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Google Plans Free VoIP In the UK

Posted by timothy on from the thinking-ahead dept.

jarich writes "According to this news article, Google may be preparing to offer free Voice Over IP telephone service in the UK. This sounds related to a previous Slashdot article about Google starting to buy dark fiber. So what are they planning? A free service like Skype (computer to computer only) or more along the lines of Lingo or Vonage?"

41 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Skype is not computer to computer only by Nermal6693 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can also call a regular phone with Skype. It's not free, but you can do it.

    1. Re:Skype is not computer to computer only by arivanov · · Score: 4, Informative

      Two dedicated VOIP operators - Gossip Telecom and one more which specializes in businesses and offers IP Centrex style solutions (fully outsourced VOIP PBX). These are dependant on your link so your mileage is likely to vary.
      Also at least some ISPs have started offering VOIP as an addon at a minimal cost. Once again, mileage will vary except possibly Nildram. Speaking out of experience (done some measurements on their network and have a non-UK VOIP phone on it): they have nearly 0% packet loss (around 0.01% which is the loss from DSL) and under 3ms jitter. Even the shitties VOIP implementation just works. Of course this does not come out of the blue. They charge you 25 monthly for a static IP with the relevant services attached while the industry average is around 23.

      --
      Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
      http://www.sigsegv.cx/
    2. Re:Skype is not computer to computer only by batemanm · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I seriously doubt that a 3Ms Jitter buffer is possible.

      Of course it is. The way to deal with jitter is to buffer the incoming packets and play them back at a uniformed rate. As long as you can keep the end-to-end delay below about 150 ms it won't be noticed by people, below 250 ms there is a slight delay and over 250 ms is classed as unaccetpable. Unfortunetly in VoIP delay times at routers can eat up a lot of this time. There are lots of papers on how to deal with jitter but if your jitter is only 3 ms there is no point in doing anything about it.

      If it's by ear then please remember it is impossible to measure 3Ms.

      If you are talking by ear upto 40 ms jitter is not noticiable by people, between 40 and 75 is classed as good quality but with occasional delays while over 75 ms be unacceptable. This is according to the ITU.

      The work I do with VoIP we struggle to get 15 Ms.

      Megaseconds? Sounds like a pretty duff system to me. But 15 ms jitter should be fine for the human perception system and shouldn't be noticed.

  2. Kind of restrictive... by stever00t · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's a 32 word limit per call.

  3. Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Once again, I find myself wondering what Google's endgame is. Are they going to remain at the forefront of search technology, or are they going to attempt to orchestrate an M$ style invasion of our lives?

    1. Re:Endgame by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wonder the same thing!

      Such is the problem of being a public company - constant pressure to be a jack of all trades and master of none. Expansion, expansion, expansion. Diversify! Must make more profit for greedy stock holders.

      IMO, companies should only sell their stock to employees. Not that I've thought about it much. I just wish companies could be left to do what they do well, instead of being forced to keep trying to rule the world.

    2. Re:Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'd be happy about Google diversifying if I knew that their core competencies were not being compromised. But from what I hear from inside Camp Google, people are being stretched too far, too fast, and search, although important, is taking a backseat to rapid (and often not very well thought out) expansion. That worries me... and it should worry you too, because rapid expansion into everything results in buggy products that promise the world, but in the end crash every 20 minutes or so. Like MS products.

    3. Re:Endgame by seanadams.com · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Once again, I find myself wondering what Google's endgame is.

      Great businesses don't have "endgames". Microsoft has no "endgame" - their goal is to have all the money. It's not something you can ever finish, but that doesn't mean you can't make it your goal.

      Google's goal seems to be having ALL the information. There's a hell of a lot of info on the phone lines so it makes sense to go there once you've got a handle on the web.

    4. Re:Endgame by locokamil · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It seems to me that Google's business model revolves around (gross oversimplification follows) simply throwing out targetted advertisements when they hear a keyword.

      I can't see how a phone based system can rely on that business model. As many of the more comical posts on this article have pointed out, a third party interrupting a phone conversation with an ad about some product or the other is... well... annoying. No one is going to use such a service.

      What it all boils down to is that Google is trying to diversify into areas where it has little or no chance of making money in. While it does so, it is going to ignore what its good at... and lose its search muscle to MSN or Yahoo. And while this speaks highly of the market economy, it doesn't really promote the idea that Google is run by highly intelligent people.

