
It’s Official: Voice is Worthless - mjfern
http://gigaom.com/mobile/its-official-voice-is-worthless/
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Groxx
Important detail: it's about "voice", not "[Google] Voice", though that's how
it looks in the title. To me, at least.

Basically, data plans are netting the cell companies more and more money,
while voice plans are netting less and less, with the inevitable crossing-
point somewhere in the near future (they're saying 2013, by just following the
trendlines).

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mikeklaas
Huh? Any capitalization of 'voice' in a headline reads 'Google Voice' to you?

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dhimes
I read it like Groxx- because voice plan aren't worthless and still make big $
for the carriers. Since that reading the headlines as Voice Plans are
worthless so _obviously_ wrong, I mentally defaulted to the next meaning of
Voice: Google Voice.

Symbol overloading + linkbait title = FAIL

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davidedicillo
It's time for carriers to understand that charging per minute or per message
(even more ridiculous) are concepts of the past. It's all about data.

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schintan
agreed..the next generation networks will carry voice as data packets itself
so this had to happen sometime.However, I doubt how will this benefit the
consumers as long as they are going to put caps on data usage.

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jasonkester
Uh, has anybody here _ever_ racked up $60 worth of mobile calls in a single
month? That pretty much describes my pay-as-you-go fees for an entire _year_.

So, sure, if you pay them for more phone calls than you could ever possibly
make, they'll let you make as many phone calls as you like.

This reads less like news and more like a placement by whichever carrier is
offering this plan.

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PakG1
There was a case in Vancouver where Fido promoted unlimited calls. But in the
fine print it said maximum 5000 minutes per month. A guy actually went over
that, and he started getting additional charges. He didn't understand it of
course, because he had purchased the unlimited package. All the other carriers
jumped on the opportunity to say, "when we say unlimited, we mean unlimited."
Of course, their unlimited was clearly restricted to weekends/evenings, but
the point was made. Edit: the guy used his phone for both his personal life
and for his personal business.

If you can't rack up $60 worth of calls in 1 month on PAYG, that's amazing.

Assume: 10 cents/minute

A budget of $60 gives you 600 minutes/month. That's 20 minutes/day in a 30-day
month. If your cell phone is your only phone, like it is for me and for many
others, it's very easy to breach 20 minutes/day. Especially if you have a
significant other.

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bingaman
I just checked and I've spent almost exactly $60 on my pay-as-you go phone
since mid-October. That comes to about $15 a month. I make no effort
whatsoever to reduce my phone usage, other than the fact that I don't enjoy
talking on the phone at all. I use AT&T, so I pay $1 a day when I use the
phone and then it's 10 cents a minute for calls outside of the network. As it
turns out, most of the people I talk to have iPhones, so I'm not getting
charged the 10 cents per minute. I also buy the minimum amount of text
messages every month (200 for $5). I've never used all of them and they roll
over each month, so my current balance of text messages is about 475. This may
not be for everyone, but it's working for me. My phone is also the 'dumbest'
phone I could find. Cuique suum.

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blocke
So basically AT&T is matching what Sprint already does. Meanwhile Sprint is
busy raising its effective rates to match AT&T and Verizon. I love
competition.

Here is to hoping as tech marches on some decent Android phones trickle down
to prepaid. I'd like off the contract bandwagon please.

~~~
jedbrown
T-mobile has a month-to-month contract if you own your phone, you can
discontinue at any time and it's $20 cheaper per month than a 2-year contract.
Not prepaid, but no 2-year crap either.

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joeybaker
Summarized: as tech advances, the same services become cheaper.

Add this article to the "no duh" category.

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JoachimSchipper
Actually, I'd summarize this as "data is the new SMS".

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jedbrown
The difference being that data actually costs something to provide. SMS never
did.

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zacharyz
Oh come on. Smart phones in general still only make up a small percentage of
the over all subscriber base for the big phone companies. The rest of their
subscribers still burns through minutes and text messages every month.

I welcome the day where I can have data only phone plan with iphone.

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danilocampos
Boner-kill: You have to be subscribed to their criminally-overpriced unlimited
messaging plan to get down on the unlimited mobile calling. Had to screw it up
somehow, huh AT&T?

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cubicle67
Vodafone here in Australia offer unlimited calls and text (to any number) plus
1Gb data for $45/month

<http://www.vodafone.com.au/personal/plans/infinite/index.htm>

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josephb
Pity their network sucks so badly right now, and has done so for the last 4
months or more.

Hopefully the fix up whatever they have broken trying to merge the Three and
Voda networks.

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georgieporgie
As someone who has always hated talking on the phone, I agree.

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lhnn
As a network engineer on the voice team of a bank, I disagree.

Voice is not worthless. A more accurate headline would be "Dedicated voice
plans on current-generation smartphones are becoming marginalized".

