Telefonica’s Tu Go shows that, finally, a telco has figured out the value of the app

Mobile carriers have been fighting against so-called over-the-top (OTT) communications apps for quite some time now. These are generally third-party apps we’re talking about here, that are called “OTT” because they run on top of the carriers’ data services.

The carriers hate OTT apps because – they claim – they don’t make any money off them. This is nonsense, of course: when they’re not being blocked or throttled by the operators, the use of these apps drives the sales of new devices, and of the data services themselves.