Why AT&T Killed Google Voice | Hacker News Reader

Why AT&T Killed Google Voice

online.wsj.com

144 pointsmjfern50 comments

Well written opinion, but misleading title - I was expecting WSJ to have found out that it was AT&T who killed Google Voice, although we don't seem to know that yet. One can hope that this is high-profile enough reporting to let out some info about what happened, exactly.

Also, some of the advice is questionable:

Transition away from "owning" airwaves. As we've seen with license-free bandwidth via Wi-Fi networking, we can share the airwaves without interfering with each other. Let new carriers emerge based on quality of service rather than spectrum owned. Cellphone coverage from huge cell towers will naturally migrate seamlessly into offices and even homes via Wi-Fi networking. No more dropped calls in the bathroom.

But cell phone coverage reaches a lot farther than wifi. I'm not a radio physicist, but I think 802.11 allows communication over 14 channels, each of which can be crowded, and some of which can cause interference for others. It was designed with overlapping WAP and a (relatively) small number of people connecting to each. Now, I'm rather clueless about the implementations of cell phone protocols, but I know enough to think twice before saying "open her yup, baby! no dropped calls in the bathroom!" - it doesn't sound as if the author does. Can we keep GSM/GPRS/EDGE if we allow many overlapping connections? If not, are backwards compatible replacements feasible, or will we need to replace every cell phone in the country?

Encourage faster and faster data connections to our homes and phones. It should more than double every two years. To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011, 25 megabits in 2013 and 100 megabits in 2017.

Also, virgins should rain from the sky. The number should double every year. Five virgins today should be 10 virgins in 2011, etc.

These data-connection speeds are technically doable today, with obsolete voice and video policy holding it back.

What policy is he talking about? Is there a reason for this policy aside from holding back data speeds and virgins?

I liked the article, but agree that the suggestion that Cell networks can be run like Wi-Fi isn't feasible. The amount of signal loss through a barrier increases with frequency, so 2.4GHz signals die out more quickly than, say 700MHz. To be a bit anthropomorphic, radio waves don't see the thickness of an obstacle in terms of inches or meters, they see them in terms of wavelengths, which are inversely proportional to frequency. So opening up high power, low(er) frequency wireless equipment to everyone would most likely be a disaster.

On the other hand, the current practice of just handing over chunks of scarce resources to anti-competitive firms _is_ broken, so the author is correct that change would be beneficial.

It's an opinion piece that covers no ground we haven't already read a hundred times over - I didn't see any reporting in the article. Sad - in order to compete with the Tech Crunches of the world, even the WSJ is throwing out flashy LinkBait with little substance.

yes, but coming from the WSJ which is a lot more widely read by policymakers than, say, TechCrunch this gives the issue a lot more coverage which is probably the right way to think about how it can be addressed by those with the power to address it.

Not to disagree with you, but most big news outlets (WSJ included) have been whining about how blogs pirate their stories and re-spin them for Google juice. Turnabout is fair play.

Tell you what, I'll subscribe to the first newspaper that digs up the AT&T/Apple contract.

Exactly. It's fluff to us, but it's news to policymakers. It reminds me of a comment someone made about an article that claimed that nobody will read your thesis: something about an informal section to go with the formal parts. Well, more-mainstream journalists reporting on something we already know up in our ivory towers is a way to get the message out there.

Agreed. I saw WSJ.com and expected actual reporting. Maybe unsubstantiated, "bloglike" content should have "blog" or "ed" in the domain name (blog.wsj.com).

Headline almost makes it sound like Google Voice is "dead" or like something political happened legislative-wise to prevent Voice from operating. When I saw the author, it actually made some sense; during the Nov. election, I was a poll worker (volunteer) with Kessler's son. In Atherton of all places.

It's an opinion piece in the opinion section. That means it's likely not hard facts (otherwise it'd be in the news sections). It's a fairly emotional piece in an outlet where this likely hasn't been seen before. Even though we have heard the arguments hundreds of times over...

Text messages are 20 cents each, or $5,000 per megabyte.

