Last week, V-ENABLE got a big score. The company announced a deal with MetroPCS Communications (NYSE: PCS) to provide a mobile 411 service, which is based on a monthly payment. Keep in mind that the typical wireless operator may charge as much as $2 per 411 call.

To get some more perspective on things -- and the 411 sector -- I had a chance to interview Dipanshu Sharma, who is the founder of V-ENABLE.

Q: How are things at V-Enable? What are you seeing in the free 411 marketplace?

A: V-Enable is doing quite well. Life at V-Enable is busier than ever. V-Enable is in the center of a business that is in transition. 411 is an age-old business and had not seen much innovation for decades. With the advent of local advertising shifting from yellow book to internet and now to mobile, the 411 business is seeing its share of innovation. There are three business models that are currently being practiced

1. Regular $1.50-$1.79 per 411 call (declining)

2. Unlimited 411 calling for a fixed price $2.99-$3.99

3. Free Directory Assistance (advertising supported)

Both unlimited and FREE DA models are seeing fast growth. The unlimited model allows users to talk to the operator without any annoying voice advertising and also limiting how much users spend on 411 per month. Free models takes all the cost away but users have to deal with voice ads.

This week, Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) launched its Skype offering for its N800 Wi-Fi tablets. Skype, which is owned by eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), is a dominant player in peer-to-peer calling and has about 196 million registered users. So long as you call another registered Skype member, the calls are free. And even if you call a non-Skype member, the rates are fairly low.

So what does the Nokia deal mean?

I had a chance to interview Dipanshu Sharma, who is a wireless expert and founder of V-Enable. According to him, "I have a N800 and upgraded it with latest software last week, which includes Skype. Got a Skype Out/In account and am receiving home calls on the N800. Call quality is very good.

"So I think the addition of Skype onto Nokia phones will further erode the landline market for the youth that have internet and smartphones. It also affects the long distance market as Skype is giving 2c/min to most European countries. That said, Europe will be a big user of Skype because of reduced long distance costs and no-roaming fees (when on Wi-Fi)."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

This week, the biggies of wireless attended the CTIA conference in Florida. As always, there were some big announcements, such as from Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S) regarding its huge mobile build-out of WiMAX.

Dipanshu Sharma, the founder of V-Enable, was also there (his firm develops voice-activated wireless applications). Here are some of his takeaways:

Mobile TV
Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) MediaFLO handsets got a lot of attention. Last year mobile TV was dominated by companies using IP streaming for watching TV on the phone. Streaming over IP clogs carriers' networks, so this year both MedioFLO and DVB-H were showcased. It was mostly MediaFLO that stole the show for mobile TV. Verizon already had a MediaFLO-enabled handset, and Cingular has promised to launch by end of this year. I checked out the phones myself and have to say the video quality was almost HD. For the near term, the service is marred by lack of channels (mobiTV has more channels), but I am sure QUALCOMM (NASDAQ: QCOM) will resolve that sooner than later.

Slim phones
Lots and lots of slim phones. I saw one Samsung phone that was slim and wide, rather ugly. On the other hand, Samsung's music phone with screens on both sides was quite innovative.

LBS (Location Based Services) and local search
We saw a few LBS companies demonstrating use of phones' GPS capabilities for navigation. Telenav and NIM have commercial products for the same. As for local search and 411, V-Enable announced that its product won best of show (wireless software) at CTIA by Laptop Magazine. Infospace (NASDAQ: INSP) announced a free local search product for RIM's (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry.

Mobile advertising
I probably met so many mobile advertising companies that have differentiators that sound all the same that I can't even remember their names. Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) also announced its mobile advertising product. It's unclear if there is room for so many mobile advertising startups to exit, especially when Yahoo! and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) are entering the market very fast.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Lots of cool things are coming from this week's CTIA conference. One is the launch of a mobile service from V-ENABLE. The company is a leading developer of voice-activated technologies for mobile devices and has relationships with biggies like Verizon Communications(NYSE: VZ).

Now, it has Mobile411. Basically, you can talk into your phone and get directory assistance -- for free. Other features include maps, directions and weather reports.

The service is completely supported by ad revenues. It's a also a big market. There were about three billion wireless 411 calls last year in the US.

I had a chance to talk to V-ENABLE's founder and chief technology officer, Dipanshu Sharma. Here's his take:

"411 has so far been a voice application. We launched today the world's first visual 411 service that brings 411, mapping/directions and local advertising together. Now users can use our patented multimodal interface to ask for businesses using their voice or type their request. We also have full operator integration so the user can get a live operator, ask for a business and get the maps and directions to that business on the phone screen once the call with the operator ends. Complimenting phone screen to traditional voice services is the trend. As we all know, Apple Inc. [NASDAQ: AAPL] will be launching visual voicemail in June and we just launched the most advanced visual 411 offering."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

During the holidays I traveled quite a bit by car. Usually when I'm in the car, I listen to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ:SIRI) -- don't get excited, it's the lame Canadian version -- and I use my Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ:RIMM) BlackBerry for different purposes, mostly email and search.

So while I was happily singing along to one of the songs, inventing the lyrics as I go along, an idea came to me. Why couldn't the satellite radio companies, Sirius and XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:XMSR) have karaoke style radio? After all, the artist and song names are already displayed on the devices, why not the lyrics then too? Granted, this could be too complicated for all channels, but why not have a few dedicated karaoke channels or even just one? Silly idea? Well, people have made money on sillier ideas than that and Karaoke software for MP3 players does exist.

Then, as I was searching for border waiting times, another idea hit me. I'm an incompetent texter. It simply takes me forever to text three words. Wouldn't it be a lot easier if we could have mobile voice activated search? We already talk into the device, then why not complete the circle and integrate voice activated search? Speech to text technology is nothing new.

It seems it's not that simple. Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been working on voice activated search for more than two years but now even the demo page is unavailable. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is discontinuing its Yahoo! by Phone service for voice operated commands (not search). Could salvation come from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), a company that already has speech to text technology and voice commands on Microsoft Windows Mobile? Or maybe V-ENABLE is the solution, especially after it claimed to be the first in the sector to receive a mobile voice search technology patent (mind you, Google may have a patent as well).

Regardless, someone should innovate now. Just imagine how easy life would be if lyrics arguments could be so easily resolved and if we could just tell the phone what we're looking for.