Sitofono goes Mobile
I'm happy to announce that Sitofono goes mobile for US and Canada users. — This means that you can now point your mobile phone's browser at www.companyname.sitofono.com, insert you mobile phone number in the edit box and call the company which owns that Sitofono from your mobile phone completely for FREE.
Context & Ripple Effects
SitoFono entered the picture in November 2006, when VoIP Watch grouped it with iotum and Grand Central as a three-way cluster of click-to-call services each trying to become the button companies put next to their phone numbers. What changes here is reach: the same Sitofono lines are now callable from a mobile phone's browser for US and Canada users, at no charge.
First-order effects
- US and Canada mobile users can reach any company's Sitofono line directly from the handset's browser without paying the carrier for that call.
- Companies already publishing a Sitofono address gain a mobile entry point with no new infrastructure on their side — the same number now answers desktop clicks and phone browsers.
Second-order effects
- Rival click-to-call players in the same cluster, Grand Central chief among them, face pressure to match browser-based mobile access rather than staying desktop-only.
- Carriers lose billable minutes on a growing class of business-contact calls, since the call originates inside a third-party web session instead of the dialer.
Third-order effects
- If browser-initiated calling spreads, the control point for reaching a business moves from the carrier's network to whoever routes the call — a structural shift that later mobile VoIP entrants would be racing into.
The trend: Click-to-call is migrating off the desktop widget and into the mobile browser, shifting call origination away from carrier dialing toward service-routed sessions.