Wow.

IIRC, with some carriers it can even be $35/message. The part that irks me the most is,"You get charged 20c/message to receive messages. Oh, and by the way there is no way for you to prevent a text message from being sent to you."

You can have SMS blocked, but you have to call them and request it specifically. I believe the salespeople try to frighten you into getting one, warning you of the dangers of receiving an SMS without a plan.

That must be an American thing. I've never heard of someone having to pay for incoming messages.

It's a recent can&usa thing (was introduced in canada several months ago). It's very likely just a scheme to coerce most subscribers to get a text messaging plan and boost their ARPU by $3 to $10 dollars, since all of the 'plans' have free incoming texts.

Definitely a north-american thing, I have not seen it in any other part of the world.

I hadn't either, but then I was from the UK. I moved to Canada and they started bringing it in, I was thankful I was on Rogers who didn't introduce it . . . and then the recession hit and they BS-backtracked and implemented it.

Oh well, time to hunt the unlimited smartphone data plans.

Too bad about being in Canada. Canadian data plans suck compared to the US ones. The US doesn't have that much competition for cell plans, but Canada has even less (2 carriers; Bell or Rogers).

Agreed the competition is bad, there are more carriers in ontario, however they're either the big three, or a second brand name for one of the big three (Bell, Rogers and Telus).

Bell has access to the unlimited data plans, and now has a phone worth it (in the Palm Pre). However Bell's customer service is appalling. Basically unless you contact the BBB every time you have a problem, nothing will get done.

Whoa... just re-read my post and that was supposed to be $0.35/message... not $35/message. O.o It's too late to edit it though. Sorry for the mis-information.

But as others have said 20-35 cents per message can add up pretty quickly. The entire point of that price is to convince you that it's better to just pay the $10/month for unlimited text messaging. I mean text messages are a max of 140 characters. That's a minuscule amount of information in comparison to voice calls or data plans (checking email,websites,etc) yet they charge an arm and a leg for it.

It is quite a coup, especially because text messages are essentially free to the carrier:

Looking for a data pipeline that would fit these micro messages, Hillebrand came up with the idea to harness a secondary radio channel that already existed on mobile networks.

This smaller data lane had been used only to alert a cellphone about reception strength and to supply it with bits of information regarding incoming calls. Voice communication itself had taken place via a separate signal.

"We were looking to a cheap implementation," Hillebrand said on the phone from Bonn. "Most of the time, nothing happens on this control link. So, it was free capacity on the system."

via: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/05/invented-...

Maybe for the radio part of it, but between cell tower and service center (and vice versa), SMS goes over the signaling links - which are also used for call setup, notifications, WAP push, and routing queries.

Theres nothing free about them, theres no such a thing as free in the telco world - everything costs someone something, though I agree, SMS is extremely cheap for the carrier - definitely NOT worth paying 20 cent for. Carriers love SMS for that exact reason.

Having said that, SMS can also cause the carrier a world of pain... I obviously can't provide any details, but one specific network had a problem where two thirds of all signaling traffic was caused by some virus which a large percentage of their customers' phones were infected with. This was costing them many thousands a day! Thankfully, we were able to block these messages at an early stage in the transaction and reduce network traffic by a substantial amount and over the air traffic by about half.

They are essentially free, because the carriers provide no delivery guarantees for SMS messages. That is, if the channel is busy with other signalling traffic, then SMS messages will be silently dropped.

The TCAP transaction would be retried approx. ten minutes later, up to three times (on the networks I've seen, anyway).

That is true for original GSM networks. However SMS might be using a data channel for delivery instead of control in the latest EDGE,CDMA.

I googled for UTMS 3G (the most usual here in europe), and they still use the FREE signal channel:

"On umts, sms is packet switched - bit rate will be 16k...... cos it is sent on signalling channel."

ref: http://www.wirelessforums.org/uk-telecom-mobile/anyone-know-...

If they were using the regular data channel, and they charged the regular (even though they are inflated as is) data prices, this would be a non-issue.