    5. Re:Endgame by MMMDI · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There used to be one that used advertisements to support the service of free long distance... Freeway, I believe the name was (but don't quote me on that). I used it quite often as an alternative to buying numerous phone cards every week, and never had a problem with it.

      Basically, it worked out like this: Dial a 1-800 number, put in your personal pin number, listen to a fifteen-second ad. You just earned two minutes. Push # to hear another ad (for another two minutes), or * to make your call. There was no limit to the amount of ads you could listen to, so you could (and I did) just keep pushing the button to rack up an hours worth of time before making the call. There were no ads played during the call, no interruptions, nada.

      Of course, it really sucked when you built up a fair amount of time, only to dial a wrong number or find out that the person you're calling wasn't home.

    6. Re:Endgame by HuguesT · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Replace endgame with "vision" or business plan.

      MS has a vision (windows everywhere) and a business plan (own the O/S everywhere from cell phones to supercomputers, crush everybody that disagrees, leverage O/S dominance to applications).

      You don't see MS diversifying into airlines, insurance, manufacturing, automobiles and whatnot.

      The question is: what is Google up to? Are they on a collision course with Microsoft in the short term ?

      In the last few months they have been putting out products for the windows platform only: hard disk search tools, image indexing tools, etc.

      To me this means that Google is getting less interested in the search business. Are they going to turn into some run-of-the-mill software house for the windows platform only or are they up to something else?

    7. Re:Endgame by davesag · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's a bit like wondering, "but what if deep down google really is evil." Google claim their ethos i to do no evil, but if I were truly evil, and out to do as much evil as i could - a genuine evil-doer in fact, the first thing I'd tell people is I am devoted to not doing evil. So Google's very prominent "we are not evil" claim is truly the first evidence that they are in fact as evil as Hitler.

      If google are evil then their endgame still just is as murky as if they are benign. I mean say you are google - what do you want this to be? is google going to announce google currency, google implants a google health care system? the google army? "google squad". With luck google will become OCP. Good business is where they find it.

      --
      I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
    8. Re:Endgame by batemanm · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Google claim their ethos i to do no evil

      I always had problems with that statement since it is meaningless since evil is undefined. They may think nothing they do is evil but other will disagree. For example I eat meat so to some people I'm an evil cow killer. To me isn't wasn't a bad thing it was just lunch. It is all just a matter of your viewpoint.

  4. Possible Google Plan... by madstork2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wonder if this is a step towards making VoIP basically a free tool, much like the web is today. It would be interesting if Google or another
    VoIP provider go to an advertising model to support free VoIP.

    I think it would be interesting to have ads while a call is being connected (i.e. ringing). It seems like they could pipe audio ads down the wire during the inevitable pause while the system tries to track down a cell phone, or the long distance call is being routed...

    A company like Google could also put a phone front end on to the search engine, I'm thinking along the lines of directory assistance, but instead of limiting info to just addresses / phones numbers, the Google directory assistance would search the internet and speak the results (and a few related ads) over the phone.

    They might even have the CPU power to do adequate speech recognotion. All told it is pretty easy to imagine a system taking adavtage of the newest phones, with enhanced SMS, web interfaces, along with a voice interface. It would also be cool if you could specify where you want your search result output to go. Maybe if they had VoIP and some type of phone based interafce you could have your results displayed on your phone, pda or spoken. With a viable VoIP perhaps you could have the results faxed to you at a hotel. I'd also like to see the option of having the results emailed.

    All told these relatively small technical advancements, would be large strides in making Google even more ubiqutious. Non-computer users and casual users would have another resource to get and retrieve information in the "real-world".

    I just wish I was smart enough to get a job with them . . .

    1. Re:Possible Google Plan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't understand why everybody thinks Google is going to offer telephone service. They haven't said anything that would give that impression, and AFAIK nobody has any information linking Google with VOIP at all! Everybody is just extrapolating because they are making a high-capacity global network. Isn't it possible that Google might want a high-capacity global network for a different reason? They are a network company after all! Let's not jump to conclusions here.

    2. Re:Possible Google Plan... by rokzy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      adverts while ringing seems very crude, plus unreliable for the advertiser since you're only guarateed a couple of seconds. unless there's forced waiting, in which the whole thing completely stinks and would, imo, mark the beginning of the end of Google if they need to resort to such a disgusting interface (their fame being from their excellent interface in the beginning).

