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If SMS is crappy for you, just take phone calls. There is still jam-in, yes, but you can mostly find a cheap phone connection from any place in the world to any

by Argorak 13y ago

If SMS is crappy for you, just take phone calls. There is still jam-in, yes, but you can mostly find a cheap phone connection from any place in the world to any other. I regularly call cross-continent and with some googling, you get a decent rate. The point being: the system is there and there is competition that drives the prices down. Also, I don't believe that for a "vast majority of users", federation doesn't matter. Everyone I know uses multiple messenger apps on their phone _or just use SMS_. SMS is the base line. This is a failure of a model. Sure, Google has no interest of federating with Facebook. What this leads to is the aforementioned silos of peoples communications. "How do I contact this person? WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter DM, Jabber, Google Talk, jadajadajada? The only thing that comes close is email. No, I don't expect multi-billion dollar companies to do something that sounds nice. Which still makes the model as a whole a failure. Obviously, multi-billion dollar companies cannot be trusted with providing reliable and easy reach-ability on a global scale.

MichaelGG 13y ago
>The point being: the system is there and there is competition that drives the prices down. Eh, not really. Many countries still use the state-run monopoly. Connecting to them has a specific price. The demand for calls into their country is more-or-less fixed, and will remain so no matter the price. If you're seeing a price much below the actual price, then it's due to someone doing some illegal maneuver, such as sticking their cell phone on a VoIP system. (Despite it being illegal, I applaud such efforts.) Even for countries that aren't run like that (Europe?), prices can be well in excess of $0.20 a minute. The price to the receiver of the call is $0.00 so perhaps that limits competition. Some places even put an international tax on all calls, so that calls from outside the area are forced to pay more. Some places do the inverse. Do you have info on people that use SMS across countries? For many countries I've seen, the price-per-message makes it a true last resort. (Inside the US or inside EU, this may not be an issue.) This makes WhatsApp so useful. Do you have a real proposal, or is this a "it'd be nice if our government helped some companies build and run an IM infrastructure for very low cost for us"?

by Argorak 13y ago

MichaelGG 13y ago

>The point being: the system is there and there is competition that drives the prices down. Eh, not really. Many countries still use the state-run monopoly. Connecting to them has a specific price. The demand for calls into their country is more-or-less fixed, and will remain so no matter the price. If you're seeing a price much below the actual price, then it's due to someone doing some illegal maneuver, such as sticking their cell phone on a VoIP system. (Despite it being illegal, I applaud such efforts.) Even for countries that aren't run like that (Europe?), prices can be well in excess of $0.20 a minute. The price to the receiver of the call is $0.00 so perhaps that limits competition. Some places even put an international tax on all calls, so that calls from outside the area are forced to pay more. Some places do the inverse. Do you have info on people that use SMS across countries? For many countries I've seen, the price-per-message makes it a true last resort. (Inside the US or inside EU, this may not be an issue.) This makes WhatsApp so useful. Do you have a real proposal, or is this a "it'd be nice if our government helped some companies build and run an IM infrastructure for very low cost for us"?