6 ms·

Google Voice and FaceTime – Why the Carriers Are Losing Their Voice

45 points by Garbage 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago
Word to the wise: When a software company with actual ability and some edge decides to move into your industry, if they are doing things right, your industry will be disrupted. Music, books, movie rentals, mobile phones: these are just the most familiar consumer-facing examples. Anyone else have other examples?
- zzleeper 16y ago
  Advertising (Google, Craigslist, FB)? online brokers (zecco.com, etc.) ? Maybe also sales (I get more stuff from amazon that from the mall)
- yafujifide 16y ago
  This gives me an interesting idea: How about a Netflix for clothes? I bet a lot of people would love to have new clothes every week. The only problem would be ensuring the clothes are clean and in good condition. You would probably have to have some automated way of cleaning the clothes if the system is to be efficient. Checking that the clothes are not torn up would be harder, but you can have the customers do that for you. They'll just send it back if there is a problem.
  - RK 16y ago
    That sounds like a very difficult business to me. There is some sort of version for toys though. Just found http://mybusybucket.com/ http://mybusybucket.com/ Not sure if that's a dominant player. I don't have kids...
  - johns 16y ago
    Sort of along those lines: http://www.manpacks.com/ http://www.manpacks.com/
  - aaroneous 16y ago
    renttherunway.com does it for designer dresses and thredup.com for kids clothing
    - metageek 16y ago
      The model probably works better for designer dresses, since renting a $2000 dress for $200 seems like a bargain, but leaves the owner with enough profit to pay for professional cleaning.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      I believe there's also a way to rent designer handbags.
  - klous 16y ago
    there's a netflix for baby clothes: http://bebaroo.com http://bebaroo.com
- iwr 16y ago
  If your industry is being disrupted by technology, all resistance is... futile. You should hope or work toward getting a tech company to help you monetize your content before it's too late.
  - groaner 16y ago
    Don't underestimate the ability the entrenched players in the disrupted industry to fight back via non-technological means, e.g. lobbying the government to ban your disrupting technology.
    - aniket_ray 16y ago
      IP based voice services are effectively banned in India for all practical purposes. ( Although banned only for local voice, most software/hardware also have the local voice option so they are banned ). Unfortunately, the big players in India are all too cozy with the government for anything to change here soon.
- nikster 16y ago
  As incompetent as the wireless players are technologically, I don't think they're in any danger. Whether they're just the dumb pipes they should be or the vertically integrated content providers they dream of being - the fact is that they're the ones controlling the pipes. Nobody can force them to provide access for cheap. So without government help the tech companies depend on AT&T and Co. Now if the FCC decided to open up some frequencies, then things could get really interesting. But I think for now the Telco lobbies still outgun the tech lobbies in Washington.
Xuzz 16y ago
Note: while this mentions that FaceTime is an 'open standard', it's not, at least yet. Steve Jobs promised it in June, but he has yet to release any documentation or the necessary information to make a compatible implementation.
- davidedicillo 16y ago
  my bet is that is going to release it after Christmas. Right now he has the perfect environment where people like me (who lives in the US) buy as xmas present for his mother (who lives in Italy) an iPod touch so that we can video chat without having to explain how to make Skype work or install a webcam.
aroon 16y ago
That was easily the most misinformed article I have ever read on tc. I'm not even sure where to begin. About the only thing that is right is that services will be moving to the application layer in the long run because there are benefits the abstracting the network. But the idea that the people providing the data link upon which every service you care about depends on are becoming irrelevant is so absurd it makes me laugh. Where would apple and google be and where are they going without them?
- pjscott 16y ago
  They're "irrelevant" if people can easily switch to a similarly-priced competitor and have everything keep on working as it did before. Once the network is abstracted, the companies providing that network become interchangeable, and therefore about as relevant as the company that picks up your garbage each week. That's the grand hope, anyway.
  - izendejas 16y ago
    The key word there is if (in the first sentence). I doubt it. Telcos/ISPs are headed the way of utility companies. They are natural oligopolies because the barrier to entry is too huge for there to be many competitors and it's in everyone's interest to have them functioning well and at least partially profitable, so don't be surprised if they get subsidized or even nationalized. The companies that pick up one's garbage happen to be cities in most cases. So as stated above, here you might even be right--if by irrelevant you mean, that we take them for granted yet are still extremely important (eg, without electricity we would have little, without garbage services we would die sooner, etc...)
