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Comment by pdkl95 | Hacker News Reader

The existence of an alternative protocol doesn't help without interoperability between the protocols, which will never happen. If I have to first convince anyone I want to communicate with to first e.g. make an account on my XMPP server, communication is going to be much more difficult and sometimes impossible. Telegram isn't the only service that assumes a 1-to-1 mapping of phone numbers to people; Signal also has this problem.

While you enjoy your "spam free" service, some of us will have to work with the separate but not equal alternative. In case you haven't noticed, as the common communication environment has become more and more locked-down (starting with mobile, and now spilling over into desktop), fewer people are using open alternatives. Simply observing that open protocols exist doesn't make them an actual de facto alternative.

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Get a phone number like everybody. You are like 0.0000001% of the market. Nobody is going to twist their product to cater to you.

> Get a phone number like everybody.

Are you paying for it?

I can be reached by telephone. What I don't have is a unique telephone number. This works perfectly fine for actual voice communication. If you think I can simply afford an extra monthly expense, you're wrong.

> You are like 0.0000001% of the market.

Made up statistics reveal your presuppositions.

There are a lot of people that don't have a unique phone number. It's a minority position, but that's kind of my point: chat services do not inherently depend on traditional phone numbers, and requiring one is going to exclude more people than you probably realize.

In any civilised country a prepaid phone number is almost free (if not free) so requiring a unique phone number will only exclude people I don't care about.

And of course that statistic is made up. It was a joke.

Err. A SIM card which comes with a phone number costs me £0 for the SIM and £5 minimum top-up. £10 for the phone, though half my friends seem to have old phones they could probably lend me.

Are you in a country which doesn't have pay-and-go service?

Apparently even pay-as-you-go plans in the US have a fixed monthly payment: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/pay-as-you-go

You can always use Freedompop or ringplus, where after a signup fee the plans are free.

I'm in a country with a crazy healthcare system. Medical disability barely covers the absolute bare minimum; spending that 15 on a SIM (assuming I could find a phone somewhere) would require not paying of one of the drugs that are keeping me alive.

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