Roamware wins patent to help cut my mobile roaming costs

I had a note from Roamware today letting me know that they’ve won a patent for their technology:

The United States Patent Office today recognised Roamware, Inc. for its pioneering work in mobile traffic redirection – the ability for a network operator to redirect subscribers to the most advantageous network whilst roaming abroad – issuing Roamware United States Patent Number 7,072,651, entitled "Method and System for Cellular Network Traffic Redirection," and exclusive patent rights over its broadly-worded claims.

I hope we’ll soon be entering an era where, using technology such as Roamware’s mobile traffic redirection service, we will be paying just a few cents or pence extra for a roaming call.  The world is getting small, very, very fast.   You can walk about with your Skype phone and use it with perfect clarity around most of the Croisette here in Cannes.  Granted you’re swapping from wi-fi network to wi-fi network — but that’s a good indication of what’s coming.  55p a minute is just silly. 

You never know, maybe T-mobile will phone up Roamware and next time I’m in Cannes it’ll be 5p a minute. 

I won’t hold my breath…