MagicJack Moving To Smartphones 94
robo45h writes "The late night infomercial VoIP company magicJack is moving into the smartphone space. The competition there is really going to be interesting. We have the likes of Skype and other VoIP companies competing against the wireless carriers still selling over-priced voice calls. It's such a big battle that the recent Verizon / Google Proposal specifically excludes (provides a loophole for) wireless. This has been brewing since cell phones added data capabilities, but it's coming to a head now." Free calls sounds nice, but it's worth noting that not everyone's happy with MagicJack's EULA.
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considering the EULA stuff, plus the amout of first posts I've seen in the past few days on slashdot, I would call this both funny and insightful.
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considering the ... amout of first posts I've seen in the past few days on slashdot
You'd think every single article would have a post that came before all the others.
Good... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time the phone companies recognized that phone calls are just data passing through their networks.
I know they don't want to be seen as purely "bit carriers" which don't add much value, but that's what they are.
Re:Good... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about time the phone companies recognized that phone calls are just data passing through their networks.
Actually, no. Voice over IP over cellular data is an incredibly inefficient way to send voice. Worse, all the ad-related blithering in "free" applications uses more bandwidth than the call.
The best phone audio quality today is with an ISDN voice phone. End to end digital, end to end synchronized at the bit level, full duplex, no need for echo cancellation, no lag beyond speed of light lag. Many home phones in Switzerland have worked that way for a decade.
It's disappointing. We ought to have CD-quality telephony by now. But instead, audio quality has gotten worse. The phone network is 64Kb/s: 8KHz sampling of 8-bit samples. That's PC audio circa late 1980s. Cell phones don't even deliver that; they use very lossy compression.
Re:Good... (Score:5, Insightful)
We ought to have CD-quality telephony by now.
Why? 8 bit 64k is perfectly adequate for voice. If we have spare cash to spend on communicaitons, spend it somewhere else, on something that isn't perfectly adequate, or that benefits substantially from improvment. If we get better voice quality as a side effect, great! But it isn't something to focus on.
Now run along. I think I saw some vinyl records in the other room you can play with.
Re:Good... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I doubt that much innovation ever followed the phrase "perfectly adequate."
Your insight is extremely adequate.
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I doubt that much innovation ever followed the phrase "perfectly adequate."
No, but I'm sure someone has described an innovation as "perfectly cromulent."
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Why? 8 bit 64k is perfectly adequate for voice.
Phone voice quality is marginal for conference calls. Cell phone compression barely works at all if it has to handle two people talking at once. Better video conferencing systems [brightcom.com] have higher-bandwidth audio; it's a small bandwidth cost compared to the video channel.
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We should have vinyl quality phone calls by now IMO.
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Having to stick on a packet header every few tens of bytes of data seems very wasteful of limited radio specrum. Wouldn't it make rather more sense to just transmit the voice data to the base station and have the other end and convert to IP there?
Voice may be a minority of data carried on land-based networks, but that true for mobile networks now as well?
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You start with talking about VOIP via wireless then switch to talking about hard-wired circuit switched technology? What is your point exactly?
I'm pretty sure that VOIP over 3G can carry more simultaneous calls per cell than GSM or CDMA2000 so I'd dispute your claim that it's incredibly inefficient. And compared with a dedicated, circuit-switched 64kbit stream like the ISDN calls you mention, it's VERY efficient.
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I wish I could recall what comic it was who noted the irony that "progress" has brought us from the days where phone carries used slogans like "you can hear a pin drop" to today when they use one like "Can you hear me now?"
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They're not going to give that up without a struggle though. What would really shake things up is if instead of my getting a SIM & phone number and letting one phone company thereafter monopolise my usage, I could say "this number is mine" and shop around for whoever offers the best rates. If I could say: 'Orange are doing a cheap deal on data, I'll buy a load from them this month', then we'd be able to actually exert market pressure on these companies. As it is, even Pay As You Go types are effectivel
Learn something, daily (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.fcc.gov/cib/consumerfacts/numbport.html [fcc.gov]
Background
Under the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC's) "local number portability" (LNP) rules, so long as you remain in the same geographic area, you can switch telephone service providers, including interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers, and keep your existing phone number. If you are moving from one geographic area to another, however, you may not be able to take your number with you. Therefore, subscribers remaining in the same geographic area can now switch from a wireless, wireline, or VoIP provider to any other wireless, wireline, or VoIP provider and still keep their existing phone numbers.
