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Skype Unleashed Onto Cell Phones
An anonymous reader writes "Today Hutchinson announced that it would provide unlimited cell phone to cell phone Skype calls via a 3G connection. This new service, called X-series, is part of a new alliance made up of Skype, Sling Media, Yahoo, Nokia, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Orb and Sony Ericsson. According to the article, users will also be able to 'search Google and Yahoo, send MSN instant messages to their friends, watch their TVs from a Slingbox, access their computer at home with Orb and buy or sell stuff on eBay.' Users will only get charged a monthly fee for access, in a similar way to broadband charges."
Prob is that the fine print for unlimited data plans says no voip!
http://www.hutchison-whampoa.com/
Yes, CNET got it wrong as well. Let's see if Slashdot can correct their summary before the article!
Sounds like a great way to get p0rn on the go
Wulfram II - Free Online Mutiplayer 3D Tank Shooting Gam
While this isn't completely related to the parent article, it is Skype related. A group of students and myself from the University of South Florida are conducting a simple survey on Skype user satisfaction. It consists of a short automated Skype call, followed by a brief questionnaire. The entire process should take less than three minutes. If you would like to help us with our research please visit:
http://skype.cse.usf.edu/
We appreciate your participation, and feel free to suggest the survey to any friends or family that use Skype.
Can you make a dial-up modem call via Skype over the cell phone network?
With the exception of Skype, aren't most of these things possible on phones already either as pre-bundled applications or as Java downloads?
I suppose the really critical thing (rather than the application and content) is that there will be no per-data fee, it's a one off monthly cost as with broadband. Internet on the go with a broadband price plan.
Not only that, all these monthly fees are all priced in terms of first world affordability, thereby excluding the majority of humanity.
~ no pay to play
Now I will be able to use my phone as . . . a phone!
---- "XML is like violence. If it doesn't fix the problem, you aren't using enough."
Skype, Sling Media, Yahoo, Nokia, Google, eBay, Microsoft, Orb and Sony Ericsson have announced plans to discontinue their free mobile services.
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Admittedly I haven't utilised the internet from my mobile (cause I am a tightarse), but I was of the impression you could already connect to the internet, and through the "awesome" power of java do what ever you like, including using voip (even if you first had to remotely access a terminal capable of it). So what, (besides the unannounced flat rate) are they so hyped about? Seems they have learnt a lesson from micr$oft about selling users a product they already have by telling them "it's cool, it's hip, it's happening".
Skype.. the propritary, we don't speak any accepted standard VoIP provider. They might as well be AOL or Compuserve before they realised that this "internet thing" meant they had to use SMTP for email.
Google on the other hand has standardized on an open standard for VoIP (Jingle), and has said they'll support SIP at some future point (currently the most widely supported VoIP standard).
AccountKiller
That's Hutchison, not Hutchinson.
I have Cingular's unlimited plan for the internet. The lowest ping I've ever had was 800ms, and I average 950 to 1150. Combine this with my maximum of 4Kb/s, how exactly is voip going to be feasible?
Fuck, it's the end. The company name is 3? The service is called X-Series. And I'm living in a joke, right??! Someone allowed the (1) creation of the ultimate fortress in the history of business technology. Hopefully not! (2) the UK, a country without a Constitution, can now be the place to begin tracing activities of human beings. Excuse? Yes, you're not being monitored, you're loosing privacy under any suspecting evidence of wrongdoings. Why, it's Terrorism, of course... Again! The cost? Zero, everything is being privatized. They all win, because there is a contract from 'Tres' with a term to commit to all who delivers. Ask for the contract, it exists. Suckers. Now we sink because Osama said so and the rich listened.
Notice the absence of network providers. They will only give out subscriber phones (usually in Germany when you make a 24 month contract to pay 10 Euros each month you get a 250 to 350 Euro reduced price tag on your phone that you purchase with the contract that leads to all the phones coming from the network providers, which ususally also give you another 200 to 350 Euro off each time you renew your contract depending on how much money they earned) that don't have that feature. Since almost all the phones are sold through them you can take a guess at the market impact of this deal. Also they will just jack up the price for data packages sent through their networks if they want to.
Pretty much only early adopters will use this at best. The big thing is wireless lan coverage and useage over wireless lan. If Skype would mange some kind of smooth handover between two hotspots. Now that would be headline news!
Shit, I forgot to comment on the fact that perhaps all of this takeover by the rich is happening so they can, in their tems, "patch" the grieve that stimulates a would-be depression 1-8 years from now. To help get past this stream of bloody river, they are uniting. Very thoughtful, makes me happy.
...as a phone! :-)
This message printed on 100% post-consumer recycled electrons.
8 kbps for a typical non-Skype VOIP codec, add packet overhead and you're in the approximate range 10-20 kbps. Skype is more demanding, with one source claiming 3-16 kBps (notice the capital B). So, somewhere in the modem range, maybe up to ISDN speeds.
Can anybody explain why this is a good thing? Right now, I make a telephone call on my cell phone. I get charged one flat monthly fee (that is pretty low). It really couldn't possibly be any simpler.
What's the point of doing the same thing, but with 14 different acronyms, none of which will work together perfectly?
I'm surprised this is new. We have everything else on our cells.
The government can't save you.
Is price even a bonus? I've got an unlimited Net connection on my phone, and it's bundled in the price I pay, already.
... anytime soon?
Or do we have to rip it ourselves from the phones once we get our hands on them?
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
So, in effect, you can pay 3 for NOT using their network?
