David Pogue: Is Google Voice a Threat to AT&T? (pogue.blogs.nytimes.com) |
David Pogue: Is Google Voice a Threat to AT&T? (pogue.blogs.nytimes.com) |
I'd love to have the iPhone on Verizon but how much will they want the iPhone if it is a trojan horse that makes them lose MMS,SMS and international long distance revenue?
How? Most people don't make international calls with their cell-phone. All Google Voice calls count as normal calls, and subtract minutes from your cell-phone plan, just like all other normal calls. So if you are calling your friend to see why he's late to dinner, AT&T makes as much money off you with GV as they do otherwise. Same with text messages; when someone sends a text message to your Google Voice number, it's relayed to your cell-phone. If you pay to receive random text messages, you paid for that one too. (But I assume iPhone users have unlimited SMS messages, so who cares?)
Anyway, AT&T loses very little here, and users gain a lot in terms of convenience.
(There's also the argument that Google Voice makes it easier to ditch AT&T. That's true, but I ported my number from AT&T to T-Mobile yesterday, and it took literally 15 minutes, with no involvement from me other than "ok, do it". So it's already really easy to switch away from AT&T.)
All in all, I don't get it. I'm glad I have a MyTouch 3G instead of an iPhone. Google Voice works swimmingly for me (and I even get to see a cute tshirt-wearing android every time I make a call. Yay!)
I'm actually surprised T-Mobile doesn't block GV, as they have a lot more to lose. With "My Faves", you get unlimited calling to 5 arbitrary numbers. With your GV number as one of those, all your calls become free. Now that actually costs them money.
These are also the same reasons why I think it's a great idea.
Are you sure it used your minutes and SMS instead of VOIP and SMS through google's accounts?
I'd say that's a good threat to AT&T.
I'm all for giving AT&T less control in favor of Google because Google is decidedly less evil, for now. But make sure you have protections for future events.
The native applications for various platforms, however, seem to involve actually using the phone as a phone, but with the calls routed through GV in order to have the caller ID and such work as expected. IIRC some earlier efforts involved explicitly dialling your own GV number to initiate the call.
So if people get used to using GV on iPhone, Blackberry and Palm, it would make switching to GV on Android trivial. There would almost no transition costs.
I get tired of my iPhone (or more likely pissed off at Apple for something) then I could just take my GV #, make some settings changes, then buy an Android phone and be off.
Easier switching is better for us, maybe not so much for Apple or AT&T.
Source: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?t...