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Facebook Gives Free Voice Calls a Trial Run in Canada

Posted by timothy on from the just-being-friendly dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this nice news (for Canadians) snipped from CBC: "Facebook has chosen Canadian users to be guinea pigs for a new mobile feature to make free phone calls. Facebook's new Messenger app for Apple mobile devices enables voice-over-Internet protocol phone calls, which use data instead of eating into the minutes in a mobile plan."

3 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. That'll be great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Data plans are just so mch cheaper than minutes.

    1. Re:That'll be great by Mashiki · · Score: 3, Informative

      You jest, but for a lot of people, data is a lot cheaper than voice minutes.

      Where is this mystical plan in Canada? Last I looked, and that was recently it didn't matter what plan it was. At all levels the screw over level was so high, that you were getting so badly fucked that you might as well go looking for a pay phone(we still have those in Canada).

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      Om, nomnomnom...
  2. Re:Lack of direction? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 3, Informative

    I use my Android phone+wifi+SkypeOut to ring my folks' landline phones in the States all the time (I live in Sweden), and it works great. Skype video is not as good as when using my laptop with a wired connection, but it does work.

    The tech is not the problem. The problems are twofold:

    1. That space is already well populated (e.g. Skype).

    2. US users in particular are going to get gouged deeply if they try to use mobile data to save on POTS/LDD charges.

    Also, I understand that some major US providers block Skype, which means they'll probably block this as well.

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