After a few rough stops and starts, T-Mobile last year introduced a new VoIP service named Bobsled. As originally implemented, the service allowed users to make free calls to both other PCs as well as from any device to any phone number in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico -- by simply clicking on a Facebook friend's profile. T-Mobile this week announced that the company has both expanded and improved the Bobsled service, and is now offering it for both Android and iOS customers -- whether you're a T-Mobile customer or not.

T-Mobile also announced a new Bobsled Messaging app for Android phones, allowing users to send group text and multimedia messages to users across platforms. Piggybacking on the back of Apple's iMessage, the service is also soon going to be available for iOS, and takes aim at the slowly dying cash cow known as SMS.

With both the VoIP and messaging app you've got a mobile carrier actually embracing disruptive ideas and the evolution away from SMS and voice minutes. Hand in hand with the company's recently-implemented 100 minute unlimited data Walmart plan, these are exactly the kind of legacy-revenue-killing ideas the executives over at AT&T would have hated, ensuring they died a quiet but certain death.

"With Bobsled, we continue to leverage and embrace the power of IP communications to bring seamless, cost-effective connections to consumers across networks, devices, countries and carriers," insists T-Mobile. "With Bobsled, people can now make free voice calls from an iPad(R) or tablet, send free one-to-one and group messages anywhere in the world, and access their phone's contacts and text messages from their tablet or computer."