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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?"
I'm guessing Cringely has made a prediction
With a free mobile-to-mobile feature, you don't have to be able to make free calls, but cheap calls would be cool too. You could interface directly to your computer for a whole range of other things too. My take is that the cool part is in the interface to the computer, with free calls being one of the multiple possibilities. Once this gets popular, there may be some limitations though.
I wonder if this method is patented... ?
see a Text Widget
I think it was on Slashdot, but I can't find the link.
Talk about a hack...
Makes me wonder how much delay there is between talking and the other party listening with the cell to cell to skype to skype to cell to cell.
We have a new acronym c2c2p2p2c2c
There are already companies that offer this. For example, metroPCS which offers unlimited calls. No minute counting.
For $40 a month, you get unlimited local and long distance calls.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
No company, at least in Mexico, gives real unlimited cell-to-cell time. Much less when they figure it out all.
I see 57005 people
While it's a step in the right direction, if you want to call somebody on a landline, you still have to pay for the SkypeOut, yes?
It seems like a lot of trouble for little savings. I guess my perspective would be different if I was a very mobile person who needed to make frequent out-of-country calls (more common in Europe, yes, I know).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
But not very cost-effective if you're the only one using it.
2x cheapest cell plan is still about $60-70. For that much money, you can almost buy unlimited minutes (or at least practically unless you talk non-stop) from the cell provider.
For a family or group of friends, however, this sounds like a great deal.
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
I didn't know that Captain Crunch whistles work on cell phones.
http://www.skype.com/products/skype/linux/
By running from Skype to a mobile phone, you use two fairly crappy codecs: iLBC at 13 kilobits per second on top of GSM at 12 kilobits per second. On their own, each one is marginally tolerable, but I would rather gouge my eardrums out with a dagger than listen to the two codecs combined.
He goes on to suggest that investors should move their money away from phone companies to NeuStar -- a company that vends telephone numbers.
Cough.
It seems to me that the obvious place to converge points of content would be email addresses -- which will make phone numbers obsolete as well.
... have to pay $60/month minimum for two-phone wireless service and 2c a minute to termine the call at a real phone.
You've met "free-as-in-speech" and "free-as-in-beer" -- now meet "free-as-in-really-expensive"! Yayyyy capitalism!!
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.
I now have to pay for *2* cell phones instead of just one.. sounds MORE expensive then just using my minutes!
i have to agree - there's a big difference between 'free' and 'unlimted': i think the difference is usually called marketing or something like that. obviously the cost tends towards zero the more you use it but it's never going to reach zero in one month. cue geek response: cost per minute for constant use...
The plan requires two active cellular phone connections. Last I checked that isn't free. Sure, it will be cheaper than actually making direct calls, but that is not the same as free. Furthermore, it doesn't sound like it handles incoming calls, so really what you have is a flat fee for unlimited outgoing calls. This doesn't sound particularly free.
I don't practice what I preach because I'm not the kind of person that I'm preaching to.
Even though it isn't the core of the article, the Cell+Cell+IPDrum+Skype idea is more about circumvention than savings. Dividing it up: (1) Adobe is powerful. (2) The way phone companies work not only is changing but must change. Now, I thought both of those things were obvious.
Seems like you'd need to be spending a LOT of time calling international to make this worthwhile.
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're using Firefox I guess? If firefox doesn't recognise a url entered as a url it does an "I'm Feeling Lucky" google search on the "url" entered. The link is broken and is starts with "http" and the first result on searching for http (and thus the I'm Feeling Lucky link) on Google is Microsoft.com.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
Coming up with a money-saving scheme that depends upon gaming a system is not a great idea when the rules are not under your control and can be changed any time.
"Just how long till someone does this on a large scale, by overselling the dedicated lines, and starts selling true unlimited cell plans?"
Just longer than it takes for some shady lawmakers to sneak in a law to prevent that.
Blender And Linux Fan
Hey, cool, it's an English to Klingon translator!
Anyone here run a communications company?
