Thread: How can anyone justify Smartphones?

Originally Posted by JimR

So you get stupid (e.g. voice-plan centric) service contracts.

That is my greatest annoyance. Google, for example, lets you call land lines for free. (Maybe just in the US, I dunno). Google can be accessed through your data plan. Why force a voice plan when a data plan includes voice via data.

As a side note, if you can get unlimited data via your phone for, I forget but I think it was $30 a month with decent speed, why does my home internet, via land line, cost $50. Yea, it's faster, but it should be because a land line.

Dylan, yes, exactly. In Japan, they have had to restrict Skype to Wi-Fi use on iPhones because of a similar issue to Google, and they didn't want to kill their voice market. Stupid, stupid--trying to preserve an obsolete business model when the new model could be so much more robust.

Bump up the price on data just a tad, use the money to boost 3G bandwidth so more people get faster speeds and are thus not so apt to complain about the higher prices, and start offering pure data plans, et voila--new business model for a new communications market.

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

That is my greatest annoyance. Google, for example, lets you call land lines for free. (Maybe just in the US, I dunno). Google can be accessed through your data plan. Why force a voice plan when a data plan includes voice via data.

As a side note, if you can get unlimited data via your phone for, I forget but I think it was $30 a month with decent speed, why does my home internet, via land line, cost $50. Yea, it's faster, but it should be because a land line.

Have you read the AT&T press releases? Starting 5/2011 they are going to be metering all DSL and Uverse lines. 150GB for DSL and 250GB for Uverse with 10 dollars extra a month for every 50GB after the initial. Also better make sure you have software to monitor your connection as the metering software AT&T uses has been shown to inaccurate.

I would love that deal. I currently pay $10/gb over 5 gigs; before that I was paying 5 cents / megabyte over 5 gigs ($51.20/gig).

Originally Posted by holli4pirating

Google, for example, lets you call land lines for free. (Maybe just in the US, I dunno)

Yup, just in the US.