AT&T to allow 3G Skype calls | Hacker News Reader

AT&T to allow 3G Skype calls

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79 pointsTimothee61 comments

ATT actually loses nothing from me. I'll still use my normal ATT phone service for all US calls. All this means is that I will call foreign countries from my cell phone.

That's amazing ...

Why would AT&T do this? I no longer need 'minutes' of phone service anymore (except as a backup when I'm occasionally out of a 3G service area)

Perhaps they calculated that it's less risky to open VOIP apps than to possibly suffer the wrath of the FCC.

I agree, after rejecting google voice they didn't dare to reject this.

It's supposedly Apple that has rejected Skype and Google Voice. If you read Apple's letter to the FCC their agreement with AT&T is to prevent apps that will abuse the 3G bandwidth from making it into the App store, which is why I assume that Skype has been wifi-only up until now.

I'm just hoping that AT&T wasn't right. It would sure suck if 3G performance (for everyone since bandwidth is shared per cell tower) suffered from loads of people making Skype calls and/or Skype performance also suffered from too many other people trying to make Skype calls.

Yeah, that's my guess. Might as well get out in front and score some PR points for being open since it seems to be only a matter of time before it's a mandate. http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/genachowskis-open-intern...

Well, Verizon just put a huge shot across AT&T's bow today by announcing they would allow Google Voice (and others) on their new Android-based handsets.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/verizon-android-phone...

A shot across the bow is fine. The folks who put together the phone still have to execute. Hopefully this will shape AT&T up.

Very true. Verizon could be all talk at this point.

But it's interesting to see the walls starting to come down, slowly as they are.

Can you even get 3G data service from AT&T without first buying 'minutes' though? I can never seem to use up the minimum amount of monthly minutes so this has no bearing on my own monthly bill.

On T-Mobile, you have to buy 400 minutes a month before you are even allowed to pay for data. I use about 1% of my minutes...

Holy crap! That is extortion!

Yeah. And honestly, I think the person selling me the plan lied to me about the 400 minute plan being mandatory. (This is why I'm happy to see Amazon killing retail stores -- retail employees suck.)

There used to be, and maybe still is, a mechanism to activate your iPhone with an AT&T pay-as-you-go plan. The last time I had a pay-as-you-go it worked out to about $8/mo to keep up with the calendar based expiration of minutes.

I believe that was quietly killed off during the 3GS upgrade.

I'm sure they're banking on the quality of 3G VoIP calls being low enough that you'll want to place a normal call whenever possible.

People already complain endlessly about their voice service dropping. I suspect data is worse, and VoIP will make that abundantly clear.

The snarky side of me wants to say they know how bad their own 3G network is... But a voice plan is required to use the iPhone and their minimum plans are expensive enough that they won't be missing much revenue. It will be handy for having a single phone with multiple numbers though (maybe business/personal). Though so is Google Voice...

You're still tied to an AT&T voice plan unless you don't intend on receiving calls.

Applications still aren't allowed to run in the background so you'd need to have your iPhone on with the Skype app running to receive calls.

Not so amazing as Skype nor Vonage match the phone experience as neither take control of your dialer nor run in the background. If Skype is closed your phone won't ring and your calls will be missed.

Does this mean Google Voice will be supported as a native iPhone app?

if/when Apple pulls its' head out of its' a*, maybe.

or maybe Google will punish Apple and not release native app again.

I wasn't sure at first (thought Apple might be taking the heat) but this seems to confirm AT&T's claim that it's Apple that has the problem with Google Voice and not AT&T.

It isn't clear yet. Google Voice isn't VoIP (at least, not in the same way that Skype is) because you use your carrier's minutes whenever you place a call. That said, AT&T may choose to bundle the two announcements together because they're both examples of them being "open".

Of course, Apple is the one supposedly behind the Google Voice ban, so don't be surprised if Google Voice isn't mentioned at all during tomorrow's event.

I figured that the Google Voice issue would be brought to light with this announcement. But, the Google Voice app should have technically been accepted before 3G Skype calls: it doesn't really use data like Skype does. It seems (I don't have it) to be more of a convenience for the user so that he doesn't have to call his GV number and then dial the number he wants to reach, and instead accesses your address book and dials everything for you.

If this shows anything, it's that Apple is really behind the refusal (so far) of the GV app.

In light of the Vonage app which was approved the other day, I don't see what possible objection ATT/Apple could have against the Google Voice application.

If the Vonage app doesn't replace the native dialer, then it's certainly possible that it could have been approved while GV hasn't been.

Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.

EDIT: Hey everybody. I'm just repeating what Apple said. The GV announcement said nothing about VOIP, it just said "replacement of core functionality." Thanks.

Remember: it's not an objection to VOIP in general. It's an objection to the replacement of core iPhone functionality.

Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned, but I would have thought that the piece of software in the iPhone that makes it usable as a phone would be closer to "core functionality" than the dialer. VOIP is definitely treading on the former, though how it deals with the latter is obviously a question of interface rather than of protocol.

Conceptualizations of what constitutes core functionality in products and software have become increasingly shallow and less feature focused. I don't know if this is because of a somewhat less "business" driven mindset, or because Apple is absolutely brimming with UI freaks, but the mentality seems to at present be that the imitation of a dialer in software rather than the actual ability to make calls is what is most important to "protect".

I appreciate Apple's attempts maintain integrity in the UI interface but their hysterics over something like this make me wary.

That's not true.

AT&T has always limited iPhone VoIP applications to WiFi to cripple their usefulness. They just announced today that they were extending VoIP apps to 3G, most likely due to pressure from the FCC.

Also, you can't replace the native dialer or any core functions on the iPhone. Google Voice implemented its own dialing interface and was rejected for duplicating the built-in dialing and voicemail functions.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ATT-Extends-VoIP-to-3G-bw-7675...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_voice#Rejection_from_iPh...

I thought the only reason given for rejecting Google Voice was that it would cause confusion with Apple's dialer? If they did announce Google Voice along with VoIP, there would be some backtracking, I'd imagine.

Did Apple ever explain how the GV dialer was more prone to confusion with Apple's offering than the Skype/everyother voip app one?

I don't think we've actually seen any screenshots of how the GV app was supposed to work.

Well a dialer is just a number pad from where you dial numbers, no? Maybe I misunderstand the objection then.

I assumed that due to Google's special access to the iPhone, the app was a little more far-reaching than the screnshots that are a sibling to you seem to show. That's also what Apple's announcement implied to me.

Google doesn't have special access to the iPhone, they use the same SDK as everyone else with the exception of a couple of private APIs though that's fairly common.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/12/private

Yeah, that's the 'special access' I was talking about. Apple tends to reject other people's apps for using private APIs, but they let Google get away with it.

Actually, only blatant violations are rejected. There are a lot of apps out there that make use of a few private API calls so I wouldn't say that Google has "special access."

screenshots: http://www.iphonefreak.com/2009/03/gv-mobile-google-voice-ip...

Ah, thank you. I never saw those.

Those aren't actually screenshots of Google's Google Voice app, it's one of the third-party ones that has since been pulled.

I have GV Mobile Premium (the one pictured) and like it quite a bit. Having used it I find it hard to belive that someone would be confused between it and the native iPhone dialer - it's just not that similar.

Last I heard [mid-Sept]: Apple said that "Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google." Seems sketchy... [http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10356432-265.html?tag=mnco...]

FWIW, Skype over AT&T 3G has worked for many years on Windows Mobile. Or... it did 2 years ago when I last used it.

Ditto.

I also made a skype call from my laptop via a tethered cellphone and the quality was noticeably better: the cpu speed of the phone was more of a limiting factor than the 3g data speed.

Question: With the Skype-app on the iPhone can you be online on Skype even after you lock the screen or go to another app?

If you want to online on Skype on the iPhone so that people can call or message you even when you are using SMS or doing something else. Is this possible? At least on wifi?

Not possible without jailbreaking.

AIM does just that, albeit they ping you with badges/notifications when you get a message, which wouldn't quite work with calls. But you could always call back, or be "away". Nothing is stopping Skype from making that happen.

Thanks. Not very practical if two people using want to be able to contact each other on Skype and especially if they are both using it on the iPhone. Imagine if everyone was using Skype like that. No one would be online.

One benefit is I no longer have to use my minutes to call 1800 #s. like cust service etc

I was going to ask if you guys have a similar site to http://www.saynoto0870.co.uk that turns premium numbers into local phone numbers for standard rate calls.

But I found it.

http://www.saynoto1890.com/

The UK version of that has saved me crap loads in customer service call costs.

Good for them, good decision. There are other international operators that run skype and it is really useful.

If you have a sip account you can use fring to make voip calls.

I use Gizmo5 on my e71 over 3g. Better and cheaper than Skype.

So what's your point?

more info here: gizmo5.com and their blog: http://gizmo5news.blogspot.com/ quite cheap indeed.

I second that. Google Voice + Gizmo5 is working pretty well for me on the iphone using siphon. Free incoming calls (gVoice click to call), call quality is not to shabby, slight delay but its manageable. without using any cell minutes.

i wonder if this has anything to do with keeping the iphone exclusivity? verizon today also announced that they will be supporting android devices.

FCC would have ruled AT&T to do this anyway.

Too bad skype text chat is unreliable.

less reliable than international SMS?

Yes, definitely. The failure rate of Skype text chats, especially group chats with many participants, is astonishing.

International SMS is quite reliable, depending on destination country and routing.

I think the technically correct term would be "no longer actively blocks".

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