The first company who can give me a single, flat monthly bill for local, long-distance and international calls (be it landline, VOIP, or mobile) gets my business. I don't care if it totals a little more than I am paying now. I hate all those silly plans with different payment structures, different hours costing different amounts, long distance (sometimes including across town) costing more than local, strange rates per country for international, etc. etc. etc.
No per-minute charges. No per-call charges.
Is this really that much to ask for?
This guy cannot possibly be serious!
I wonder if he still has this investment?
Hmm. Maybe I'm just getting cynical in my old age...
Wikileaks, no DNS
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.
Just how long till someone does this on a large scale, by overselling the dedicated lines, and starts selling true unlimited cell plans?"
I think the real question is, "Once somebody does this on a large scale, how long will it take for the cell phone companies to ditch free mobile to mobile?"
The opportunity here is not for you to have a second phone tethered to your computer, but for some person to set up a bank of phones tied to broadband for each mobile phone carrier. If this person can manage to charge you less money and trouble than setting this up on your own, he (or she) has a new business opportunity.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Technology seems to be increasing the economic efficiency of the marketplace by supporting a type of business model arbitrage. If somebody offers something for less than it really costs or is really worth, people use technology to quickly find a way to exploit it.
For example, cell companies offer free in-system minutes to encourage friends & family to recruit new customers -- a nice little viral marketing ploy and something that, I'm sure, reduces stress in friends & family cell phone conversations. But it also creates an opportunity because those free in-system minutes are worth something if they can be somehow converted to out-of-system calls. Hence the motivations for this little hack.
Or consider the case of the single-use video camera. The unit is offered at a subsidized price (less than the true price of the camera) with the expectation that the consumer will return the camera and pay for the DVD conversion service. With a bit of hacking, though, a person can get a low-grade digital video camera for only single-use price of about $20.
Technology allows people to exploit these situations (and publish the results), much to the chagrin of the businesses that use these models. I wonder if this will drive businesses to a true pay-for-what-you-get mode of operation. No cell minutes will be free because it will be too easy to abuse free minutes. No single-use device will be as cheap -- it will require a deposit for the value of the asset.
That technology allows people to use products and services in unintended ways will force companies to change their products or business models to either lock-out unintended uses or build in a charge for the cost of those uses.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
the carriers can start offering free mobile-to-skype service...
Free when you physically jack in to the network, pay when you roam wirelessly. Sounds about fair.
Another way to get free cell calls
*ducks*
Nice use of Something Awful to troll, +1 to something.
Home of the midwest loser - www.say-10.net
So "free" means I need to have two cell phone plans and a VoIP plan? Sign me up!
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Working for an upcoming VoIP company, I can see where things are headed. Vonage is already connecting customers with WiFi phones. This means you have phone service, and you can use this phone anywhere there is a WiFi connection -- your office, Starbucks, or whatever.
Since this upcoming VoIP company is an offshoot of a Wireless ISP, we also get to hear all the talk about WiMAX. Intel and Nokia are teaming up to implement it on a massive scale. Assuming that the frequency licensing does not become an issue, consumers will be able to purchase true nomadic high-speed connections (with speeds probably in the vicinity of today's mid-range DSL) for roughly the same price we pay today for our broadband.
The obvious combination of these ideas is a phone that connects to a VoIP network over a nomadic WiMAX connection. $200 hardware, $50 for your internet connection, and another $25 a month for the phone service that you can take anywhere. As I posted above, at least one VoIP provider is offering unlimited international calling. Even if the rates for VoIP increase considerably, this is still well below the threshold for cost benefit.
Mods: Do you disagree with me? Go ahead and mod me down. Meta-mods will sort it out. Good luck!
There are a number of companies selling VOIP to GSM gateways, you can see them all over the GSM world (which is everywhere except the U.S.). The boxes hold from a single GSM phone, up to a 19" rack which holds 32 GSM phones.
