3G. Wireless Communication Solutions

MINO Wireless, CA-based mobile services company, has announced a new mobile application for making international calls from Blackberry phones. Users can call any phone worldwide at very low rates.

MINO began selling its Blackberry application on Handango (www.handango.com) in May, and in the first four weeks several thousand Blackberry users have downloaded the MINO Java application, which takes only two minutes to download and install and making low-cost international calls, without dialing access numbers and PIN numbers like with calling cards.

Users can dial direct from their contact lists after they install the MINO application and pay very low international calling rates. Blackberry users who can’t download a Java application can still use MINO by pointing their WAP browsers to getmino.com.

MINO opened its service in early 2006 and has signed up over 40,000 users in more than 50 countries in a few months. “When we looked at the early adopters of our service, we found that Blackberry was the most popular device among them,” said CEO Jing Liu.

Mobile phone is the natural device for making international calls, but if users want reasonable cost, they are not likely to use their mobile phone to make international calls. Since Blackberry users already have an Internet plan for emailing, they can get the low cost and convenience of calling from PC’s and VoIP phones on their Blackberry device with MINO.

MINO Wireless was founded in 2004 and has been developing the technology to connect mobile phones to the Voice-Over-IP infrastructure for two years.

For more: Blackberry by MINO

Skype Wi-Fi VoIP phones already announced by four companies (SMC, Belkin, Netgear, Edge-Core), Skype is working with other manufacturers to produce dual-mode phones for later this year.

Skype current parnters for these GSM/ WiFi dual-mode phones include Nokia and Motorola. One of the issues still to be worked out is whether the dual-mode phones will be released SIM-free, or whether they’ll be able to work out deals with cellular providers. As this sort of Skype experience would be more seamless than some of the current efforts to run Skype on smart phones, including PDAs such as Palm. The key breakthrough is that they could also connect to a mobile network at other times.

This might have been a reference to mobile network 3, which at the end of this year will launch a “specific Skype service” allowing users to call other Skype users for free through their 3 handsets. However, 3’s service will be based through its 3G handsets rather than Wi-Fi, and will probably involve a monthly charge for the service.

While GSM isn’t going to be to everyone’s liking, this is the kind of step forward that is likely to catapult Skype to the top of the VoIP market share, regardless of service category, and help them earn their keep. (Remember that eBay purchased Skype for US$2.6 billion.) Hopefully they’ll be following up with similar announcements for other types of cellular networks.

More detail at Silicon.com