EQO drops Skype; Makes a great comeback

By Vivek | June 26th, 2007 at 10:17 pm ET         

I had expected EQO to go down the exit path quietly. But the Canadian startup has proved me wrong, not 100% though. In my last post on EQO couple of months back I had questioned the logic of the mobile app from EQO that required users to keep their PC ON to make free calls via Skype. I assume, EQO got that same message from far more people than just me. And besides that, Skype declaring iSkoot as the official mobile partner didn’t help the things at all.

Looking to seek revenge from Skype, EQO has launched a new release of it’s mobile app and has officially dropped support for Skype. So no more calling of Skype contacts and not even chat with your buddies. Instead of that users now get a shiny new mobile app that is 100% worth the effort needed to download and install it.

Once you are done installing, the mobile app automatically imports all the contacts from your mobile to make calling easier. To make calls, EQO to EQO enabled handset calls are free, while you need to pay for calling landlines. The rates are pretty much in the same range as most of the calling cards would offer.

Biggest win for the mobile app is still on the chat front where you can add your Google Talk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and Jabber accounts. Once you feed in the account information, EQO fetches all your contacts to the mobile and you can get chatting quickly through the cool new interface that doesn’t require a screen refresh to enter a new message. In other words it works just as GTalk on Blackberry does.

The part I like about EQO is the deep device integration offered by the mobile app resulting in an always on experience. So, no need to wait for the app to load before you can start talking, which is the case with most of the apps.

EQO is still missing out on the mVoIP part of things since it needs both - a data network and voice minutes to enable the calls. Fring, Barablu, and Truphone already offer true mVoIP functionality.

Links:
EQO
EQO funded. What for?