

New Wireless Carrier Bypasses Networks, provides unlimited VoIP over Wireless - mdasen
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2342994,00.asp

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Brushfire
This is interesting. However, having been intimately acquainted with the
mobile world, I'm a little skeptical.

1 - _month-to-month with no contracts or credit checks._ This is the very same
thing that caused the death of many of the MVNO's. Unfortunately, a lot of the
people who really care about 'credit checks' are the very same people who dont
tend to pay their bills. Collections costs money.

2 - There is no mention of SMS. Personally, I use SMS more than voice. SMS
routing is a little trickier, and there are carrier interconnect agreements
that they might be using, but I'm curious as to the cost structure. Also, its
unlikely that, if they do have SMS, that it will be able to work on commercial
SMS services anytime soon.

3 - I use VOIP for my business telephone lines. Even when you turn the call
quality down to cell-phone-quality, things can still get choppy or jittery.
This is over business grade DSL. I can only imagine the call quality and drops
using any of the wireless carriers data networks.

4 - Lock-In / Trust. People are hesitant to switch to new carriers becuase of
contract lock in, but also trust. I might switch from Verizon to AT&T or back
(but never sprint, they are horrible). But will I switch to a noname provider?
No. AT&T rollover is, for all intensive purposes, just like having unlimited.

I do really think the mobile VPN bypass is neat, but I'm not entirely sold
their business can work in the long run. Good luck to them.

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mdasen
I think it's interesting that they're offering an international plan for only
$10 more that offers free calling from 40 countries. That seems like the
biggest win. The current situation with international roaming is ridiculous.

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latortuga
When I hopped to their website and saw a little flash animation that said
"Truly Unlimited Data" I couldn't help but smile. I'm hopeful for this company
solely because I want a bona-fide choice in carriers that actually makes a
difference. Perhaps they'll introduce competition into a market that is
severely lacking it.

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nickh
I'm skeptical about the audio quality, because even small amounts of packet
loss and latency can wreck havoc on VoIP calls.

However, even if Zer01's service doesn't live up to its claims, it's a step in
the right direction. North America needs more companies striving towards this
type of service.

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barrkel
The proof will be in the pudding. Latency and packet loss are murderous for
most VoIP stuff I've used.

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chiffonade
> "We've developed specific algorithms in our technology that address latency
> issues across the GSM networks," Piilani said.

Apparently they're doing time travel in software now.

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lutorm
This latency is clearly not a time-of-flight issue.

~~~
chiffonade
It never is, unless you're sending data to satellites in orbit. If they lease
the network access, how exactly are they fixing the latency issues on hardware
and software they do not control?