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    They're "irrelevant" if people can easily switch to a similarly-priced competitor and have everything keep on working as it did before. If anything should be, bandwidth should be commodity.
trezor 16y ago
Considering I know noone who uses Google Voice, nobody who uses FaceTime and a million people and two who uses Skype, this article seems kinda silly. I guess the lesson which people should learn (especially the people in the US), is that there is severe differences between different markets and regions, and whatever happens in the US might be something interesting or it may be the US entering the space the rest of Europe and Asia entered 5 years ago or more. I still don't get why FaceTime is any better than the other options out there, especially when it only works on Macs and Apple-devices.
- yardie 16y ago
  I remember, early on, when no one was using Skype except for those that knew about it. The main difference between Skype and Facetime is one is based on proprietary software and the other is a bundle of open standards. Just because Skype dominates doesn't mean it will always stay that way.
  - mike-cardwell 16y ago
    I don't think that's the main difference. I think the main difference is that one works on just about every Desktop and smartphone OS, while the other only works on a single minor desktop OS and a single minor phone OS (albeit fast growing). And I'm not an Apple hater. I love my Macbook.
- drenei 16y ago
  A year ago while still in a closed beta, Google Voice had 1.4 million users, with 570,000 using the service 7 days a week.#1 Skype added 39 million users in Q4 2009, to come to a total of 560 million accounts.#2 Its still early for facetime, but I wouldn't discount Apple, especially with over 120 million iOS devices sold.#3 ----- #1 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/business-week-14-million-google-voice-users-global-push-in-the-works/26813 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/business-week-14-million-googl... #2 http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/skype-q4-2009-number http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/skype-q4-2009-number #3 http://mashable.com/2010/09/01/apple-ios-downloads-stat/ http://mashable.com/2010/09/01/apple-ios-downloads-stat/
- 16y ago
Groxx 16y ago
Because... carriers are at least as ass-backwards when it comes to tech as the media industry is? The first slightly-interested part(y|ies) to come along with a couple decent ideas and enough scale to actually bring it to enough people to make it useful have caused major upheaval because phone companies seem to think we've barely entered the digital age. Think about it: you have voice mail as a sad, low quality version of your old answering machine, with no new tricks, and you can't save them anywhere else. You have text messages, which are incredibly limited and cost thousands of times the data transfer cost. You have a phone number list on your phone that probably maxes out at 1000 (or fewer), might search something aside from the name, and you pay a premium for the ability to back it up yourself with crappy tools, or for them to transfer it to another phone in their system once. I can have up to 3 alarms on my phone. I'm charged up the wazoo for horrible pre-made ring tones. No voice recording (memos). No call recording. No integration of any kind with my computer (except sending / receiving up to 10 v-cards at a time via bluetooth). What was the last device you've had in the past 5 years that you could say any of that about, much less one which costs as much as your phone. All of which is partially solved by "proper" smart phones like Android and iPhone, which run software (/hardware) made by non-telecom companies. And am I the only one who thinks that voicemail -> email, ring time rules, and call-forwarding to your other phones should have existed 5+ years ago if your phone providers weren't sitting on their asses? Thank you, Apple and Google, for showing phone companies what they should have been doing all along: improving.
- yardie 16y ago
  I think the phone companies are fully aware of the things they could provide. They would rather charge you for the privilege. I take special exception with Verizon who are notorious for nickel and diming for features that would be free anywhere else. Like bluetooth file syncing. In one instance I managed to find a backdoor for my ringtones using the V-(web,cast,mail, I honestly can't remember) website. It was supposed to be used to upload and download photos. And I was able to upload mp3 ringtones to my phone. Then one day the system would only sync jpegs. You could upload all the files you wanted but they would never be sent to the phone. When I moved abroad I bought a cheap sony-ericcson that could do 10x more than that POS Samsung from Verizon and it was half the price. It didn't surprise me the iPhone never made it to verizon. I'm pretty sure the breakdown was over the fact that Apple wanted to include a bunch of stuff that Verizon would rather you pay them for.

