Hacker News Reader

Comment by smanek | Hacker News Reader

That's amazing ...

Why would AT&T do this? I no longer need 'minutes' of phone service anymore (except as a backup when I'm occasionally out of a 3G service area)

View on HN

Perhaps they calculated that it's less risky to open VOIP apps than to possibly suffer the wrath of the FCC.

I agree, after rejecting google voice they didn't dare to reject this.

It's supposedly Apple that has rejected Skype and Google Voice. If you read Apple's letter to the FCC their agreement with AT&T is to prevent apps that will abuse the 3G bandwidth from making it into the App store, which is why I assume that Skype has been wifi-only up until now.

I'm just hoping that AT&T wasn't right. It would sure suck if 3G performance (for everyone since bandwidth is shared per cell tower) suffered from loads of people making Skype calls and/or Skype performance also suffered from too many other people trying to make Skype calls.

Yeah, that's my guess. Might as well get out in front and score some PR points for being open since it seems to be only a matter of time before it's a mandate. http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/genachowskis-open-intern...

Well, Verizon just put a huge shot across AT&T's bow today by announcing they would allow Google Voice (and others) on their new Android-based handsets.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/verizon-android-phone...

A shot across the bow is fine. The folks who put together the phone still have to execute. Hopefully this will shape AT&T up.

Very true. Verizon could be all talk at this point.

But it's interesting to see the walls starting to come down, slowly as they are.

I'm sure they're banking on the quality of 3G VoIP calls being low enough that you'll want to place a normal call whenever possible.

People already complain endlessly about their voice service dropping. I suspect data is worse, and VoIP will make that abundantly clear.

Can you even get 3G data service from AT&T without first buying 'minutes' though? I can never seem to use up the minimum amount of monthly minutes so this has no bearing on my own monthly bill.

On T-Mobile, you have to buy 400 minutes a month before you are even allowed to pay for data. I use about 1% of my minutes...

Holy crap! That is extortion!

Yeah. And honestly, I think the person selling me the plan lied to me about the 400 minute plan being mandatory. (This is why I'm happy to see Amazon killing retail stores -- retail employees suck.)

There used to be, and maybe still is, a mechanism to activate your iPhone with an AT&T pay-as-you-go plan. The last time I had a pay-as-you-go it worked out to about $8/mo to keep up with the calendar based expiration of minutes.

I believe that was quietly killed off during the 3GS upgrade.

The snarky side of me wants to say they know how bad their own 3G network is... But a voice plan is required to use the iPhone and their minimum plans are expensive enough that they won't be missing much revenue. It will be handy for having a single phone with multiple numbers though (maybe business/personal). Though so is Google Voice...

You're still tied to an AT&T voice plan unless you don't intend on receiving calls.

Applications still aren't allowed to run in the background so you'd need to have your iPhone on with the Skype app running to receive calls.

Not so amazing as Skype nor Vonage match the phone experience as neither take control of your dialer nor run in the background. If Skype is closed your phone won't ring and your calls will be missed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com