It's like if the USPS decided to charge a buck for post cards because people liked them more, so the logical thing to do would be to just stick the post-card in an envelope, but then the USPS declared that illegal and outlawed post card sized envelopes.

We don't know that this is still the case. Text messaging is very popular, and what was once a little-used patch of bandwidth might not be so spare these days. This is not to say that the charges are warranted (except that people pay them) but that the 1985 unused-band consideration isn't as applicable.

This is the basic problem. Geeks like the idea of unlimited bandwidth, but it really isn't a possibility. Physics tells us that you can't have it, especially over wireless.

The only scarcity is in your cell, right now. In 99% of cells, txt messages are free as the signal time slices are going unused (no other texters, low signalling use). At, say, a rock concert, the wireless tubes might be crammed but that's why SMS doesn't have a latency (or delivery?!) guarantee. Also, a mobile base station could be set up at the concert to get more airwaves or there may not be enough voice channels.

So... txt messages are essentially free.

Quick recap - founding of SMS:

"Mr Matti Makkonen had discussed the idea of a Message Handling Service for GSM digital mobile phone in 1984 in a pizzeria in Copenhagen with two other Finns Mr Tiainen and Mr Tapiola during a conference of mobile phone communication's future.

When the development of GSM digital mobile phone standard was extended from the Nordic countries initiative to the global ETSI workgroup, the idea of SMS was proposed to be included as a global standard. "Without this international collaboration SMS would not have become a global success story", says Makkonen.

Mr Makkonen, did not receive financial payback for his pioneering work because he didn't apply for a patent. "At that time there was an open sharing of ideas by monopoly operators so we never even considered to write a patent application" said Makkonen. "We just started to spread the idea and take care of it into the specifications. The mobile system today is open source and developed from innovations by hundreds of people" he said."

http://www.bookit.net/news/en_GB/makkonen_economist/

I saw a great writeup explaining how it is cheaper to send an equivalent amount of data to one of the Voyager spacecrafts, than it is to send it by SMS.

link?

This seems to be the source:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/14/txts_r_v_pricey/comm...

I found the last part amusing. Andy's idea for fast data connections is that their speed should double every year. That brings him to a 100Mb in 2017.

Here in Europe ADSL is already 20 Mb for most connections and cable is offering up to 120 MB now. This is now, in 2009. I expect 100 Mbit connections to be the norm in 3 years here in western Europe.

Is the difference in network speed between the eurozone and the States that big? Hearing Andy it seems so, and that difference is to stay.

I think he was referencing average household speeds, and he didn't implicitly state those ARE the speeds.

To homes, five megabits today should be 10 megabits in 2011

He also said that those speeds are possible now, but restricted by the carriers.

These data-connection speeds are technically doable today, with obsolete voice and video policy holding it back.

Yes, the difference is that big. Average cable offering is 7 Mbit today where I live. You can upgrade to a whole 15 for an arm and a leg.

A few lucky big cities have Verizon FiOS (fiber to the home), which can go up to 50 Mbit.

US broadband speed is seriously behind Europe and Japan.

Worth pointing out that this problem is also present in Europe. We don't pay for incoming SMS's (thank god for that), but the telcos have an effective monopoly which they use and abuse to make sure no one can come up with any effective and profitable phone-based service (beyond those spam sites selling ring tones).

For example, they offer a way to charge customers via "Premium SMS", but the margins that they take on those are insanely high. See http://www.txtlocal.co.uk/prices/ for example... If you want to charge your customer 25p, you will only get about 7p of that. Makes Apple's 30% cut look almost free.

Telcos are, worldwide, abusive monopolies. Given that communications are so important to our society, I can't wait to see the back of them, and the beginning of a new era in communication innovation.

I hate having to mention this every time Google Voice comes up, but if you are using Google Voice from your AT&T phone, it uses your AT&T minutes. Just like any other call. (It is not VoIP until your voice gets to Google's servers. Then it travels over IP, until it is converted to POTS at the other end.)