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That's a pale shadow of what GP is talking about.
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Your post is this post's parent.
The one you were replying to was this post's GP (your parent).
The one before that was this post's Great grand parent, (GGP).
Etc.
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Re:Good... (Score:5, Interesting)
My mobile phone came with a SIP client, and when I am near a WiFi access point I can call any other SIP users for free. Most people don't (yet?) have a SIP address though, so most calls go to my SIP provider who then routes them to a POTS number. This kind of bridging is something that carriers currently offer, but they bundle it with data, so you pay for the call as a single item, rather than for the bandwidth and the bridging as separate items. I'd love to see legislation forcing them to bill the two separately and offer the same rates for the data part irrespective of who you use for termination.
Quality of service is also very important for voice. GSM quality uses about 5MB an hour. The bandwidth requirements are tiny - a minute of a YouTube video will use more than an hour of talking - but latency and (especially) jitter make a big difference to the perceived quality of the call. Giving higher priority to voice traffic (e.g. reserving some fraction of the available bandwidth for each call) is a valuable service above and beyond just shuffling bits.
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You just used a lot of words to say that they don't really do much aside from cripple that data you're trying to use for SIP calls by prioritizing their own traffic above it. I don't bother with the cell network at all, as I'm pretty much always near wifi, and over a standard network, SIP call quality is fantastic. Over 3G, it sucks, and its only because of "QoS" crippling.
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limited data plans (Score:2)
But what is the point if you are being capped on data? What incentive is there for the phone companies to even care since they control the data? What incentive is there for me to use it and burn up bytes towards my cap instead of just using cell minutes? ( well, in my case i have been grandfathered in with unlimited, but you get the point )
MagicJack are roaches... (Score:2)
Abusive EULAs, mandatory binding arbitration kangaroo courts, spying for commercial and other purposes, are
Re:MagicJack are roaches... (Score:4, Funny)
Skype VOIP over wireless? (Score:1)
"We have the likes of Skype and other VoIP companies competing against the wireless carriers still selling over-priced voice calls."
I didn't realize these were wireless services. I thought they required a computer to work. I currently pay $0/month and 18 cents per minute (VirginMobile) - is Skype really cheaper than that, once you include the cost of the bits used?
Wireless internet costs me about 7 cents per megabyte streamed. How many megabytes does the Skype use per minute? 1/2? So about 3.5 cents per minute of Skyping, plus 2.1 cents charged directly be Skype == 5.6 cents.
6 18.
Re:Skype VOIP over wireless? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people have wireless data plans
No, no they don't.
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>>>You chose a cheapskate version, so you pay the true price for your service, and probably save money.
Anonymous Coward is correct! :-o
Well that's it. Time to close down the office and head home.
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Most people have wireless data plans offering several GB/month.
Most people from what sample [wikipedia.org]? I use my phone only for urgencies, and for that, I pay Virgin Mobile $21.40 every three months and still have minutes left.
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>>>I pay Virgin Mobile $20 every three months
Give them your credit card number, with automatic topup, and that pretax price drops to $15. I do this for both myself and my brother..... and as you mentioned any unused minutes just rollover. Right now I have about $100 of unused minutes that will quickly disappear during my next long-distance trip.
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And if you looked into Page Plus you could pay $10 pretax every 4 months . . . There are lots of wireless pre-paid vendors.
Majic Jack Quality? (Score:4, Informative)
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>>>I do make it a point to keep it on the "AirCard (3G)"
What other settings does the MagicJack have? If the quality really is that poor, then I'll just stick with my calling card. It's only 5 cents a minute.
(looks up G.711) - "G.711 is an ITU-T standard for audio companding. The standard was released for usage in 1972..... G.711 uses a Pulse code modulation (PCM) sampling rate of 8,000 samples per second, with the tolerance on that rate 50 parts per million (ppm). Non-uniform quantization (l
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>>>>> It was designed for and needs a dedicated line where 64k is guaranteed.
