05 April 2007

Once upon a time, the only way to make calls on a cellular phone was via a cellular operator, most probably the one that gave you the phone. However, recent years have seen a revolution in the mobile industry and, while traditional operators still dominate almost the entire market, a few upstarts have begun to disrupt the status quo.

One such company is Truphone, a London-based internet telephony (VoIP) firm which, unusually, started life on an organic farm in Kent, yet which found itself praised as a "Technology Pioneer for 2007" by the World Economic Forum last December. The brains behind the operation is chief executive James Tagg, who made a name for himself as one of the driving forces behind touchscreen technology after working on the original Psion organiser.