New Skype and Fring Android VOIP apps may have carriers up at night

Today, mobile VOIP companies Skype and Fring encouraged a little more face time between friends, families and colleagues, with updated Android apps for placing free video calls.

With the Skype app, owners of HTC Desire S, Sony Ericsson Xperia neo, Sony Ericsson Xperia pro and Google Nexus S smartphones (more devices will be added eventually) can call Skype contacts on iPhones, Macs, Windows PC devices and even certain televisions over WiFi or 3G connections.

With the Fring app, Android users can call place free calls to Fring users on any Android smartphones, as well as to those with iPhones and other platforms, over WiFi, 3G or 4G.

"We give users the freedom to do it with whomever, wherever," a Fring spokesperson told Connected Planet.

Skype claims to have approximately 30 million concurrent users logging into Skype at any given time, making up to half a million simultaneous video calls. Fring says it has "10s of millions of fringsters" and that more than a million new users join each month. Add in all those FaceTiming iPhone users, and that's a good amount of streaming mobile video carrier networks will soon need to take into account (or users will need to track on their own, given that operators are moving away from unlimited data plans).

Nonetheless, Pund-IT Principal Analyst Charles King believes the video calling market still has a lot of growing and maturing to do. In the meantime, carriers must be "staying up nights wondering about the larger ramifications of free VOIP services running on their backbone networks," he told Connected Planet.

To date, King adds, "They've survived and thrived by delivering ever more enhanced service bundles of one kind of another. I expect them to continue those offerings and to develop additional innovative solutions for both consumers and businesses. If not, they could eventually be toast.”