>>
>>Actually -- G.711 is what the PSTN uses.
Yep. Dedicated line with guaranteed 64k throughput.
.
>>>When you think about it you can compress voice quite a bit. For example, GSM compresses voice down to 6.4Kbps if you make it aggressive enough. But there is overhead in the RTP header, whatever is framing your dialup (SLIP/PPP), the fact that a 50k modem isn't always 50k, etc.
>>>
That's
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My buddy uses MagicJack and his voice goes in and out constantly. It's like calling someone on a cell phone that is in a dead spot. Anyone else experience this?
Yes- when my parents call me with their MagicJack to my landline, usually after a while (few minutes, maybe a half hour) their end doesn't get through to mine (I can't hear them; they continue to hear me). Sometimes it will correct itself after a while.
Also, whenever I try to dial their MagicJack number from my Skype phone, it doesn't go through at all (on my end, it "rings" a few times then says call failed; on their end it doesn't ring at all).
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Yes- when my parents call me with their MagicJack to my landline, usually after a while (few minutes, maybe a half hour....
Half hour? You're a teenage girl?
Re:Majic Jack Quality? (Score:4, Funny)
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Do you have an ISP that shapes? Though that much being transferred is tiny there are problems with cable networks. The TK6000 product is in continual disconnect mode when you use it on Comcast. Apparently if you use a DSL service the problem doesn't exist or isn't that bad. With the TK6000 and Comcast you have to keep picking up the phone every so often to keep it alive. You also have to pick the call up within a couple rings or you get a busy signal when you finally do.
The magic jack doesn't have as b
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Yes, my parents had set this up on one of their laptops, and things were fine for a while, and then they started experiencing these symptoms similar to your buddy (call drops, auto-tune like modulation, random voice drops, etc). On further investigation, I found that they had finally figured out how to use their laptop with wifi, and so MagicJack was
magicjack EULA is nulled by State or Federal law (Score:5, Informative)
the article: ... in Palm Beach, Florida."
MagicJack, a cheapie $20-a-year internet phone service, comes with a shriveled and shaking devil EULA: "Any claims, legal proceeding or litigation arising in connection with the magicJack device or Software will be resolved by binding arbitration
These kinds of clauses are nullified by law. Paypal discovered that during their litigation, when huge sections of their EULA were struck by the court as being over-ruled by consumer protection laws.
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No I'm talking about the case Paypal already lost sometime around 2004 (which was before Ebay acquired them). The court set-up three tiers of award: ~$75 for class 1 which included everyone, ~$250 for class 2 that had documentation showing Paypal stole the client's money, and class 3 for people who lost thousands. Their claims would be reviewed individually by the court.
Hopefully I'm remembering the details correctly. I fell into class 1 and had about 75 dollars deposited to my paypal account, which I th
Re:magicjack EULA is nulled by State or Federal la (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Keep it in perspective (Score:5, Informative)
>>and a full years of unlimited phone service.
It's not unlimited. Believe me. I bought 2, one for me and one for the wife. Within 2 days they suspended her account for over usage. Their terms say they can do so if you exceed the average callers usage by a factor of 20. Of course, they don't tell you what the average is. No warning, just cut her off. Then, mine starting not working unless I restarted the software every time I wanted to make a call. Coincidence? I wouldn't know but since we share the same IP address I believe not. No problem, we took hers back, got our money back and I use mine to connect my cordless phones to Skype. Would not recommend that anyone buy Magic Jack.
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Hmm, this doesn't jive with what I've heard on the dedicated (though unofficial) forums. You can use 2000 minutes before there's any AUP issue. I recall they did have a limit on the number of different numbers you could call in an hour because they were getting telemarketers buying them and their TOS was home use, not business.
These complaints are very rare, and usually because someone has very unusual usage patterns. That said, they do the same thing ISPs were getting in trouble with, calling limited servi
Re:Keep it in perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
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He has one and has a old computer that he runs 24/7.
