ATT actually loses nothing from me. I'll still use my normal ATT phone service for all US calls. All this means is that I will call foreign countries from my cell phone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
It isn't clear yet. Google Voice isn't VoIP (at least, not in the same way that Skype is) because you use your carrier's minutes whenever you place a call. That said, AT&T may choose to bundle the two announcements together because they're both examples of them being "open".
Of course, Apple is the one supposedly behind the Google Voice ban, so don't be surprised if Google Voice isn't mentioned at all during tomorrow's event.
In light of the Vonage app which was approved the other day, I don't see what possible objection ATT/Apple could have against the Google Voice application.
If the Vonage app doesn't replace the native dialer, then it's certainly possible that it could have been approved while GV hasn't been.
Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.
EDIT: Hey everybody. I'm just repeating what Apple said. The GV announcement said nothing about VOIP, it just said "replacement of core functionality." Thanks.
Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.
Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, but I would have thought that the piece of software in the iPhone that makes it usable as a phone would be closer to "core functionality" than the dialer. VOIP is definitely treading on the former, though how it deals with the latter is obviously a question of interface rather than of protocol.
Conceptualizations of what constitutes core functionality in products and software have become increasingly shallow and less feature focused. I don't know if this is because of a somewhat less "business" driven mindset, or because Apple is absolutely brimming with UI freaks, but the mentality seems to at present be that the imitation of a dialer in software rather than the actual ability to make calls is what is most important to "protect".
I appreciate Apple's attempts maintain integrity in the UI interface but their hysterics over something like this make me wary.
AT&T has always limited iPhone VoIP applications to WiFi to cripple their usefulness. They just announced today that they were extending VoIP apps to 3G, most likely due to pressure from the FCC.
Also, you can't replace the native dialer or any core functions on the iPhone. Google Voice implemented its own dialing interface and was rejected for duplicating the built-in dialing and voicemail functions.
I figured that the Google Voice issue would be brought to light with this announcement. But, the Google Voice app should have technically been accepted before 3G Skype calls: it doesn't really use data like Skype does. It seems (I don't have it) to be more of a convenience for the user so that he doesn't have to call his GV number and then dial the number he wants to reach, and instead accesses your address book and dials everything for you.
If this shows anything, it's that Apple is really behind the refusal (so far) of the GV app.
I thought the only reason given for rejecting Google Voice was that it would cause confusion with Apple's dialer? If they did announce Google Voice along with VoIP, there would be some backtracking, I'd imagine.
Those aren't actually screenshots of Google's Google Voice app, it's one of the third-party ones that has since been pulled.
I have GV Mobile Premium (the one pictured) and like it quite a bit. Having used it I find it hard to belive that someone would be confused between it and the native iPhone dialer - it's just not that similar.
I assumed that due to Google's special access to the iPhone, the app was a little more far-reaching than the screnshots that are a sibling to you seem to show. That's also what Apple's announcement implied to me.
Google doesn't have special access to the iPhone, they use the same SDK as everyone else with the exception of a couple of private APIs though that's fairly common.
Yeah, that's the 'special access' I was talking about. Apple tends to reject other people's apps for using private APIs, but they let Google get away with it.
Actually, only blatant violations are rejected. There are a lot of apps out there that make use of a few private API calls so I wouldn't say that Google has "special access."
I wasn't sure at first (thought Apple might be taking the heat) but this seems to confirm AT&T's claim that it's Apple that has the problem with Google Voice and not AT&T.
I also made a skype call from my laptop via a tethered cellphone and the quality was noticeably better: the cpu speed of the phone was more of a limiting factor than the 3g data speed.
Question: With the Skype-app on the iPhone can you be online on Skype even after you lock the screen or go to another app?
If you want to online on Skype on the iPhone so that people can call or message you even when you are using SMS or doing something else. Is this possible? At least on wifi?
AIM does just that, albeit they ping you with badges/notifications when you get a message, which wouldn't quite work with calls. But you could always call back, or be "away". Nothing is stopping Skype from making that happen.
Thanks. Not very practical if two people using want to be able to contact each other on Skype and especially if they are both using it on the iPhone. Imagine if everyone was using Skype like that. No one would be online.
I was going to ask if you guys have a similar site to http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk that turns premium numbers into local phone numbers for standard rate calls.
I second that. Google Voice + Gizmo5 is working pretty well for me on the iphone using siphon. Free incoming calls (gVoice click to call), call quality is not to shabby, slight delay but its manageable. without using any cell minutes.
