T-Mobile's Openness Doesn't Extend To Skype
from the only-goes-so-far... dept
On Wednesday, we talked about how T-Mobile was doing a (mostly) good thing in opening up their mobile phones to the full internet (opening it up was good, but ignoring that it’s a different browser experience was bad). One of the things we noted, was that unlike Hutchison’s 3 who declared its customers would be “nuts” if they wanted to get the internet on their phones, T-Mobile was letting their customers decide what they wanted themselves. Apparently, though, that thinking only goes so far. A foot note to yesterday’s announcement was that T-Mobile would not open up its mobile devices to Skype because “it believes the lack of integration between Skype applications and SkypeIn/Out monthly pricing would be unattractive to customers.” Yeah, right. So, suddenly the customers can’t decide for themselves? Everyone knows the real reason is simply that T-Mobile doesn’t want to lose voice minutes by having them shift to VoIP over a data connection and they could have just said that. Claiming this is somehow for the good of the customer is pure spin.
Comments on “T-Mobile's Openness Doesn't Extend To Skype”
VoIP on GPRS/3G
Zed,
Some comments on your previous post:
-VoIP does not work on GPRS since Skype requires 80Kps vs ~50Kps for a GPRS connection. 3G should at least offer 200Kps and therefore enable VoIP calls unless the carrier blocks them
-Try calling a cell phone with SkypeOut and you will realize that the quality is really bad when you are lucky enough to be connected
-VoIP over GSM: I have an unlimited, flat fee data plan so the cost of a communication is marginally free and I can keep my plan minutes. On top of that, any international VoIP call would cost only a fraction of its GSM equivalent