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It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

gigaom.com

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Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#11

Post by corin_ »

jasonkester wrote: post #10

Uh, has anybody here ever racked up $60 worth of mobile calls in a single month? That pretty much describes my pay-as-you-go fees for an entire year . So, sure, if you pay them for more phone calls than you could ever possibly make, they'll let you make as many phone calls as you like. This reads less like news and more like a placement by whichever carrier is offering this plan.

I'm in the UK, but yes I would rack up that bill easily in a month if I was on PAYG.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#12

Post by PakG1 »

jasonkester wrote: post #10

Uh, has anybody here ever racked up $60 worth of mobile calls in a single month? That pretty much describes my pay-as-you-go fees for an entire year . So, sure, if you pay them for more phone calls than you could ever possibly make, they'll let you make as many phone calls as you like. This reads less like news and more like a placement by whichever carrier is offering this plan.

There was a case in Vancouver where Fido promoted unlimited calls. But in the fine print it said maximum 5000 minutes per month. A guy actually went over that, and he started getting additional charges. He didn't understand it of course, because he had purchased the unlimited package. All the other carriers jumped on the opportunity to say, "when we say unlimited, we mean unlimited." Of course, their unlimited was clearly restricted to weekends/evenings, but the point was made. Edit: the guy used his phone for both his personal life and for his personal business.

If you can't rack up $60 worth of calls in 1 month on PAYG, that's amazing.

Assume: 10 cents/minute

A budget of $60 gives you 600 minutes/month. That's 20 minutes/day in a 30-day month. If your cell phone is your only phone, like it is for me and for many others, it's very easy to breach 20 minutes/day. Especially if you have a significant other.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#14

Post by zacharyz »

Oh come on. Smart phones in general still only make up a small percentage of the over all subscriber base for the big phone companies. The rest of their subscribers still burns through minutes and text messages every month.

I welcome the day where I can have data only phone plan with iphone.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#16

Post by moonwalker »

jasonkester wrote: post #10

Uh, has anybody here ever racked up $60 worth of mobile calls in a single month? That pretty much describes my pay-as-you-go fees for an entire year . So, sure, if you pay them for more phone calls than you could ever possibly make, they'll let you make as many phone calls as you like. This reads less like news and more like a placement by whichever carrier is offering this plan.

Actually I do rack up about that much here in London. Can't switch to a yearly plan since I won't be staying that long. And that's nothing compared to other bills :)

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#17

Post by jedbrown »

blocke wrote: post #3

So basically AT&T is matching what Sprint already does. Meanwhile Sprint is busy raising its effective rates to match AT&T and Verizon. I love competition. Here is to hoping as tech marches on some decent Android phones trickle down to prepaid. I'd like off the contract bandwagon please.

T-mobile has a month-to-month contract if you own your phone, you can discontinue at any time and it's $20 cheaper per month than a 2-year contract. Not prepaid, but no 2-year crap either.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#18

Post by jedbrown »

JoachimSchipper wrote: post #13
joeybaker wrote: post #7

Summarized: as tech advances, the same services become cheaper. Add this article to the "no duh" category.

Actually, I'd summarize this as "data is the new SMS".

The difference being that data actually costs something to provide. SMS never did.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#19

Post by josephb »

cubicle67 wrote: post #15

Vodafone here in Australia offer unlimited calls and text (to any number) plus 1Gb data for $45/month http://www.vodafone.com.au/personal/plans/infinite/index.htm

Pity their network sucks so badly right now, and has done so for the last 4 months or more.

Hopefully the fix up whatever they have broken trying to merge the Three and Voda networks.

Re: It’s Official: Voice is Worthless

#20

Post by lhnn »

georgieporgie wrote: post #8

As someone who has always hated talking on the phone, I agree.

As a network engineer on the voice team of a bank, I disagree.

Voice is not worthless. A more accurate headline would be "Dedicated voice plans on current-generation smartphones are becoming marginalized".

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