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Comment by dandandan | Hacker News Reader

Stallman won't like it but Facebook Messenger has voice calling built in now and it works very well. I was calling someone in SE Asia from rural Massachusetts recently and the quality was great with very low latency. It felt like a natural conversation given the connectivity challenges on both ends.

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I too have been quite pleased with Facebook calling over a 3G connection from the Middle East to North America, though I still find that FaceTime voice calls sound better (pending both parties own apple devices)

At least you should be using Whatsapp calls, which are end-to-end encrypted, and also have very good quality with the data saving option enabled.

Interesting. I can't see myself using it for work though, which the majority of my Skype calls tend to be.

My team has been using appear.in for about two years now (I introduced it to them smug).

http://appear.in/some_words_doesnt_matter <- share with whoever, instant video call

We use Skype for Business at work, however when the boss isn't watching we switch to appear.in since it works much better and doesn't require craptastic software.

SfB is pants. Quality is always crap, UI is terrible, Mac client is constantly behind, there is no really-open interface for Linux and bots, etc etc.

But, the boss will see when you're "available" straight from Outlook, which is where he lives. It's not an IM tool, it's (yet another) instrument of workforce control.

Don't even get me started on the mac client... constantly drops calls, other end complains that sound quality is terrible despite high quality headphones, screen sharing stops suddenly mid presentation, can't see scheduled meeting directly in app, and overall horrible UX.

Also, despite the rigid security policy where I work, the mac client stores my password in the keychain.

Signal has voice calling as well. The bitrate is a bit low for my taste but it's pretty damned reliable, long distance as well.

the begin of the conversation is a bit lacking though, you need to wait few seconds and few "do you hear me?" tests. I don't use it often but happened not hearing the other side in the middle of the conversation, need to investigate this further.

I don't have connection problem with Signal when I use it. The problem I do have is that the call will almost always drop before a few minutes are up.

why are people downvoting this?

You don't need to be Facebook friends to complete a call but I can still see that expectation being an obstacle to establishing one. Is there a space for a very simple WebRTC call application? It seems like everyone is focused on video calling or more full-featured products.

I'd love it if the default was to use some very lightweight WebRTC app where you just created a new link for each conversation.

I don't think it's likely to happen any time soon unfortunately.

Regarding Facebook, it still feels weird, I'm not sure I can put my finger on exactly why. I just want to keep "friends" and "business" totally separate.

How was this service Mozilla once included in their browser called, something from Telefonica? Worked pretty well for me. Maybe they ditched it to early?

No as long as it is not supported by mobile safari, thereby cutting a large swath of situations where such an app would be useful. We've had WebRTC calls as "experimental" for years now in https://awwapp.com/ solely because of this limitation.

Once you invest more in working around this by having native clients, it makes sense for your product to do more.

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