These boxes are the bane of every data centre in Europe. You walk around and see a cabinet with a few of these boxes, a single VOIP router, and hundreds of magnetic car mount GSM antennas around the inside. Any data comms equipment with 10 meters gets huge numbers of errors because of all the induced RF, servers nearby tend to randomly reboot, people who work in the data centres tend to have serious migranes, etc. When you get a few of these operators in a data centre, local GSM coverage is eliminated as they overwhelm all the local sites.
The economic model makes sense, though. To terminate international calls on a mobile phone, the GSM provider tends to charge a huge amount of money, like US$0.75 per minute. One of these GSM gateways can hold many SIM cards per phone, and then the calls appear as if they are local. If the operator has a good bucket plan, like 1000 minutes for $10/month if your call is on the same operator, or free on nights and weekends, then the numbers start to add up quickly. One 19" rack box with 30 active phones can terminate 20,000 minutes per month, which at US$0.40 per minute profit is quite a nice paycheck.
This is nothing new, but now someone has figured out a simple system for the stone-age american market.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
This is news? I've been doing this for months with asterisk, bluetooth, and broadvoice sip. $50 a month for Tmobile 2 line service and you end up with unlimited nationwide and some of europe (wife is swedish).
Is handy for when she's at school, but who wants to call that much from a cell? Especially considering quality, it's not really worth it for most people who don't run around that much, and tmobile's reception is spotty. Will be a lot better when companies start setting things like this up so cell's become roaming pbx extensions, they'll actually use the minutes.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
...Nextel offers unlimited everything for $200 a month, that's probably not too much more than the service for the two phones, plus it's much more convenient than having to go through Skype.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
Bah, I've been doing this for years. Two applications:
1. Calling my Asterix box and having it forward to regular numbers
2. Calling my Dial-Up Server and surfing the internet
Although the DUN Server is a little slow (9600 baud), it still serves it purpose of retrieving email. I used to have unlimited text messaging on my cell plan, I could just send commands (ie shutdown -r now) to my servers, but that option got removed.
The real way for free calls is to wait other people call you.
And don't forget cell phones can cause dain bramage...
It's a better plan over here in the UK, where we don't have to pay to receive calls. (why you lot put up with paying for incoming calls, I don't understand....)
RTFA. It apparently works for incoming calls too. Presumably their software automatically dials your preprogrammed cell number when an incoming call comes in via Skype.
I guess the whole point of this sytem is being missed.
Consider these....
a) Not all countries charge for incoming calls.
b) This system gives the cheapest way of POTS to POTS communication by using a VOIP bridge in between, thus taking out the most expensive piece.
c) Cost of one Call now is
(c2c cost one)+skype cost+(c2c cost two)
c2c cost one, technically is free if planned properly
skype cost, technicaly is also free
c2c cost, technically can be free if planned properly
There are quite a few limitations of this system, but is definitely a good start.
d) Voice quality and Lag will definitely be a challenge
e) There are legal challenges, in a few countries it is *illegal* to connect PSTN to IP network.
--------------
Are you sure a mile is only 1.6 km?
I have an unlimited minute plan with Cricket for $35/month.
I rarely call outside the state I live in, so I don't pay for long-distance on my phone. $5 extra give unlimited US calling. a few of my friends have the same plan and we laugh when we hear people complain about minutes or getting charged extra fees. our phones basically work like land line phones, and I know exatly what my bill will be every month.
since I started using Cricket over 5 years ago I havn't paid a cent more than what I agreed to pay every month, and havn't had any problems at all. I will never go back to Sprint or AT&T, or get another limited minute plan ever.
-John Fenley
Until the Direct Connect (as Nextel calls it) system overloads and breaks down. It's already flakey during peak hours. More pie in the sky ignoring the limitations of a resource.
What's up with that Skype hype? It's a proprietary protocol with lousy quality over crappy lines.
Dedicated Cellphones.... skype... uh...
How about using SIP and one of many subscription-free VoIP providers (FWD, Sipgate), an old box and Asterisk@home?
You can not only call your VoIP friends, but also make cheap calls to regular phones, setup several VoIP providers in Asterisk.. you can buy a sub $20 modem card for connecting your home line to Asterisk and have voice mail and fax too...
