

An iPhone App to Sidestep AT&T - fthead9
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/technology/personaltech/25pogue.html

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stevederico
Google voice denied and Line2 accepted? Interesting steve...

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rationalbeaver
Interesting indeed. In my book that smells like the 'unfair trade practices'
type of interesting.

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jws
There was a well publicized policy change between the two events.

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jey
Which policy change?

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jws
Google Voice was rejected in July of 2009. In October of 2009 AT&T
unilaterally (maybe after seeing how the FCC was thinking) amended their
customer agreements to allow VOIP over the cellular network. Once that camel
nose came under the tent the difference between VOIP phones and the builtin
phone started to go away. Now in March of 2010 Line2 has been altered and
accepted to deliver VOIP on the cellular network.

As submitted, Google Voice had several problems, including a massive privacy
violation that would have held up any app. It is reasonable to think that they
could have worked through those. The "duplicates the dialer, voicemail, and
SMS" seems to be the key objection that Google could not, or chose not, to
work around, but at least for voice calls that is changing as evidenced by
Line2. I never saw SMS come up explicitly, but surely AT&T would not be happy
to see that cash cow vanish. The question is if they had enough foresight and
clout to get it protected in their agreement with Apple.

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stanleydrew
But Line2 was originally accepted, with all it's iPhone-duplicating
functionality, in September 2009: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/02/google-
voice-alternative-li...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/09/02/google-voice-
alternative-line2-is-now-live-on-the-app-store/)

And, at least if you believe the statements to the FCC, AT&T has never had
anything to do with the acceptance or rejection of the Google Voice app. So
Apple ends up looking rather hypocritical here, when all of it's stated
reasons for rejecting Google Voice also apply to Line2's app and yet that app
was accepted.

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jws
Not true. Line2 was wifi only and was positioned as an additonal line, not a
replacement.

I think the prevailing meme is clearly missing something. Like, why did google
quit instead of addressing the flaws. Apple stated officially on the record
that google voice was not rejected, in december, did google get discouraged
and give up? Are they still in queue? Are they happier with a reason for
people to buy android phones than fir iPhone users to be able to have
convenient access to their google voice accounts?

Did people even want a native google voice app for anything other than
subverting their voice/SMS contract? I use google voice, and I'd like a native
voicemail viewer for it, but I don't need to replace my SMS program or dialer.

~~~
stanleydrew
I'm not disputing that Line2 was originally wifi only. That's not relevant
though, since Apple didn't complain about Google Voice using the 3g network to
initiate calls in its FCC statement. From the TC article linked above:

"When [you get a] call, the service can either relay the call to your ‘real’
number (the AT&T number assigned to your iPhone), or it can send it to
voicemail, depending on the way you’ve set up your call filters."

This is exactly what Google Voice does, and Line2 even included a similar
"visual voicemail" feature from the start. It also duplicated the iPhone's
dialer _pixel for pixel_. In Apple's FCC statement the stated reasons for
Google Voice's rejection were re-routing of voicemail, duplication of "visual
voicemail," and duplication of the iPhone's native dialing functionality.

Is there a claim in the FCC statement against the Google Voice app that
doesn't also apply to Line2's app?

And Google didn't address the flaws, because there were no flaws to address!
As the acceptance of the Line2 app makes clear, all of Apple's stated
complaints about GV weren't real, so why try to get around them when the app
will just be rejected for some other completely ridiculous reason?

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huhtenberg
Taking bets on how soon this app will be ejected from the AppStore. Especially
considering:

 _The Line2 app is a carbon copy, a visual clone, of the iPhone’s own phone
software._

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jkincaid
For those of you wondering if Apple is going to remove this from the App
Store: they almost certainly won't.

Line2 was first submitted to the App Store in August 2009, which was really
bad timing because it was in the middle of the Apple/Google Voice storm. A
month later it was approved (after the founder pestered Apple a lot). And I'm
pretty sure the version Pogue is reviewing was actually released last month
(<http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/18/line2-google-voice/>).

In other words, none of this is news to Apple, though it's clearly
hypocritical on their part. Also, no way Apple would pull this after a Pogue
review — he'd probably write about it, and he's proven before with his 'Take
Back The Beep' campaign that he can incite quite an uproar.

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gcv
How is this substantively different from the Skype iPhone application, with an
in-bound phone number? The major usability barrier to me there is the
inability to have Skype run in the background on the phone (reasonably so,
since it would kill battery life); does Line2 somehow work around this?

Edit: Never mind, I should have finished reading the article before posting.
Line2 routes calls through the cellular network when the app isn't running.

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fthead9
I use it on my iPhone, dropped my unlimited plan to 450 minutes, saves
$30/month Toktumi is only $15/month so saves $180/year and now I can actually
use my iPhone at home. Very cool app, going to test on my iPod one of these
days too.

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stanleydrew
I'm happy that iPhone owners now have something even better than Google Voice.
But how can Apple possibly defend the Google Voice rejection now? I hope the
FCC gets involved again. I'm offended on Google's behalf.

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khangtoh
Damn Line2 does exists, for one moment while reading the article, I thought
the author was joking and talking about that imaginary VoIP app of everyone's
dream. Then I searched in iTunes and it's a reality.

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ekiru
This is great publicity for Line2, assuming Apple doesn't decide to remove
their app from the App Store due to the attention this article will bring to
them.

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justinchen
link to the app in itunes
[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line2-2-lines-1-iphone/id3191...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/line2-2-lines-1-iphone/id319185557?mt=8)

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DenisM
Oh this will be interesting on the 3G iPad. $30/mo 3G VOIP?

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stanleydrew
Does the iPad have a microphone?

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gojomo
Yes. From
<[http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/>](http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/>):

    
    
      Input and output
        * Dock connector port
        * 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
        * Built-in speaker
        * Microphone
        * Micro SIM card tray (Wi-Fi + 3G model only)
    

It's likely the headphone jack is even iPhone-compatible (accepts headsets
with inline microphones), though the wording above isn't clear.

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cpr
It is compatible.

See <http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/ipad/faq.html>, question "Does it work
with Apple's remote earphones?".

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sliverstorm
To read the article, you'd think VoIP was a completely new, unheard of
technology.

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albertsun
VoIP on your phone pretty much is.

