Slashdot Mirror
Yahoo! Messenger Gets Phone Service
prostoalex writes to tell us that Yahoo! has launched a new phone service attached to their Messenger service. From the article: "The calls have to be initiated from a PC, but can be made to traditional landline phones and cellphones. Yahoo customers can receive calls from those phones, as well. Yahoo will charge 2 cents a minute for domestic calls, on top of the monthly $2.99 fee. Per-minute charges to 180 other countries will vary. It won't charge to receive calls."
Screw $0.02/minute, Ventrilo is free and much less likely to be wiretapped!
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
I need clients that talk to one another, not 12 different clients that don't. Skype, Yahoo, Windows Messenger, AIM, Google Talk..hey you clowns, I can't run all these clients at once.
We still don't have effective Caller ID for VoIP. So who's going to take these calls from your computer besides people who *know* you are calling or your dentists office? You can't use it for anything but calling grandma. Don't get me wrong, VoIP on your system is a wonderful thing, but Skype was just worthless when I'd have to make a business call and my client would say to me "Oh, I didn't know +000001234 was you." I expect the same from Google, Yahoo, or any other player looking to break into the market. Until they have CallerID implemented correctly (and *not* hackable!) it's not ready for prime-time.
Phone service for $2.99 monthly won't make people run out and replace their traditional phones. But, "we see a continual chipping away at the traditional model," says Maribel Lopez, an analyst with Forrester Research. "And this really hurts the future phone business."
The future of the traditional model will continue to drift as it has been, to mobile phones and broadband digital services. Yet another milestone on the path to having a unified telecom service provider stick just one line into your home for everything.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
With their partnership with SBC/ATT? Last time I checked, sbc's dsl was "sbc-yahoo dsl". Wouldn't selling a voip level product be a stab in the back of your partner? Maybe it's just me.
How Jaded Are You?
and *not* hackable!
It's always hackable. Your grandma can hack caller id on a regular phone. Your standards are higher for the brand new technology?
China has a complex system.
There are some city with 10 digital number such as:Beijing, Shanghai. You have to dail 10 XXXX-XXXX. Attention, The 10 is area code and the 8 digital is your local number. Most of the cities in china have 3 area code with 7 local number just like North American and those cities are face the shortage of number, so they want to change the local to 8 digital.
for mobile, you have 135-XXXX-XXXX. the first 3 digital are limited to some different operator, such as 135,136 belong to china moblie,133 belong to CDMA network. The next 4 digitals used as area code which you can know where this calling coming from.
There are alot of change and many "new" technical. I had left china for 4 years, so just for your reference.