I could be wrong about that formula.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Furthermore, not every carrier has free mobile-to-mobile; my Sprint PCS account only has free calls to other Sprint phones on the same family plan. And since that second phone costs $10 per month, not counting the cost of the plan itself, it's merely cheaper, not free.
How long? Um... I'm guessing about 3.5 years... IN THE PAST. Unlimited regional cell phone plans cost about $45. Some even give you roaming minutes for the rest of the country if you travel...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Thanks for that info. A certain message board I often use always prepends http:/// to any https:/// links, and the links always take you to paypal. Now I know why.
I wonder if this will drive businesses to a true pay-for-what-you-get mode of operation. No cell minutes will be free because it will be too easy to abuse free minutes. No single-use device will be as cheap -- it will require a deposit for the value of the asset.
...
... just let me do whatever I want and tell me how much it actually costs.
If they also stop vastly overcharging for other services, I'd be all for it. Back-of-the-envelope, GSM voice bandwidth can send 60,000 characters per minute -- why does a 20 character text message cost the same as a minute of voice? Because that's what we'll pay
If there was a cell provider who came out and said, we'll let you do anything you want with your phone, and charge you in direct relation to how much it costs us to provide that service, I'd sign up with them in a second. I'm tired of arbitrary overcharges, undercharges, weird marketing entanglements
Can this be done by Friday?
Try listening to music being played down a GSM phone. That's just bizarre.
Only because the phone runs the GSM Full Rate codec at too low a bitrate. Crank the bitrate up to 30 kbps, and music starts to sound decent. For example, I took a Smile.dk song, encoded it, decoded it, and got this. In fact, a popular homebrew application for Game Boy Advance uses GSM audio at 30 kbps.
Plus, the camera remains single use -- how many solder/desolder cycles is that chip gonna survive?
Depends. The chip is electrically identical to a SmartMedia card, so (provided you can successfully desolder the chip) why not just solder on a SmartMedia socket?
We used to do this in the old school modem days with 3 way calling... you have no LD... Call a friend who did and wanted brownie points.. 3way modem to the latest hot download BBS... Or maybe it was the call forwarding... Anyways, been done before, its just a new implementation to use it with the Cell phone & then over IP..
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
SkypeOut costs money. Your cell phone basically just becomes an extension of the free level of Skype service. And on top of that you have to pay money for the cell phone. You are better off just using the cell phone as it was intended to be used. That is unless you are going to do something coll with the Skype part like AOTS's DittyBot.
http://www.lingo.com/
* Unlimited US, local and long distance calls
* Unlimited to Canada and 17 countries in Western Europe
* 26 calling features like Voicemail, Call Forwarding and 3 way calling
* Keep your phone number, Emergency Calling Service and more...
Sounds like a job for Greasemonkey.
It's really great to read about what Cringely has to say. But I think I also need to know what Dvorak thinks about this.
English is easier said than done.
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
eh? since when can't we switch providers to get a lower rate? this happens all the time and is one of the things the providers compete on.
The whole problem for the providers is that because all 5 networks have 99% coverage and nearly the same call quality the only thing they can compete on is price and goodies. Because of this the consumers aren't brand loyal and most people switch networks every year.
Furthermore, it doesn't sound like it handles incoming calls, so really what you have is a flat fee for unlimited outgoing calls.
Most mobile network providers that I've used don't charge you for incoming calls, and all offered a prepaid plan with no monthly charge. On the other hand, I've never seen a provider that gave you free calls within network.
I've had completely free digital mobile service on 5 phones with T-mobile going on two years now.
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Actually a few weeks ago I was thinking about writing a Skype to VOIP gateway. That's because of an offer of 1und1.de of a calling 'flatrate' for around 10/month to any landline in Germany.
If I had such a gateway, I would offer people free calls to numbers in Germany, maybe asking them for a small donation if they use it a lot, so I can cover my expenses.