Well, technically, you still do, but less of it.
I remember reading some wirelss/3G forum posts of people who already tested this some time ago and it turns out only CDMA2000 (or WCDMA) based 3G networks are able to run VOIP (e.g.Skype) without any issues. This means that only Sprint and Verizon Wireless (and others who are CDMA based), in areas with EVDO coverage + unlimited data plans will be able to enjoy this, and most of the US is still on CDMA 2000 1X (for now, at least).
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
I wonder if they'll enable SkypeOut on these phones. The long-distance call providers would probably not be able to compete with SkypeOut pricing on these phones. You could make a killing by simplifying the process of using SkypeOut - users don't even have to know that they're riding on SkypeOut for their long-distance calls. If anything, call quality would be improved!
but hey your a techy
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It will be really interesting to see the reaction from cell phone companies as people begin to move to only having a cheap data connection and using Skype. They'll probably shoot data rates up for a while then get wise and start their own VoIP service that comes "discounted" with a data plan. This is the wave of the future, but like most companies cell carriers will fight tooth and nail for the next 10 years trying to keep us all in the past.
or else!
Skype deals with firewalls and NAT better. If you know the ins and outs of SIP, you'll know that it's a nightmare on the WAN. SIP's designers pretended it's an ipv6 world when creating it (my old boss sat on several of these IETF task forces). One reason it sucks so much was the decision to embed the ip address as a TEXT STRING inside the SIP message, so it never gets NAT'd.
Skype just works. Very, very few people care that it's closed, as evidenced by its adoption rate.
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or does this remind me of the "class action lawsuit similar to the one launched by Microsoft and Coke against PepsiCo last year"?
I know a little sig that's just ten words long
Skype just works. Very, very few people care that it's closed, as evidenced by its adoption rate.
They'll start caring when they can't reach someone with a different VoIP provider. Communication requires open standards, not proprietary ones. If you want to work over a NAT, use IAX2.
AccountKiller
Oh, I'm with you on the openness bit, believe me. I'm just stating the facts as they stand. What my personal opinion is doesn't really matter much.
IAX2 is nice, but it's not geared for personal endpoints - it's a trunking protocol first and foremost, and lacks a lot of features provided by both Skype and SIP. You can make a simple softphone with IAX2, but it won't be terribly great. That's why there aren't many around.
Every VoIP system needs a PSTN gateway. So it doesn't matter, which standard you use. I can call every user of every VoIP standard with SkypeOut, through the PSTN gateways, as long as they support that. And anybody with a PSTN gateway can call me in my SkypeIn number. All systems need to provide similar means. SIP sucks, we don't need it for interoperability, which it provides in theory but not in practice.
PSTN/SS7/ISDN/PCM is the inter-operability standard, much like SMTP is for Internet mail. SIP, Skype, XMPP, whatever they are just like POP, IMAP, MS Exchange protocols, Lotus Notes mail standars: they only matter locally and do not need to be standard.
We can come up with better future standards or even fix SIP, but in the meantime Skype is far superior to anything else. In the end SIP or IAX2 or something can be used between the various inter-system gateways, but the clients do not need to be one standard only.
Of course, if openness is your religion, then you can not use Skype.
Anssi Porttikivi / app@iki.fi
Where did you get that from? The goal is to remove PSTN from the equation. PSTN is expensive, normally charging per-minute and having call setup costs etc. VOIP is free end to end, by its nature.
I make a lot of calls over SIP and rarely need to hit a PSTN connection... and when I do I use SIP gateways in the country I'm calling that provide a free connection to that country. Skype is horribly expensive when it forces you into PSTN - in many cases more expensive than a standard analogue phone call.
I've been able to do this for almost a year now, using my Verizon xv6700, unlimited data plan ($45/mo) and the WM5.0 Skype Client. What's new? The problem with running 3G on your phone constantly, though, which is what you need to do in order to receive calls over skype, is that it sucks down battery life like nobody's business. Standby is simply no longer an option. 3G (EV-DO) data connections make a virtual phone call, except the battery consumption is twice the normal battery consumption for a standard phone call (1x). That 180 hours of standby, 6 talk time on the longest lasting battery you can find? Uh.. yeah, not anymore. Try like.. 3.. if you're lucky. Worse - because incoming calls trump data connections, you'd better not care about who you're talking to when you do make a skype call from your phone, cause it'll drop the second someone else calls you, as your data call gets put on hold. This can be resolved by having a data-only plan with your PDA phone, but then you run into not being able to make calls off 3G networks, having to carry two phones, and still having to deal with that whole battery life issue, constantly in search of the next wall outlet (and how useful is that for a cell phone?) At that point, why not just go with one of the smaller carriers like Cricket who provide unlimited calling for $45/mo (but you can't leave your service area.) Still, it's useful for making outgoing calls when you have a charger nearby and are doing something like 800/866/877 dialing, and you don't want to waste minutes (which should be free for those calls anyway.) It's cool, but over-rated, at least until battery for high speed data services no longer become an issue. I'm a big fan of the possibilities, but unless they've somehow made some magical integration where it would detect a skype call in progress trumps incoming calls and somehow are able to put the battery into low consumption mode while connected to 3G networks, people are going to find the skype feature a novel, but not very useful, technology.
SIP sucks. That's all there is to it. Ridiculous overhead, and its preferred method of handling dropped or delayed packets is to storm the network with MORE of them...
Although I would much prefer they were open, Skype is still a big step in the right direction. If not for Skype, you probably wouldn't see Google making its own (more open) VoIP offering.
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