45 points by Garbage 16y ago

Word to the wise: When a software company with actual ability and some edge decides to move into your industry, if they are doing things right, your industry will be disrupted. Music, books, movie rentals, mobile phones: these are just the most familiar consumer-facing examples. Anyone else have other examples?

zzleeper 16y ago
Advertising (Google, Craigslist, FB)? online brokers (zecco.com, etc.) ? Maybe also sales (I get more stuff from amazon that from the mall)
yafujifide 16y ago
This gives me an interesting idea: How about a Netflix for clothes? I bet a lot of people would love to have new clothes every week. The only problem would be ensuring the clothes are clean and in good condition. You would probably have to have some automated way of cleaning the clothes if the system is to be efficient. Checking that the clothes are not torn up would be harder, but you can have the customers do that for you. They'll just send it back if there is a problem.
- RK 16y ago
  That sounds like a very difficult business to me. There is some sort of version for toys though. Just found http://mybusybucket.com/ http://mybusybucket.com/ Not sure if that's a dominant player. I don't have kids...
- johns 16y ago
  Sort of along those lines: http://www.manpacks.com/ http://www.manpacks.com/
- aaroneous 16y ago
  renttherunway.com does it for designer dresses and thredup.com for kids clothing
  - metageek 16y ago
    The model probably works better for designer dresses, since renting a $2000 dress for $200 seems like a bargain, but leaves the owner with enough profit to pay for professional cleaning.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I believe there's also a way to rent designer handbags.
- klous 16y ago
  there's a netflix for baby clothes: http://bebaroo.com http://bebaroo.com
iwr 16y ago
If your industry is being disrupted by technology, all resistance is... futile. You should hope or work toward getting a tech company to help you monetize your content before it's too late.
- groaner 16y ago
  Don't underestimate the ability the entrenched players in the disrupted industry to fight back via non-technological means, e.g. lobbying the government to ban your disrupting technology.
  - aniket_ray 16y ago
    IP based voice services are effectively banned in India for all practical purposes. ( Although banned only for local voice, most software/hardware also have the local voice option so they are banned ). Unfortunately, the big players in India are all too cozy with the government for anything to change here soon.
nikster 16y ago
As incompetent as the wireless players are technologically, I don't think they're in any danger. Whether they're just the dumb pipes they should be or the vertically integrated content providers they dream of being - the fact is that they're the ones controlling the pipes. Nobody can force them to provide access for cheap. So without government help the tech companies depend on AT&T and Co. Now if the FCC decided to open up some frequencies, then things could get really interesting. But I think for now the Telco lobbies still outgun the tech lobbies in Washington.

Xuzz 16y ago

Note: while this mentions that FaceTime is an 'open standard', it's not, at least yet. Steve Jobs promised it in June, but he has yet to release any documentation or the necessary information to make a compatible implementation.

davidedicillo 16y ago
my bet is that is going to release it after Christmas. Right now he has the perfect environment where people like me (who lives in the US) buy as xmas present for his mother (who lives in Italy) an iPod touch so that we can video chat without having to explain how to make Skype work or install a webcam.

aroon 16y ago

That was easily the most misinformed article I have ever read on tc. I'm not even sure where to begin. About the only thing that is right is that services will be moving to the application layer in the long run because there are benefits the abstracting the network. But the idea that the people providing the data link upon which every service you care about depends on are becoming irrelevant is so absurd it makes me laugh. Where would apple and google be and where are they going without them?

pjscott 16y ago
They're "irrelevant" if people can easily switch to a similarly-priced competitor and have everything keep on working as it did before. Once the network is abstracted, the companies providing that network become interchangeable, and therefore about as relevant as the company that picks up your garbage each week. That's the grand hope, anyway.
- izendejas 16y ago
  The key word there is if (in the first sentence). I doubt it. Telcos/ISPs are headed the way of utility companies. They are natural oligopolies because the barrier to entry is too huge for there to be many competitors and it's in everyone's interest to have them functioning well and at least partially profitable, so don't be surprised if they get subsidized or even nationalized. The companies that pick up one's garbage happen to be cities in most cases. So as stated above, here you might even be right--if by irrelevant you mean, that we take them for granted yet are still extremely important (eg, without electricity we would have little, without garbage services we would die sooner, etc...)
- stcredzero 16y ago
  They're "irrelevant" if people can easily switch to a similarly-priced competitor and have everything keep on working as it did before. If anything should be, bandwidth should be commodity.