However, I didn't find any OS or free (as in beer) configurable VOIP client to connect this to... I've lookep a bit into the Skype API, and it seems connecting to Skype should work (one problem being that Skype needs to connect to a soundcard, so I would also need a 'virtual' soundcard, if I don't want to connect two soundcards together).
What do you think of this idea, would you place a call through a Skype-VOIP-PSTN gateway (privacy implications...)?
Maybe you know of a solution already?
Kind Regards, Florian
The *caller* cannot switch to get a lower rate. That is to say if I call an o2 mobile, it costs a fortune whatever landline or mobile net I call from because o2 charges them a lot to do it. I cannot not use o2 because I'm not the one using o2, the person I'm calling is.
The point the gp makes is a fair one... I have been wondering for some time why calls to mobiles are so expensive. Receiver pays may well have helped reduce prices... it still seems unnatural though as you're paying for something you have no choice in.
Isn't this a form of a red-box? (or blue box, or cyan box, or whatever the color of it is?)
Ahhh, nostalgia.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
join the free calls to your home phone number, and just setup a asterisk server routing over skype/vonage/iaxtell/whatever.
Guess I already got this, I have asterisk at work, and a password to use the Companys toll free vonage line for all calls.
I'm sorry that the highpoint of your day after having a home ASTERISK setup is getting a low quality box to hold to your ear and generally inspire poor driving and useless conversation.
"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly" - Touchstone,Shakespeare's "As You Like It"
Of course the caller can switch. I pay a fixed rate when calling to other people's mobiles, set by my provider, regardless of the provider the callee is with. Providers compete on this.
The only thing is that I have three different rates to pay - to fixed phones, to mobile phones of the same provider as I, and to other mobiles.
That's using a Telfort mobile in the Netherlands.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
You note though that you are charged a high rate for calling based on the highest of the termination charges. Your switching only cuts the margins of your end of the call, it won't help reduce the termination charge at the other end hence the price doesn't drop much, which is the point that was being made by the original poster.
Incoming calls to landlines are always free, one local company offers an unlimited use cell phone, several others have free incoming calls. I think the US has the same caller pays system but the customers are insulated from it. I have been looking at a bunch of VOIP providers and almost all provide free incoming calls even if outgoing is only 100 minutes.
While I think of it... the fact they can only compete on price and goodies would mean they were cheap, you'd think, surely? However they are more expensive than in the US...
http://www.fwdout.net/
The reason they offer unlimited in-calling is because it is inexpensive to keep calls within their own network. When calling even local number, they have to access a trunk to the phone company. They don't have to do any work if someone wants to do this, and they get paid for two plans a month. Cell companies can only offer these plans though because the average use really isn't that much. At a company I worked for we offered an unlimited local calling plan that was a huge success. The only problem were a very small minority of customers that would actually use their cell phones up to 20 hours EVERY day. Maybe they were using them as baby monitors while they slept, or as phones in call centers, we don't know... Can you imagine the size of the tumor from 20 hours/day of use?
Those Bastards. I refuse to join these cell phone companies as long as they charge by the bit.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
ok but how cheap is it in the US then? I just checked cingular and they have only 3 plans which all seem as expensive as the ones around here. example: cingular $55,97 plan: 450 minutes + 200 text KPN Mobile (2nd biggest here): 50,00 plan: 450 min + 900 text cingular seems to be 45 $cents per extra minute, kpn is 11 cents
damn preview button should be used :)
oh and bit of a mistake on the extra min price: it's 24 cents at kpn
Oh...right...they're out to make as much money as they can. Darn.
(* and I should be able to listen to my MP3 collection at home through my cell phone :)
J
Maybe I overgeneralised ;) Comparing to the people I've spoken to the US is cheaper. I pay £30 (so, what, 50USD shall we say) per month for 400 minutes and 50 texts (to all UK landlines and mobiles). Something like 15p/min for extra minutes...
:) Which wouldn't surprise me. 3 is cheap though... lots of minutes there, just such terrible service and up to now a poor choice of (3g only) phones that I moved away again.
Maybe it's just the UK that's expensive