Truphone's Head of Special Projects, Dan Lane, jumps to Simwood (and why you should care)

You probably won’t have come across Simwood unless you’re working in or around the wholesale IP world. If you want things done correctly by proper, serious people who know what they’re doing, you talk to Simwood. For the most part, Simwood focus on VoIP, voice and all that jazz.

That is about to change.

That’s because Dan Lane, the chap who was running “Special Projects” at global operator Truphone, has accepted the position of COO at Simwood.

I’ve written about Dan before and know and again he’s contributed some excellent content to Mobile Industry Review. I’ve been following him and his work closely over the years. He’s been responsible for some of the most inspiring and mind-blowing mobile/VoIP technology I’ve seen.

No one has, until now, set him free to properly innovate.

I’ve always wondered what he could do if someone with a proper set of networking technologies handed over the keys to their data centre and told Dan to, “See what you can do with this.”

For instance, some of the things he’s demonstrated to me in the past (publicly and privately) have required a SIM card with this or that connectivity. Or operator-level access to network switches. The sort of thing Dan has setup at home (I kid ye not), but not the sort of thing that most mobile operators allow.

I’m talking about seamless teleconferencing. Seamless multi-ring stuff. Seamless mutli-sim-using-same-phone-number jazz. Live text two-way messaging to your instant message client from your mobile number. All that jazz that you’ve sort of heard about or sometimes seen demonstrated.

Truphone could have been a contender. In fact I think Truphone missed a huge, huge trick with Dan Lane. They should have launched Tru Beta. Or, actually, Tru Alpha — that is, next-next-next generation voice and mobile telephony services driven by Dan and running off some segmented section of their system to allow him to experiment and delight the lot of us. That would have allowed him and his colleagues the opportunity to openly experiment and iterate — and I’m confident the stuff they’d have delivered would a) have found new markets for Truphone and b) have impressed the hell out of the company’s corporate clients.

I’d have signed up in a second. I’d have paid a premium to have used Truphone-by-Dan-Lane-Beta. And I’d have proper international roaming mixed with beautifully wicked voice and teleconferencing services, with gorgeous text messaging services. Oh it could have been brilliant.

This, by the way, is what I have been buttonholing Dan about every time we meet. He has been diplomatic whenever I’ve demanded answers.

I therefore find Dan’s move to Simwood thoroughly exciting. He’ll be on the board. He’ll be directly influencing the company’s (presumptive?) move into the world of mobile. I cannot wait to see what he and the Simwood team cook up.

From what I know about Simwood, they’ve got a flat management structure with a thoroughly can-do approach so I am expecting big things, soon. Good luck and every success Simwood!