Telecoms companies have made a huge effort to bring the Internet to mobile phone users, but have they largely overlooked the case for bringing mobile to the Internet? Mobile operators should enable their customers to use web apps to organize calls, text messages, voicemails and other aspects of their mobile service, according to Fenando Nunez Mendoza, CEO of fonYou Telecom, who presented at the Telco2.0 Executive Brainstorm in London this week.

Google Voice offers this kind of functionality in the U.S. today, but invited Americans need a new telephone number issued by Google before they can take advantage of such features. FonYou, a four-year-old Barcelona-based start-up, believes web-based management tools, which would enable people to direct specific incoming calls to voicemail or alternative numbers and browse SMS messages online, should be a standard part of a mobile operator’s service offering.

As well as providing a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service in Spain, fonYou is looking to work with mobile operators to enable them to offer this kind of functionality. Mendoza told the Telco2.0 event that fonYou expects to go live with its first operator customers in the third quarter of 2010.

Distinguishing real friends from Facebook friends

Mendoza reckons the social networking generation wants to be able to configure their mobile service to distinguish between close friends and acquaintances they interact with on Facebook. One of the selling points for the fonYou service in Spain is that you can give people you meet on social networks your fonYou number and then direct their calls to voicemail, without revealing your “real” mobile number. The service also enables a small businessperson, for example, to record a personalized voicemail for each incoming call, so each client can get a message that is directly relevant to them.

Of course, competition from Google Voice, Ribbit, Skype and other web-based telephony services is already putting mobile operators under pressure to experiment with web-based management tools. James Parton, head of Telefonica O2’s Litmus developer programme, told delegates at the Telco2.0 event that his company is looking to make application programming interfaces (APIs) available that will enable developers to enable the online storage and management of SMS messages.

But, for me, these kinds of web management tools are nice-to-have rather than a must-have. Most SMS and voicemail messages are only relevant for a very short period of time – do we really need to store them? And I am not sure I would go to the effort of setting up rules for each of my contacts – it might be easier to just check the caller-ID of incoming calls and then let unwanted calls go through to voicemail.

A fonbook for families

More compelling is a service Mendoza said fonYou has under development to enable parents to set rules for their children’s phones. For example, they could configure their son’s handset to only allow calls and text-messages to family members during school hours – that kind of functionality would certainly make life easier for teachers and parents by reducing in-lesson distractions and bullying. I am sure there are plenty of families who would pay a premium for this kind of service.