T-Mobile suspends its Skype-like Facebook app

MOBILE OPERATOR T-Mobile has temporarily suspended Bobsled, its free voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling service for Facebook.

Mere days after launching its Skype-like VoIP Facebook app, T-Mobile has been forced to suspend its Bobsled service over design questions.

It seems that there are issues concerning the free voice chat service because it was developed to look like an app created directly by Facebook. The T-Mobile news site Tmo News has a comment from the Bobsled team to explain why it halted the service.

"We are voluntarily and temporarily suspending the Bobsled service as we work with our partners at Facebook to address their design questions, including working to ensure that the Bobsled experience is clearly differentiated and is not mistaken for a Facebook created property."

Quite how Facebook let the service go live before it decided that it didn't like the looks of it is baffling, but it has been taken off the air for now.

Unlike Skype, Bobsled can be accessed and run directly through the social notworking website. However, it seems that the T-Mobile development team didn't put much energy into differentiating the design from the appearance of native Facebook apps.

We called T-Mobile in the UK for an explanation and a comment on how long Bobsled will be out of action but haven't heard anything back by press time.

T-Mobile wants to extend the Bobsled brand for other voice and data based services over the Internet in the future so we can all chat with a bunch of people we don't know. But we assume that plan will also be on ice until Facebook and T-Mobile come to an agreement. µ