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 amarryatVerizon FiOS
join:2005-05-02
Marshfield, MA
 ·Verizon FiOS
| reply to Crookshanks
Re: The looming threat said by Crookshanks:Consider the cable company, their phone product is VoIP. It transmits data packets on the same DOCSIS network used for your internet connection. Why do they get away with selling it as a separate service? Two reasons:
1) Because they can.
2) Because it's (theoretically) prioritized with QoS so web browsing/downloading doesn't kill it.
Arguably there's no reason at all to use the cable company's VoIP product. It's no where near as reliable as a POTS line, doesn't come with the mobility of a cell phone, and costs more than competing VoIP products like Vonage. Somehow they keep signing people up though.
SMS will eventually cease to exist in its current form. Arguably there's no reason to use it on a smartphone other than to communicate with non-smartphone users. If everyone you know has a smartphone you can use any one of a number of free IM clients to communicate with them.
But SMS is easier - same number as to call them. No need to know what kind of phone your friend has. No need to use one app to text some people, and another to text others. That being said, I do use Google Voice to send texts sometimes - one reason is that I can do it from my desk.
As for the cable company VOIP - supposedly it runs on a different channel as well? And it isn't on the public internet, just internal? Anyway, we have the FIOS digital voice product which works just fine. But in my office, I have the Ooma for that line - and it works just as well, especially on the FIOS internet connection. Before I got the Ooma a few years ago, I had a VOIP provider and it worked very well, with TONS of features that the telco don't provide. But that service became jittery sometimes when I was on Comcast, due to their unstable internet service.
But back to the original article, I don't like the idea of metered billing for data, the skyrocketing price of data (which has become cheaper to provide), and the double-dipping where you're paying twice when you bring your own device. I do like the SIM card options you have in Europe - when I was in England a few months ago, there were a bunch of providers and options. | | |
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| said by amarryat:As for the cable company VOIP - supposedly it runs on a different channel as well? And it isn't on the public internet, just internal? Nope, same channel. The only difference is that it's subject to a higher QoS priority. Internal vs. external network shouldn't make a difference at all, data is data as you've repeatedly said. 
said by amarryat:But back to the original article, I don't like the idea of metered billing for data, the skyrocketing price of data (which has become cheaper to provide) For better or worse I think metered data is a necessity for wireless service. Particularly for 3G, an EvDO Rev. A channel has a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 3mbit/s. That's shared with every user on the channel and in reality the available bandwidth is a lot less because 3mbit/s can only be achieved under perfect RF conditions.
One could argue that unlimited data would never have been offered at all if the carriers had predicted the smartphone revolution. When they rolled out unlimited data the primary use of a smartphone was push e-mail and light web browsing, both things that could easily be accomplished on a dial up connection. Nobody streamed audio. Nobody streamed video. People weren't downloading huge apps and surfing websites at desktop quality. Nor did you have a large number of people competing for the same resource -- smartphones were in the minority back in those days and dumbphones phones only used data for MMS.
Now I would like to see some changes to the current pricing model. Sooner or later one of the carriers will offer "nights and weekends" for data as they did for voice back in the day. The network is obviously less heavily loaded at 4AM and there's no reason why application updates and the like couldn't be scheduled to happen during off-peak hours.
said by amarryat: and the double-dipping where you're paying twice when you bring your own device. I don't like it either but for better or worse there's no law mandating a different pricing structure. T-Mobile at least does offer you a break if you BYOD. I'd jump onto them in a heartbeat if they had a rural network that was worth a damn. Alas they are utterly useless outside of urban/suburban areas. | |
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