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Cringely Shows How to Get Free Cell Calls
SafariShane writes "In this week's pulpit, Bob describes how to properly use new software from a company called IPDrum. Basically, you use the free mobile-to-mobile feature of any major carrier to call a dedicated cell phone attached to your computer. That call is then connected to Skype, allowing you to make free cell calls just about anywhere. Just how long till someone does this on a large scale, by overselling the dedicated lines, and starts selling true unlimited cell plans?"
Well, it sounds good on the surface, but starts getting a little muddier when you get into it.
How much does your average cell phone provider charge for a month of service? Let's be generous and say $30, plus $10 for the "in network" plan. So, $40 right there.
Next, you add the regularly poor quality of a cell phone call, with its drop outs in sound, etc. to the equally (if not moreso) poor quality of a VoIP call, and you end up with a lot of "huh? what? can you hear me now?" in your conversations.
People who tend to spend so much time on their cell phone that they go over the costs associated with having the second phone line value value their ability to communicate and won't tolerate the kind of frustrations with this "cheap" solution.
A cable between the phone and PC running Skype is too narrow of a focus. The "home version" rather than someone trying to make a service buisness out of sounds better.
Give me a bluetooth adapter than plugs into my POTS phone jack and communicates with the phone. This could be a regular phone line, or VOIP like Vonage. Then I can call out via link, or have incoming calls get transferred as well. As far as the cell company is concerned, I'm making a bunch of calls to the wife.
Incoming should be fairly easy, all incoming calls to the home line get sent to a pre-configured number in the home cell phone. Outbound might be trickier since you'd have to tell the home cell phone what number to dial out.
I'm sure it's coming soon, but a Skype-only solution that takes a cable, that's not all that exciting
You might find that connecting the cellphone to the bridge device contradicts some term in the contract. If they figure out that this is what you're doing, they might decide to hit you with $0.50/min for all the "breach of contract" minutes, or something similarly evil.
The mobile-to-mobile minutes are free for two reasons. First, they don't have to pay a termination fee for moving the call to someone else's network. Second, it's a sales tool to get your friends to sign up. By doing this, you sabotage the second goal, and they'll try everything possible to make your life miserable.
I'll do you one better. I have a $12 asterisk card. I have a landline that allows me to make unlimited calls in the Richmond, VA area. I have broadband.
I don't care if my landline is tied up most of the time, I have a cellphone finally (just got my first a few months back). Maybe you're in a similar situation. Maybe you'd buy a $12 asterisk card too.
If we set up the hardware correctly, well then, I can make long distance calls to your area, and you to mine, and it won't cost us anything. Better yet, technically, your grandma down the road, who doesn't even have a computer, could make a LD call to Richmond VA, without it showing up on her bill. She dials into your asterisk machine, it puts it through over broadband to mine. My grandma could do the same thing... or for that matter, anyone in Richmond could do the same thing.
Why would I do this, you ask? Because even if I only cheat the bastard phone companies out of a nickel of long distance revenue, I consider it a victory.
Anyone feel like helping?
Because when you add everything up, it's cheaper that way.
Remember, you don't only receive calls, you make them too (even if you personally only receive calls, there would be no calls to receive if people in general weren't making them).
Studies have shown again and again in that receiver-pays markets (e.g., USA, Singapore, China), the total amount paid by consumers per unit of mobile phone airtime is lower.
This is because the person who is paying for the call is the same person who has market power in the relationship with the service provider. In the caller-pays system, the person who is paying for the call has no way to express their dissatisfaction with the rate by switching to a different provider, so it is not a competitive factor. The people who pay have to put up with whatever rates are in effect, or not make the call at all.
Caller-pays is a huge swindle, built on a transparent lie, and it's costing European consumers billions.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Unless it is a datacall. If it is a datacall, then you wouldn't need anything other than iLBC, but I don't think it is a datacall, because you are listening on the other end. When you listen on the other end, your network provider's vocoder must encode voice from you and decode voice to you.
Granted, you will lose some bits here and there, but these things are definetly in serial, not in parallel.
Dude. It sure doesn't help the qound quality when you're talking out of your ass.
Cascading is when you serially link lossy compression - since codecs use different psycho-acoustical models (else they'd be the same codec) they'll drop different aspects of the signal; you'll end up with only the sounds where both codecs overlappingly decide those frequencies are important, and both codecs will introduce their own artifacts.
The joyful bit is where artifacts that are particularly noticeable are most likely to be amplified by the second codec, since it's likely to figure noticeable sounds are psychoacoustically significant (which they are).