up here, as well as, hospitality suites and restaurants.  The view looking back downhill was really nice, providing a view of the city as a backdrop.

Walking around this beautiful mixture of old and new must have focused my mind on the challenges of blending the old and new together.  All too often, in the rush to make amazing new things, we abandon perfectly useful older things.  So that was the mindset that I took into Mobile World Congress, and I saw that same dynamic being played out in many of the big announcements being made at the show. 

Microsoft announced Windows Phone 7.  It is a new redesign of their mobile platform, but they have done a pretty good job of making some tough choices about what is worth keeping and building on and what needs to be torn down.  XBox and Zune connectivity is there,  Windows Mobile 6.5 and other false starts didn’t make the cut.  They may have finally gotten it right and realized that with mobile, less is more. 

Much of the rest of the show seemed to center on finding the best ways to combine the old and new technologies.  Everyone is trying to figure out the challenge of how to move from the safe and profitable wireless voice world into an exploding wireless data market where revenues are not going to come anywhere close to keeping pace with bandwidth requirements. Verizon and Skype announced a strategic partnership that combines the Verizon Wireless voice network with the Skype application.  

I use Skype most often for international communications.  It works and is easy to use.  I find Skype to be a bit ahead of its competition with new features.  They do a good job of presenting a simple interface that you can use for voice, IM, or video conferencing.  In Enterprise technology we call it UC, which stands for Unified Communications.  Skype does that, and it does it pretty well. It has presence, so that you can see when people are available. If they aren’t, you can leave messages that the person will get later.

I used Skype while my son was travelling across Europe last summer.  He was  staying in different hostels in different countries and was “playing it by ear”.  Skype allowed him to stay in touch.  As a parent, it was a joy to see his face and let him see everyone (even the dogs) at home. 

Here is how I understand the partnership.  Skype calls will be carried over the Verizon Wireless voice network, not the data network.  That makes sense to me.  The Verizon Wireless network is already optimized for voice service.   The calls will be converted over to Skype VoIP when they leave the Verizon Wireless network in order to travel across the public internet. So now, if you are talking to someone on Skype, they don’t count as minutes on your Verizon Wireless plan. If you want to jump off the Skype network, you can use Skype Out to call international phones at their rates.

The Skype application will be available to the BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8530, Curve 8330, and BlackBerry 8830 World Edition; and the Motorola Droid and Devour; and the HTC Eris.

Industry reaction to the announcement has been interesting.  Quite a few people have focused on the “changing of the guard” from wireless to VoIP.  Others have focused on telco vs. internet types of competition.  Still others focused on who got the better end of the deal.  Given that all of these dynamics were at work, what was most interesting to me was the fact that Skype and Verizon were able to successfully negotiate an agreement that added value to their consumers and to each other.  It isn’t easy.

I look at the Verizon Wireless / Skype partnership as basically adding their networks to each other’s to create a more powerful network for all of their users. Given today’s technical, business, and regulatory environments, both companies should be recognized for taking a step forward for their users.