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Comment by colinsidoti | Hacker News Reader

At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

I imagine we'll see an incentive program soon..."Refer 5 friends and this month's bill is free." If you refer the 5 friends you talk to most, the company will save much more than $19.

VoIP is cool, but traditional phone calls and text messages are not always ideal. I think innovation on the communication channels themselves would go a long way for this company. Think http://voxer.com

Facebook is in a particularly good position to pull this off correctly. They already have a "cool" factor, and if they could come up with a communication tool that people really like, so much that you're jealous your friend has it but you don't, the people will come. Blackberry pulled this off for years with BBM, but lost its "cool" somewhat recently.

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You are dead on about Facebook. Imagine if the conversation shifts from whats your phone number to whats your identity. A persons phone number is becoming increasingly less important.

> At $19/month for unlimited, they're probably operating at a loss unless they can build up a significant customer base.

that's a pretty bold statement. Care to elaborate?

Seems pretty expensive when i pay exactly that to AT&T to have 6mbps at my home. we're talking about 1mbps maximum here right?

Unlimited Voice and SMS to other carriers is expensive. Look at Twilio's pricing or Skype's pricing, or any other voip provider. Text and calling to your own network is essentially free, but off network gets expensive. Granted, I don't know how big of a cut these voip providers take, but I can't imagine it's that high.

Put it together with usage data, you quickly get over $19: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/u-s-teen-m...

Edit: Just want to point out, I'm not saying this is a bad bet to make. They can attract a ton of consumers with a super low cost, and if those consumers do most of their communication in-network, eventually they'll be in the green.

I don't know the financial breakdown, but it's worth noting that Bandwidth.com — the company behind Republic Wireless — actually runs the VoIP backbone that powers Twilio, Google Voice, and other services. So I'd imagine they get a better rate :)

Very interesting, I had no idea. A little more digging brings me here: http://bandwidth.com/about/read/verizonAgreement.html

"Bandwidth.com, Inc., a privately held telecommunications company in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, announced today that it has signed a commercial deal with the Verizon wireline companies under which the parties agree to terminate each other's VoIP traffic at a rate of $0.0007 per minute."

This is for landlines, but still a much lower number than I was expecting to see.

Remember, this is Verizon selling off bandwidth it does not need since it's unused. To V its like free money.

There's still a carrying cost to that bandwidth inventory, so it's not completely free.

Twilio and skype are not even to considered if your concerns are costs.

Other companies turn a profit with 1/10 to 1/100 of their prices.

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