trezor 16y ago

Considering I know noone who uses Google Voice, nobody who uses FaceTime and a million people and two who uses Skype, this article seems kinda silly. I guess the lesson which people should learn (especially the people in the US), is that there is severe differences between different markets and regions, and whatever happens in the US might be something interesting or it may be the US entering the space the rest of Europe and Asia entered 5 years ago or more. I still don't get why FaceTime is any better than the other options out there, especially when it only works on Macs and Apple-devices.

yardie 16y ago
I remember, early on, when no one was using Skype except for those that knew about it. The main difference between Skype and Facetime is one is based on proprietary software and the other is a bundle of open standards. Just because Skype dominates doesn't mean it will always stay that way.
- mike-cardwell 16y ago
  I don't think that's the main difference. I think the main difference is that one works on just about every Desktop and smartphone OS, while the other only works on a single minor desktop OS and a single minor phone OS (albeit fast growing). And I'm not an Apple hater. I love my Macbook.
drenei 16y ago
A year ago while still in a closed beta, Google Voice had 1.4 million users, with 570,000 using the service 7 days a week.#1 Skype added 39 million users in Q4 2009, to come to a total of 560 million accounts.#2 Its still early for facetime, but I wouldn't discount Apple, especially with over 120 million iOS devices sold.#3 ----- #1 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/business-week-14-million-google-voice-users-global-push-in-the-works/26813 http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/business-week-14-million-googl... #2 http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/skype-q4-2009-number http://gigaom.com/2010/04/20/skype-q4-2009-number #3 http://mashable.com/2010/09/01/apple-ios-downloads-stat/ http://mashable.com/2010/09/01/apple-ios-downloads-stat/
16y ago

Groxx 16y ago

Because... carriers are at least as ass-backwards when it comes to tech as the media industry is? The first slightly-interested part(y|ies) to come along with a couple decent ideas and enough scale to actually bring it to enough people to make it useful have caused major upheaval because phone companies seem to think we've barely entered the digital age. Think about it: you have voice mail as a sad, low quality version of your old answering machine, with no new tricks, and you can't save them anywhere else. You have text messages, which are incredibly limited and cost thousands of times the data transfer cost. You have a phone number list on your phone that probably maxes out at 1000 (or fewer), might search something aside from the name, and you pay a premium for the ability to back it up yourself with crappy tools, or for them to transfer it to another phone in their system once. I can have up to 3 alarms on my phone. I'm charged up the wazoo for horrible pre-made ring tones. No voice recording (memos). No call recording. No integration of any kind with my computer (except sending / receiving up to 10 v-cards at a time via bluetooth). What was the last device you've had in the past 5 years that you could say any of that about, much less one which costs as much as your phone. All of which is partially solved by "proper" smart phones like Android and iPhone, which run software (/hardware) made by non-telecom companies. And am I the only one who thinks that voicemail -> email, ring time rules, and call-forwarding to your other phones should have existed 5+ years ago if your phone providers weren't sitting on their asses? Thank you, Apple and Google, for showing phone companies what they should have been doing all along: improving.

yardie 16y ago
I think the phone companies are fully aware of the things they could provide. They would rather charge you for the privilege. I take special exception with Verizon who are notorious for nickel and diming for features that would be free anywhere else. Like bluetooth file syncing. In one instance I managed to find a backdoor for my ringtones using the V-(web,cast,mail, I honestly can't remember) website. It was supposed to be used to upload and download photos. And I was able to upload mp3 ringtones to my phone. Then one day the system would only sync jpegs. You could upload all the files you wanted but they would never be sent to the phone. When I moved abroad I bought a cheap sony-ericcson that could do 10x more than that POS Samsung from Verizon and it was half the price. It didn't surprise me the iPhone never made it to verizon. I'm pretty sure the breakdown was over the fact that Apple wanted to include a bunch of stuff that Verizon would rather you pay them for.