    3. Re:Possible Google Plan... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      I just wish I was smart enough to get a job with them

      I think you mean, "I just wish I were smart enough to get a job with them" ;)

    4. Re:Possible Google Plan... by hyu · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think it would be interesting to have ads while a call is being connected (i.e. ringing). It seems like they could pipe audio ads down the wire during the inevitable pause while the system tries to track down a cell phone, or the long distance call is being routed...

      There's already a few places that have services like that in place. In Ottawa, Canada, there's a service called CHUM Total Free Call. You dial a number, connect to their server, and they play an ad for you. At the end of the ad, you're given a dialtone and told to enter the phone number you wish to call. The benefit is that you can call anyone within the local area code at no cost. It's particularly beneficial in the rural areas that have some strange local and long distance zones.

      I'm not sure how well they're doing, though, since some of the ads made very little sense. There was one for an ISP that provided service for a monthly fee of $2.95 CAD. I can't imagine they were paying very much for the airtime given that price. However, with Google's repetoire of sponsors, they could probably do quite well for themselves.

    5. Re:Possible Google Plan... by tod_miller · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I agree, I know there is advertising in this...

      But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:

      Companies pay for a 'click to call' link on the web? Perhaps they have this idea...

      Just to make this a well rounded /. response, what is the state of free VoIP sex lines, and when will we have star wars type communications on earth? Holographics-over-ip anyone?

      --
      #hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
    6. Re:Possible Google Plan... by grcumb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "But I think google will not even have ads on thier VoIP, they are thinking bigger:"

      Or, they're thinking simpler. What do you do when you're talking on your home phone? You idle the time away, gazing abstractedly around you.

      I worked for a VOIP company who shall remain nameless. In that time, our business unit beta-tested a VOIP handset that had a fairly functional web interface built into it. The early versions had monochrome display, but the newer ones had colour. They were fed by standard CGI scripts.

      It's fairly easy these days to do text to speech, and with a display on the handset, you could be served up text ads as you talk. They would be about as unobtrusive as their current set of web ads are, and people would be getting their phone calls - anywhere in the world - for free.

      If that's not a viable business model, I don't know what is.

      --
      Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
    7. Re:Possible Google Plan... by mjtg · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here's my theory of what Google is planning. Its not related to the telephony thing, so sorry if its off-topic.

      At the moment, Microsoft dominates consumer computing. Why ? Because the desktop is the computer, and Microsoft owns the desktop.

      Remember the Sun catchphrase, "the network is the computer" ? Sun's plan was to replace fat desktops with thin clients connected to their servers, and thus rule the world. It didn't work for a number of reasons - Sun was not powerful enough, they couldn't convince enough people to see their vision, the network infrastructure wasn't there, their servers couldn't provide all the functionality of a PC.

      Now look at Google. They probably have the best server infrastructure in the world. They are constantly providing new cool services on those servers. They currently provide enough diskspace to store all your email; perhaps soon they'll provide enough disk so you can store all your info on their servers. Now, if they can put in place the network infrastructure to provide fast access between the user and the servers, then the Sun dream starts to become a reality.

      So, Google provides a complete thin desktop solution. You don't need your crash-prone virus-magnet fat client PC anymore. Google will store (and back up) all your data, provide all the software you need, and you can access it from anywhere in the world.

      The network becomes the computer. Google owns the network. So, Google owns consumer computing.

      Google wins. Microsoft loses.

      Well, its just a theory. Let's wait and see if Google invests in thin-client technology.

  5. fixed link by Devil's+BSD · · Score: 5, Informative

    Someone left a bracket on there, so...
    http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1454225, 00.html

    --
    I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
  6. Interesting premise, but.. by perimorph · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...but I'd love to know how they're going to add unobtrusive advertising to a phone conversation.

  7. Re:Thinking really hard here by ejdmoo · · Score: 4, Funny

    They're going to voice scan your calls and every 5 minutes there will be an interruption by a commercial.

    "Hey Bob, how's that car working for ya'?"

    *beep beep*

    "Come on down to Steve's auto extravaganza!!! We will NOT be oversold!"

  8. Focus? by maelstrom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is it just me or is Google getting a little unfocused with too many acquisitions and weird plans like this? How about spending some time on your core business, your google groups "upgrade" was three step backwards.

    Focus.