The only loss for AT&T is that SMS messages use your data plan, and that you can call people (and receive calls from them) from a phone other than your cell phone.

Personally, I think killing this off was really stupid. It caused them lots of regulatory scrutiny for something that only a few users use. (GV is still invite-only, after all.)

I believe it switches over to VOIP if there's an available wifi connection.

Nope. Try removing your SIM card and making a call.

The last time I checked, the Palm Pre is available on Sprint's network, not on Verizon's. I expect more from the Wall Street Journal.

It's just an op-ed piece from a less than tech savy business observer. He misses many of the details, but his overall political points are right on in my opinion.

Sounds like the author has little understanding of the technologies at play. Some of his suggestions at the end:

• End phone exclusivity. Any device should work on any network. Data flows freely.

Sure, great idea. Except that we already have competing standards (CDMA, GSM, etc.) Should every handset maker have to incur the cost of building/testing/certifying multiple hardware iterations? An iPhone can't just magically work on a Verizon network in its current incarnation. Someone has to fund the effort to make the radio compatible with Verizons network.

• Transition away from "owning" airwaves. As we've seen with license-free bandwidth via Wi-Fi networking, we can share the airwaves without interfering with each other.

So all of these large competitive companies will play nicely in a shared, non-owned space? As we've also seen with Wifi any number of other common devices can effectively dampen or block the signal entirely. Not exactly what I want for my cellphone service.

• End municipal exclusivity deals for cable companies.

Almost every municipality already manages their contracts with cable companies in a non-exclusive fashion. Except that when you do all the math, the cost of building a cable plant actually takes a very long time to recover. There is little incentive for secondary and tertiary carriers to come into almost any market because there just isn't enough subscriber base for the them all to divide and still make a profit on that area. I've been on telecommunications boards and negotiated/discussed this very topic and concept with multiple MSO's.

"Transition away from "owning" airwaves. As we've seen with license-free bandwidth via Wi-Fi networking, we can share the airwaves without interfering with each other."

There's no way that will work. Wi-Fi is actually a good example of what happens when airwaves aren't regulated (owned). Especially looking at the 2.4 and 5 GHz debacles.

I'm a fairly free-market person, but sometimes a certain amount of ownership is required. I have no problem with AT&T, Verizon, et. al. owning their slice of the spectrum, but that ownership should come with some caveats ending phone exclusivity, etc.

"No more dropped calls in the bathroom." Is that really why we need less owning of the airwaves? I get the point, but I think there must be more compelling argument.

It wouldn't be so bad if we were just overpaying for our mobile plans. Americans are used to that—see mail, milk and medicine.

I get the mail and medicine thing, but are we all overpaying for milk too?

Depends who you compare yourselves with:

http://www.milkproduction.com/Library/Articles/Milk_prices_a...

I believe its through subsidies paid to milk farmers.

Google voice does polling every quite a few minutes so text msgs are sloooow.

Google voice dials diff phone numbers so I donrt get to make google voice my free to call phone number

Google voice works on other ATT phones like BlackBerry

I don't get the benefits of free m2m I get when calling my wife so I wind up having to use two phone numbers.

The only thing it gives is at work BBs have text msgs disabled so they use gvoice for that.

There is NO revolution. Till google nakes it work better.

O and calling requires an internet connection using the BB app. Which means where I can call on phone (say subway overground) I can't call gvoice due to no service. But I get crystal clear calling using voice plan. Its bs.

My point with this is that there is no revolution... yet. It has a loooong way to go. And since BB on ATT has google voice its not ATT who is blocking or more drastic measures will be taken. In fact if anything google voice serves the BB customers much more than the iPhone ones. The BB customers are the ones who pay for massive minutes for business conversations and need this systems more. Having unlimited talk plans like t-mobile's fave-five calling one google voice number is what is really going to hurt telephone companies.

Everyone seems to ignore the fact that BBs on ATT can use the Google Voice app. I also used Google Voice sans app on my previous phone on ATT with no hassle.

RIP AT&T

(too bad that was also said a generation ago)

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