Hacker News Reader

Comment by hundchenkatze | Hacker News Reader

The help page (link is buried in the footer) has a more useful description than the home page.

"How does Capiche FM work?

Phone calls, broadcast live online.

You start a broadcast, Capiche calls your phone, and you go live. Then everything you say gets live-streamed to anyone who’s dialed into your show.

Fans and friends (and foes, if you want) can call a Capiche FM show’s number to listen on a phone call (yup: every show has its own phone number), or just open a new tab and stream the show online from the show's page. Hosts can invite anyone on air to chat live, too."

EDIT: Honestly your help page is great. Concise description about what it is and how to use it. You should consider bringing some of that content to the homepage. The skateboarding heart person is neat, but I'd rather you tell me about the product.

View on HN

Appreciate that feedback. We'll update the homepage tonight!

I've got one of those old grandfathered "limited minutes, unlimited data" plans, so the phone bit doesn't really work for me.

Streaming audio over WebRTC, though...

I'm curious about the business model. This has got to cost a metric fuckton in Twilio API usage. Is the plan to prove growth then build your own pipes to reduce the cost?

This feels like the free conference calling that just so happened to run on rural exchange numbers, so the more inboubd minutes, the better. But payments to rural carriers is either dead or dying.

If I'm understanding correctly, it does look like twilio has a lower rate for conference call minute/participant than general calling, but still $0.002 / minute / person adds up quick.

I don't get it. Why is the stream done via phone instead of just clicking a button on a webpage? Is there some advantage to using the phone?

It's a fun gimmick.

It's definitely costing them more to do it over the phone.

Well, there is a bit more to it... basically, the phone is really simple and everyone knows how to use it.

It allows access to the microphone without tech support issues (adjust microphone volume, give browser permissions etc).

Beyond that, listening also allows you to just call into a phone number and listen to a show - without expending your mobile data allowance.

There are many places in a lot of countries where you can have a landline but neither good speed internet nor cell phone reception. These places exist even a few 10s of kilometers away from the new Tesla factory in Germany.

For voice, I don't think you need a "good speed" internet connection?

Probably doesn't need to be fast, but reliable. Something with high latency or that drops packets would still give garbled audio, whether it's at a high or low resolution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com