    --
    The more you know, the less you understand.
    1. Re:Focus? by mikeb39 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You can only go so far on as limited a platform as search technology, and Google has done more with it then anyone could have imagined 5 years ago. So, they've got a great stable core (and I don't imagine they will abandon it to work on things like this, development will continue to keep them better then everyone else) and now have the LUXURY of expanding into other markets. Kudos to them for making it work.

  9. What Skype is missing though... Skype IN by buro9 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Skype to Skype... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Skype to Phone... fine, cool, fantastic.

    Phone to Skype... missing link.

    Without that last bit there is no incentive for someone to make a move to VOIP on a permanent basis for all of their calls.

    Why? Because you still have to keep a landline or mobile to be able to receive calls from regular phones... and because the cost of making a call to a mobile is prohibitive, it's likely that you keep a bundled (with TV package) landline.

    If the weight Google helps to make this a feature that is developed, then we may start to see a willingness to switch in large numbers a reality.

    As it stands at the moment... my (red neck equiv') mother was impressed, but she just sees it as one more way to do things, and she's very lazy and is still more likely to pick up and dial a regular phone. Show her she doesn't need the landline (by receiving calls, thus 100% functionality) and then there'll be something impressive.

    What has all this to do with Google? Well Skype In as I'll call it... it requires a network, something has to receive calls and store messages for you whilst your computer is off... who's to say context related sound adverts wouldn't be appended to the answer phone service... how would that differ from Gmail advertising?

    Things to think about :)

    1. Re:What Skype is missing though... Skype IN by blake182 · · Score: 5, Informative
      There was an interview on Engadget last November with Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas Zennström:

      What is SkypeIn and what are the plans for it?

      SkypeIn will allow phone calls from the traditional phone network in to Skype. We don't have a specific launch date yet, but hope to offer it sometime this winter.

  10. Total message integration by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Voicemail shows up in your gmail inbox, e-mail gets summarized in voice messages, voicemail is indexed...

    And it all has ads.

    1. Re:Total message integration by goth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Better yet: Voice conversations gets indexed too and our previous telephone calls are suddenly searchable. This could be rather usefull, just as looking up old mails is today, but of course various matters (like privacy and storage) needs to be sorted out first.

  11. *scratches head* by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This article seems to be taking a huge speculative leap. Google is investing in heavy bandwidth - therefore, it must be for VoIP? Either there's evidence the reporter isn't revealing, or someone has telephony on the brain.

  12. Re:Superpower? by ozmanjusri · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, in fact I just checked their site, and their

    "Do no evil"

    slogan had

    "...yet, be patient my pretty ones. Har ha ha ha har."

    appended to it in bloood red letters that faded as I watched...
    I wonder what it means?

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  13. Re:Thinking really hard here by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Informative
    hey're going to voice scan your calls and every 5 minutes there will be an interruption by a commercial.

    In TFA "a free telephone service that links users via a broadband internet connection using a headset and home computer." So they would surely display ads while you're making the call. Even conceivably targetted from speech recognition, but that's a long shot and likely to spook people.

  14. No substance corroborating the statement by sipmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Can someone please point out where in the article the claim that Google will offer VoIP service is substantiated? As far as I can tell, it's based on speculations by "Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy".

    Some comments on the article below:

    "The technology that will enable Google to move in on the market has been around for some time. Software by the London-based company, Skype, has been downloaded nearly 54 million times around the world but no large telecommunication firms have properly exploited it."
    The technology has indeed been around for a long time, and Skype, a proprietary walled garden system, is definitely not the first or only one to use it. So why is Skype implicated here?
    "The basic cost of making calls across the internet is almost nil. The real cost is in developing the software; after that, the service exploits available internet capacity."
    So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call "exploits available internet capacity"?
    "In addition, the sound quality of calls across the internet can be poor and the connections can be less reliable."
    As can been witnessed by using Skype, or other applications which incorporate modern codecs, for example the freely available wideband iLBC codec (http://www.ilbcfreeware.org), the voice quality over a broadband connection is usually excellent, in the case of iLBC much better then PSTN. The biggest issue is latency, which is increased in the case of Skype, where calls are often routed over media proxies to traverse NAT's.

    Overall a poor article, "By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent". But what can be expected of the Times?

