After over 15 years, and ten years since it's formal launch on Nokia N series phones, founder James Tagg has left Truphone reports Telecompaper.
The departure, long in the planning, will allow the inventive founder to focus on new technologies. Tagg, who also invented the video touchscreen, came up with the idea of Truphone due to spotty coverage at The Farm in the Kent, England countryside.
He first made the Truphone service work on the Symbian OS for Nokia phones, and demo'd it at VON in 2005. Two years later at DEMO in San Diego, Tagg and co-founder Alistair Campbell demo'd the potential of Truphone's Mobile App on an iPhone, almost a year before Apple opened up the iPhone OS to allow third party apps. Truphone then became the first over the top app to release on iPhone and Android with actual inbound and outbound phone numbers.
Over the next decade Tagg spent most of his time working on the concept of simplifying and streamlining Global Roaming starting with the announcement of Truphone Local Anywhere. The service which debuted in 2009 initially offered phone numbers in the UK, USA and Australia, allowing global travelers in those countries to actually be local with their mobile devices on a single SIM. By 2014 the services was live in seven countries and working in over 60 countries with flat rate calling, texting and data services. During that time, Tagg and his team built a global network that allowed one hop, connectivity without the need for voice and data traffic to have to go back through a mobile network back home.
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