Amidst all the hoopla about the Apple iPad (insert favorite joke here), a bit of news refuses to slip through the cracks. Playing wide by on-line tech magazines is the idea of using a VOIP application such as Skype or iCall on your smart phone. The question is why?
Cost.
If you have a on-going Skype membership, which only costs you around $3.00 a month and have built-in WiFi on your celly then you have the capability of cutting costs on your cell service. You could choose to go with the absolute cheapest phone service possible and make most your cell calls via VOIP. With this kind of technology, you can also receive calls, as long as you’re within range of a WiFi router or repeater. Smart right?
Well, the problem so far is that cell service providers hate this idea, because it threatens to cost them big $. Carriers make their money on getting you on either: 1. overages or 2. a cell service that’s more than what you need. It’s that simple. What makes the problem a bigger deal is that the smart phone makers are slow in allowing VOIP providers to access (install their apps) on the latest 3G phones.
And it gets better.
MagicJack, that little company who’s USB dongle let’s you connect your old land-line phone to your PC, announced in December a new device that let’s you use your standard GSM cell phone at home at no cost per call. Their system is a de-facto femto cell which uses VOIP as the background and a low power GSM base station. It’ll cost around $40 for the device and $20 a year after for the service (about $1.67 a month).
As you can see, these applications and devices will put a dent into cell company revenues, which has been a long time in coming. Cell service providers have long over-charged subscribers for their services and now consumers have choices. One would hope that it only gets better.
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