Telecom consortium launch own application store

Increased competition by a consortium of companies may increase VoIP traffic and take, according to news reports across the media that a dozen of the world's major mobile phone operators are taking arms against Apple's App Store.

The Apple App Store is a platform which distributes software to phones. Users can download a mixture of free and paid-for software and the model has been hugely successful, helping to drive sales of the iPhone, Apple's smartphone.

But now there's competition as the likes of Orange, Telefonica, AT&T, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and a number of others band together to form their own multi-hardware app atore.

This will broaden the range of software available to non-iPhone users and will increase the availability and provisioning of both free and paid-for VoIP applications.

According to the GSMA, the store will provide "a single, harmonised point of entry to make it easy for developers to join".

And with increased provisioning of VoIP applications it is likely that VoIP traffic will see a hefty increase.