  15. 5 second add by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I could see google putting a 5 second add before dialing. That is about as long as I would wait b4 I got pissed. Hear me out - I think they will offer the phone service for free and they will make money by making advertisers pay to place their 5second add before the phone connects to the other person. That way the person dialing is forced to listen to the add (though the person could just as easily ignore it as well). However, This is much better than getting interrupted at dinner time by a telemarketer. At the point that you have chosen to make a call you are a captive audience. This is great win win situation for everyone. VOIP calls will be free and advertisters will foot the bill (w/ possible revenue to gain from the marketing though voice ads). It would be interesting to see how google sets up the UI for the VOIP - would there be text/image ads that appear while you are making your call or would it purely be a prerecorded message? What is the longest amount of time that a person would listen to an ad before hanging up, maybe they could only do voice ads once every 10 calls so it would be staggered.

    Interesting points:

    1. Google could listen (randomly) to the conversations and note down the frequency of words being uttered. This would correlate well with any of their search methodologies because because talking about a topic will surely lead to people searching about that same topic.

    2. The people making VOIP phone calls have time, some money (they had to somehow get on the internet to make the call right?), and possibly some education. For higher margin products these are the people that you want to spend your advertising dollars on.

    3. Cross-sell, upsell Google can offer people with gmail additional VOIP accounts. Again these are people that like google and are willing to use its services.

    4. Google gains more public karma by doing things that benefit mankind while making some money on the side - to build more things to better mankind.

    5. Owning yet another medium is lucrative and would be a great chance for them to learn another business without spending a ridiculous amount of money like the telecoms in the 1990's.

    6. This could be a play to compete with microsoft in terms of becoming a global ISP that sifts through __everyone__'s information and preferences. Can you imagine how powerful this would make them? The would be able to potentially control almost all the "new" (internet, voip, videophone) advertising by amassing an enormous amount of data!

    7. Videophones will become a reality in the next 10 to 15 years. Google could put an advertisement (picture in picture) while giving away the voice call for free. Again - advertisers would foot the bill while the service remained free. I think that is key - by keeping the basic service free they get far more people than if they charged money for it.

    8. With TV usage declining and internet usage going on, google will win in the long run :) as long as they keep innovating!

    Anuj Goyal
    anuj_dot_goyal_at_gmail_com

    come on google :) hire me!

  16. You've said it. by fons · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yahoo has it (VoIP via Yahoo messenger).

    Yahoo is a search company.

    Why shouldn't Google have it?

  17. Google frightens me by shm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Google frightens me. I know their motto is "Do no evil" but ...

    Consider this:

    * They have one of the world's largest compute clusters.

    * They have the demonstrated capability to use that cluster effectively.

    * They've practically centralized all of the web in their cache. Even though you can ask for a site to be removed from the cache, I expect that all that does is hide the cache from the outside world - google still has a copy.

    * Now they have all your email too, if you've signed up for a gmail account. If you haven't, chances are that someone you communicate with has a gmail account. So they have some of your email too.

    * They have some link with the spooks - I've seen job ads from Google for the East Coast which require security clearance.

    * If in fact they're going to do VOIP, I think it's just to get VOIP centralized as well.

    Maybe your favourite TLA is paying them to do this. Who knows how much money they have.

    Certainly Google has the capability if not the intent to do a lot of evil.

    And I'm not sure they're all that clean - look at the way they cozied up to China and the way the Abu Ghraib images vanished out of their image caches. In one case they're supporting evil, and in the other case they're hiding evil.

  18. Wildcards by YowzaTheYuzzum · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just press * on your phone to replace a few common words :)

  19. not really by Ghost_3k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Has anyone actually read that article?

    Although Google is reluctant to talk about its plans, the logical use of such a network would be to help to support a new telephone service.

    So, if any big company has open jobs for "strategic negotiator" to help the company to provide a "global backbone network", does that mean it's going to start a voip service?

    Is it really only me who thinks that this articole is speculating, no facts, no evidence...nothing...

    ghost_3k

  20. Re:Thinking really hard here by adlj · · Score: 2, Funny

    yes, kind of I'm talking with my GirlFriend, and five seconds after I say "Of course I love you" a popup with a dating website appears on my screen... :-(

  21. Re:Thinking really hard here by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 2, Funny

    yes, kind of I'm talking with my GirlFriend, and five seconds after I say "Of course I love you" a popup with a dating website appears on my screen... :-( I'd be impressed if a voice recognition scheme would be able to detect the insincerity that well ;-) A more likely suggestion would be a bunch of ads for places to buy flowers, chocolate, rings and other things women need so much more than us men...

    --

    People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.