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One way looking at it is that carrier job is only to provide data service. They should not be in the business of messaging. Users (and market) will chose to use

One way looking at it is that carrier job is only to provide data service. They should not be in the business of messaging. Users (and market) will chose to use whatever messaging service they want. This even applies to voice. I rather do Signal voice call than carrier voice call with most of my friends. Better quality, encryption, etc.

kelnos 4y ago
I like this in theory, but in practice it is very useful to have a universal way to contact people that doesn't depend on both parties having the same proprietary[0] app installed. If I give someone my phone number (or email address, for that matter), I know they will be able to contact me without any more coordination required. That has a lot of value to me. If we eliminate phone numbers entirely (and thus SMS, MMS, and telco-mediated voice calling), we lose that ability. I do think that, in the future (perhaps not in our lifetimes) we'll do away with phone numbers, but only after there is another universal way to contact via messaging or voice that involves only sharing some sort of identifier, without any other setup required. [0] Yes, Signal is open source, but since they refuse to allow people to use modified clients, or build support for federation, they are a proprietary, closed system, just like WhatsApp or Telegram. It's just we can have more confidence in the privacy of our communications on Signal due to its open source nature.
- sneak 4y ago
  Signal's APIs do not prohibit modified clients.
asdff 4y ago
I think that is shortsighted because data service does not overlap cell service. Go into a grocery store and try and imessage a photo. If your stores are anything like mine it just won't work, until you defer to sending it via SMS, at which point it sends instantly no problem. At the end of the day I'm not paying for data service, I'm paying for data service plus cell service. I want cell service, it has benefits and is not replaced by data only service.
- vzaliva 4y ago
  I think this was the case in past but rapidly changed. As networks are get upgraded to newer cellular standards like LTE, 5G the data becomes pretty much standard.
sneak 4y ago
Those who do not understand the OSI model are doomed to repeat it.

kelnos 4y ago

I like this in theory, but in practice it is very useful to have a universal way to contact people that doesn't depend on both parties having the same proprietary[0] app installed. If I give someone my phone number (or email address, for that matter), I know they will be able to contact me without any more coordination required. That has a lot of value to me. If we eliminate phone numbers entirely (and thus SMS, MMS, and telco-mediated voice calling), we lose that ability. I do think that, in the future (perhaps not in our lifetimes) we'll do away with phone numbers, but only after there is another universal way to contact via messaging or voice that involves only sharing some sort of identifier, without any other setup required. [0] Yes, Signal is open source, but since they refuse to allow people to use modified clients, or build support for federation, they are a proprietary, closed system, just like WhatsApp or Telegram. It's just we can have more confidence in the privacy of our communications on Signal due to its open source nature.

sneak 4y ago
Signal's APIs do not prohibit modified clients.

asdff 4y ago

I think that is shortsighted because data service does not overlap cell service. Go into a grocery store and try and imessage a photo. If your stores are anything like mine it just won't work, until you defer to sending it via SMS, at which point it sends instantly no problem. At the end of the day I'm not paying for data service, I'm paying for data service plus cell service. I want cell service, it has benefits and is not replaced by data only service.

vzaliva 4y ago
I think this was the case in past but rapidly changed. As networks are get upgraded to newer cellular standards like LTE, 5G the data becomes pretty much standard.

sneak 4y ago

Those who do not understand the OSI model are doomed to repeat it.