T-Mobile Germany says sipgate makes jailbreaking too attractive

Alright, can someone help us out with a little primer on German law here? California-based sipgate offers up a VoIP client for the iPhone that -- for the moment, anyway -- requires a jailbroken handset to run. It goes about its business on WiFi airwaves, so from the carrier's perspective, no harm, no foul, right? Not so much. T-Mobile Germany takes issue with the app, claiming that it's enticing its iPhone users to jailbreak -- a violation of its contract terms. Furthermore, the contract disallows VoIP of any kind, WiFI or otherwise, which pretty much makes sipgate public enemy number one in T-Mob's eyes. They've gone ahead and sent out a nasty little cease 'n desist, which sipgate says it plans to fight all the way through the court system if that's how T-Mobile wants to roll; meanwhile, it's still providing service and says that "for the time being [its] users are safe." Fight the good fight, guys.

[Via TUAW]

[JustinVincible Posted Jul 17th 2008 2:57PM]

What kind of midevil contract prevents the use of WiFi?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 18th 2008 12:19AM]

The kind that T-Mob' German cuz's write!

Achtung stummer Esel!

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 17th 2008 3:27PM]

Well, traditionally voice minutes are way more expensive in Germany/Europe - they used to be billed only by the minute instead of coming in packages. So, more VoIP use equals less minutes that T-Mobile can invoice you for...

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 17th 2008 4:56PM]

The contracts offered by T-mobile Germany explicitly state that VoIP, Instant Messaging, and IPVPN are not covered under the contract.

The contract also states that the unlimited data plan is only valid with the original technical settings done by T-mobile and Apple.

T-mobile also limits your bandwidth, from UMTS/EDGE speeds to 64 kbps for download and 16 kbps for upload, if you reach your traffic quota of either 300MB, 1 GB, or 5GB.

[Freitag Posted Jul 17th 2008 5:32PM]

The easy way is just to tether your smart phone to your computer and use Skype.

It is not just Germany. I had a Treo 600 and T-Mobile service here in the good ole U.S. of A and the specifically said that any VoIP was a ToS violation and would get you canceled instantly.

They also started to ban some of the mapping apps.

I was originally a VoiceStream customer and stayed around when T-Mobile bought them.

The customer service overall used to be fantastic and then got progressively worse.

I bailed out when I wanted a phone upgrade (to a GSM phone that was not part of their lineup) and AT&T was willing to subsidize the price and T-Mobile was not.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 18th 2008 6:35AM]

But Truphone is already a Free App in the Apps store which does exactly the same thing - if not more