Imagine a wireless service that allows you to make unlimited calls, anywhere, for $7.95 a month a fraction of the typical cell phone bill.
Boingo Wireless Inc. has a plan. The Santa Monica-based operator of wireless Internet “hotspots” has struck a deal with Luxemburg-based Skype Technologies S.A., the free Internet phone service.
Boingo wants to turn its worldwide assemblage of hotspots into phone-spots, offering not just computer access to the Internet but voice access too.
Skype allows users to make “phone calls” from their home computer to a friend’s computer for free, through Internet connections called voice over Internet protocol.
The new service, called “Skype Zone,” allows users to make phone calls through their laptops on the Boingo network for $7.95 a month.
(Boingo’s existing subscribers pay $21.95 a month for a broader set of services, including Internet surfing, instant messaging, music streaming and e-mail. They can use Skype for no additional charge.)
The companies will co-market their products and share in the revenues generated by the new service.
Skype’s founders, Niklas Zennstr & #246;m and Janus Friis, were behind Kazaa, the free peer-to-peer file-sharing program that’s been vilified by the recording and entertainment industry for illegal file sharing. But the pair’s current venture has all the free features and none of the guilt of Kazaa.
Over the past two years, Skype has gained 45 million subscribers worldwide, and its free software has been downloaded more than 130 million times.
The company also offers a paid version, Skype Out, that allows 1.5 million subscribers to make computer-to-phone calls for about 2 cents per minute.
Founded by Sky Dayton of EarthLink Inc. fame, Boingo has a network of 18,000 hotspots worldwide in airports, hotels, stores and cafes.
As Skype makes agreements with other hotspot operators, they will be brought into the Boingo network, said Scott Miller, director of retail services for Boingo. The next step is extending the service from laptop computers to a new crop of devices coming out with Wi-Fi chips: cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, and cameras.
“Skype is a much bigger step forward for us,” he said.
Dueling Stamps
Two Google Inc. board members are funding a custom printing company, Zazzle Inc., that’s aimed squarely at the personalized stamp franchise of Santa Monica-based Stamps.com Inc.
Palo Alto-based Zazzle, funded with $16 million from Silicon Valley venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo Ventures, has a content library with more than 500,000 images, including Walt Disney Co. characters. They can be used for customized T-shirts, posters and, thanks to a partnership with office-mail powerhouse Pitney Bowes Inc., postage stamps.
Original Google investors John Doerr, a Kleiner Perkins partner, and Ram Shriram, founder of Sherpalo, will become directors at Zazzle.
Stamps.com leads the market for customized postage with its PhotoStamps product, re-launched in May.
Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes also won authorization from the U.S. Postal Service to create personalized stamps, but until now has been more focused on office-postage products.
“It’s a space that we created and invented,” said Stamps.com Chief Executive Ken McBride. “It’s not unusual to see Pitney follow us.”
As if to emphasize the new rivalry, word of Zazzle’s funding came out the same day that Stamps.com announced a partnership with CafePress.com Inc., an online marketplace of shops offering customized T-shirts, mugs, bumper-stickers and postcards.
Zazzle and CafePress are competitors, with CafePress claiming 2.3 million members and Zazzle claiming nearly 1 million. “I’m not sure if they’re No. 2 or No. 3, but it’s an industry where No. 1 has a lot of advantages, so we think CafePress is the right partner,” McBride said.
Gamesmanship
The casino-game craze is showing no signs of blinking as Rancho Dominguez-based video game publisher Crave Entertainment Inc. forged a deal to publish blackjack, craps, roulette and poker branded with the Hard Rock Casino imprint. (Hard Rock is owned by London-based Rank Group plc).
The games will be designed for Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 2 console, according to Sheri Snow, director of marketing for Crave. “We plan on utilizing the Hard Rock license to the maximum,” she said.
Snow said rock memorabilia and music would figure heavily into the casino-game experience. The Hard Rock Casino line of games will be developed by FarSight Studios, based in Big Bear.
*Staff reporter Hilary Potkewitz can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 226, or by e-mail at
[email protected]
