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Comment by ericd | Hacker News Reader

Any complaints about their solution? It seems good from where I'm sitting, assuming Sprint has good coverage.

It is basically a hack that combines VoIP over WiFi with Sprint cellular service, the latter of which is limited as described in the TOS.

I'm not understanding what the complaint in that is, exactly. Is it that the Sprint/cellular side of the usage is limited while the wifi usage is not?

Yes, and while I can understand why, I hope others will find a better solution.

The AT&T base iPhone plan has 450 minutes, (vs. 550 cellular, unlimited wifi here) for $40 plus $5 for 250 texts plus $15 for 200 MB or $25 for 2 GB. That's a total of $60/month at minimum. I really don't see what the complaint is here.

they would have to implement a wifi network as ubiquitous as wireless coverage.

you consider that flawless?

they don't mention wifi coverage anywhere on their site.

All the articles I've seen about this provider say that the price is low because they expect to utilize WiFi for a significant proportion of calls, not supplied by Republic, but supplied by the cable or DSL provider, in my case AT&T UVerse.

The land-line equivalent of this is Magic-Jack, though Republic do at least offer CDMA, or will until they discover their customers are breaking their business model.

If that's the case, their business model is moot.

...i'm paying for only the 300Mb/month on sprint?

as with magicJack, this will only be consumed by the folks still paying AOL for internet.

You're paying 1/3 of an equivalent cellular plan on AT&T and Verizon. You don't have to be a luddite to see that as attractive.

I have magic jack but after I initially installed it I never used it. The service is terrible and I wouldn't be surprised if they had vacuum tube mainframes and tape drives running thier repeaters. Having said that, magic jack is extremely valuable for one thing: a number I can quickly forward to any phone I please. That's why I keep the phone number. Once I need a number for people to call I can have the magic jack number listed, and simply forward it to whatever number I'm using at the time(though it won't forward internationally).

This is how I use Google Voice.

No offense, but in voip terms you are "the folks that still pays AOL"

I have numbers from companies that are more reliable and offer more value than this. And use gvoice for my spam numbers

Not really. I have the number for 5 years and I don't have to pay a dime for it again until the renewal. Plus once it forwards the call it goes off their switchboard so I don't have a problem with the miserable call quality magic jack is famous for. Who knows if I'll renew(or if the company will even be in business) when the time comes but until then I've got a number anyone can call effectively for free.

Did you read the site at all? It's a low end sprint plan + free seamless wifi calling. Universal wifi is in no way required.

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