Charge, a phone company with features for nerds • Hacker News Board

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#151

Post by ndmrs » Sun, May 22, 2016, 10:51 AM UTC

nudpiedo wrote: post #131

The question is: in which countries are you operating? US only? Is there any SIM as a service in a Linux host or behind some REST interface? (for the creation of bots) Could I have multiple telephone numbers/identities in a single SIM? If not, does anyone now where to find those kind of services?

If you are looking for a web to cellular API check out twilio[1], seen it recommended by a lot of people and am planning to use it for a few projects I have in mind.

disclaimer: Not affiliated.

[1]https://www.twilio.com/

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#152

Post by pmorici » Sun, May 22, 2016, 11:06 AM UTC

Looks like a nice enough interface but all my m2m devices use GSM & SIM cards. Besides being slightly cheaper this doesn't seem better than ting which supports both GSM and CDMA devices.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#153

Post by MatthewWilkes » Sun, May 22, 2016, 11:14 AM UTC

rsync wrote: post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

Sounds like you're disabling the voicemail service, not conditional call forwarding.

Try dialling ##004# - it's the GSM standard code to disable all conditional call forwarding rules. More codes at https://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-4041

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#154

Post by amelius » Sun, May 22, 2016, 12:21 PM UTC

> Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

Looking at this Venn diagram [1], it appears the company tagline is saying something negative about their customers. Perhaps better to change that into "for geeks".

[1] https://c8.staticflickr.com/5/4117/4889135495_e91b886fcd_b.j...

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#155

Post by aaronsnoswell » Sun, May 22, 2016, 12:22 PM UTC

Great. When are you coming to Australia?

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#156

Post by KnightHawk3 » Sun, May 22, 2016, 12:34 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #154

> Charge, a phone company with features for nerds Looking at this Venn diagram [1], it appears the company tagline is saying something negative about their customers. Perhaps better to change that into "for geeks". [1] https://c8.staticflickr.com/5/4117/4889135495_e91b886fcd_b.j...

Google (youtube/chrome) says "stats for nerds" and nobody cares, I don't think anybody really cares about being called a nerd.

My friends and I often refer to each other as nerds and I hear it's quite hip with the youths these days.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#157

Post by michalskop » Sun, May 22, 2016, 12:46 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #11

Can I have no voicemail ? That's a feature I really want and it's not easy to do. If you configure a mobile phone line without voicemail, it will not just ring and ring and ring (as I hoped it would) - instead, the caller gets a message that "the number you have dialed is not accepting calls at this time" ... or some other message (depending on the carrier) that makes it sound like you don't pay your phonebill or som…

Almost nobody is using voicemails, where I know (Czech Rep., Slovakia, Spain, Hungary) - it used to be the default (voicemail is on) to get charged for the calls into it, but I think it is not even so anymore (because it was too annoying for the users that the companies had to change it).

It rings for some time and then you get some "the user is not available at the moment".

Sometimes I really wonder how the US tech is stuck in the past (while generally is not, of course).

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#158

Post by maxerickson » Sun, May 22, 2016, 12:54 PM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #136

sargun wrote: post #15

This seems pretty expensive actually. $13/GB + $20 per month versus my Verizon plan that's ~$120/mo for 12GB of data. This plan would turn into $170. I usually go to about 60-80% of my data plan (tethering and such), which at the lower bound still doesn't make sense.

Are all data plans in the US so expensive? I live in Poland and I pay around $12/month for unlimited LTE (32Mbps down, 20 Mbps up in my area). $13 per month seems absurd.

More or less. At least 4g. There's tens of millions of people willing to pay the current prices so they don't go down.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#159

Post by Karunamon » Sun, May 22, 2016, 1:31 PM UTC

a_small_island wrote: post #13

>* Voice and SMS are unlimited up to a reasonable amount. We reserve the right to terminate service in cases of fraud or abuse at our sole discretion. From the "unlimited" notes for voice and text

Ugh.. Then it's not "unlimited". Unlimited means "without limits", not "with a limit we won't tell you".

I can't wait for people doing this to get sued for false advertising.

Re: Charge, a phone company with features for nerds

#160

Post by lttlrck » Sun, May 22, 2016, 1:41 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #34

joshbaptiste wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get rid of VM notifications, I recorded 2 minute+ of silence as my VM greeting, zero VMs after that.

Ok, that's sort of workable ... EDIT: ok, actually not so much - if you are out of coverage area and your phone rings zero times and goes right to voicemail (that's how it works with carriers in the US) then the caller calls you and goes right to silence, and presumably they retry 1-2-3x and get frustrated ... not even sure this is the right number, etc. Whereas if the phone just rang and rang and rang, at least it w…

Perhaps you could record two minutes of ringing.