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MagicJack Moving To Smartphones

Posted by timothy on from the don't-restrict-yourself-to-spyware-at-home dept.

robo45h writes "The late night infomercial VoIP company magicJack is moving into the smartphone space. The competition there is really going to be interesting. We have the likes of Skype and other VoIP companies competing against the wireless carriers still selling over-priced voice calls. It's such a big battle that the recent Verizon / Google Proposal specifically excludes (provides a loophole for) wireless. This has been brewing since cell phones added data capabilities, but it's coming to a head now." Free calls sounds nice, but it's worth noting that not everyone's happy with MagicJack's EULA.

7 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Good... by rbarreira · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's about time the phone companies recognized that phone calls are just data passing through their networks.

    I know they don't want to be seen as purely "bit carriers" which don't add much value, but that's what they are.

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    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    1. Re:Good... by Animats · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's about time the phone companies recognized that phone calls are just data passing through their networks.

      Actually, no. Voice over IP over cellular data is an incredibly inefficient way to send voice. Worse, all the ad-related blithering in "free" applications uses more bandwidth than the call.

      The best phone audio quality today is with an ISDN voice phone. End to end digital, end to end synchronized at the bit level, full duplex, no need for echo cancellation, no lag beyond speed of light lag. Many home phones in Switzerland have worked that way for a decade.

      It's disappointing. We ought to have CD-quality telephony by now. But instead, audio quality has gotten worse. The phone network is 64Kb/s: 8KHz sampling of 8-bit samples. That's PC audio circa late 1980s. Cell phones don't even deliver that; they use very lossy compression.

    2. Re:Good... by localman57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We ought to have CD-quality telephony by now.

      Why? 8 bit 64k is perfectly adequate for voice. If we have spare cash to spend on communicaitons, spend it somewhere else, on something that isn't perfectly adequate, or that benefits substantially from improvment. If we get better voice quality as a side effect, great! But it isn't something to focus on.

      Now run along. I think I saw some vinyl records in the other room you can play with.

    3. Re:Good... by hoxford · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You start with talking about VOIP via wireless then switch to talking about hard-wired circuit switched technology? What is your point exactly?

      I'm pretty sure that VOIP over 3G can carry more simultaneous calls per cell than GSM or CDMA2000 so I'd dispute your claim that it's incredibly inefficient. And compared with a dedicated, circuit-switched 64kbit stream like the ISDN calls you mention, it's VERY efficient.

    4. Re:Good... by Capt.+Skinny · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I doubt that much innovation ever followed the phrase "perfectly adequate."

  2. Re:Skype VOIP over wireless? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most people have wireless data plans

    No, no they don't.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  3. There's no phone service like no service at all by cdrguru · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem is that the wireless phone companies have built themselves into a trap. They charge for phone calls with the assumption that they are going to get the bulk of their money from that. As people move to VOIP usage, the phone calls will end and they will be left with far less revenue.

    Same thing with wire line providers - as Vonage and other data-driven systems take over the idea of a "phone" will be quaint and obsolete. Of course this means you have Verizon providing service so Vonage can eliminate Verizon from the marketplace.

    What a lot of people don't seem to understand is there will likely be a day of reckoning coming along. T-Mobile is paid by voice calls and charges little for data plans. If the voice calls stop and everyone has few or zero minutes they will be faced with some tough choices, as will every other carrier. They can raise prices on data plans to recover the revenue. They can scale the company back drastically to continue operation with the smaller amount of revenue. The last choice would seem to be pretty obvious - they can just fold up operations and find some new business to invest in.

    I expect most of the wireless companies to either scale back drastically (no more stores, just online sales for example) or cease operation entirely. If there isn't any money in it, and there will never be any more money in it, there isn't any point in continuing. Same thing with the wire line providers. Once the revenue reaches a low enough point, I don't think they are going to be able to continue.

    Of course, what nobody ever asks is what happened to people that actually needed a buggy whip after automobiles came out?