... which costs him how much in electricity every year? Sure that he saves money with MagicJack? Or would it not be cheaper to get a dedicated SIP or Skype phone?
where can you get a data only plan? on a smart pho (Score:2)
where can you get a data only plan? on a smart phone in usa any ways? without pay high fees? and even then 5gb or lower cap and after the cap it's like $10 a gig and some ports are blocked as well.
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VirginMobile sells pure data plans for phones or computers (via a USB antenna). $20 for 300 megabytes or $40 for 5 gigabytes
Cricket Broadband - their plan is $40 for 5 gigabytes of high speed, and unlimited dialup speed
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Are you sure about that? Their website says $40 for 1GB, $60 for 5GB:
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/mobile-broadband [virginmobileusa.com]
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T-mobile has a data-only SIM for $40/month with a $35 activation fee. They claim "No overages! (After 5 GB, data speeds may be reduced)."
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/cell-phone-plans-detail.aspx?tp=tb1&rateplan=Even-More-Plus-webConnect-Overage-Free [t-mobile.com]
Just say no to Magic Jack (Score:4, Informative)
I've spent time cleaning up systems infected (yes, infected) due to MJ's mandatory advertising.
Having an attacker exploit an ad system is something all advertising networks have to deal with at one time or another.
Magic Jack is simply much less stringent about their requirements and have almost no followup
As such, Magic Jack may as well be classified a trojan.
I won't say that I wouldn't install their software if you paid me.
Fact is, I would, if the sum was large enough.
VMs are cheap afterall.
MagicJack user here... (Score:3, Informative)
We've had MagicJack for about 6 months.
I have it running on our entertainment center PC. Voice quality is OK. Sometimes people will call and noone is there, and there are other slight flakiness problems, but it is definitely worth $20 a year for unlimited long distance and local calling. I ditched Vonage, which was costing me $29 a month, for the service, and it is saving me roughly $300 a year.
My biggest complaint is that when you get a call or make a call the magicjack software interface pops to the foreground, interrupting whatever television happens to be being watched on the PC at the time. Kinda neat as you get caller ID that shows up, but annoying when the kids are watching TV and you have to go and push the media player to the front again whenever there is a call.
Another problem is frequently a Microsoft update will reboot my computer but the magic jack doesn't start unless I actually log in, which means people can't call us until I go and log into the computer.
All in all, I think it's a good service. Well worth $20 a year.
Thank you! (Score:2)
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The way that program works is that it looks at the window title of the active window and dumps it into the background or minimizes it. Anyone can write a program like that.
You can probably start the magic jack program as a service instead of as a start up program that way it will load in the back ground but not require you to log in to your computer. Though, I personally see no value in having passwords on your account (which is why you aren't logging in) or you have multiple accounts (which I don't recom
Good idea (Score:2)
This used to be a desktop machine, and I had multiple accounts for various family members.
Now that it is the "TV computer", I will delete the other accounts and take the password off of the default account.
Still like the MagicSilence application though.
Just getting started with MagicJack (Score:5, Informative)
I have it running on a cheap Fit-PC Slim that is running the MagicJack software only, nothing else. I figure the $235 I spent for the Fit-PC Slim will be paid for pretty quickly due to (a) saving $25/month when I get rid of my Comcast line, and (b) running the MagicJack on a dedicated PC that sips power (it runs on only 10 watts!), rather than on my main PC that is an i7 behemoth with tons of cooling, etc. I can turn off my main PC when I'm away from it.
I have MagicJack voice mail messages e-mailed to my Gmail account, and from there I have a Gmail filter set up that sends a text message to my cell phone when a MagicJack voice mail comes in.
My Fit-PC Slim is remotely controlled from my main PC, so does not need a mouse, keyboard, monitor attached.
The MagicJack interface and the ads on the side of the window don't bother me because (a) I'm not using the interface at all; the MagicJack PC just sits there and does its job, functioning as a phone, and (b) I installed MagicBlock and MagicWho? to make it as invisible as possible.
So far, so good. The sound quality is at least as good as my Comcast line if not better. I'm hanging onto my Comcast line for a little while pending some more testing, but am expecting to get rid of it soon. Looking forward to the cost savings.
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VoIP Stinks (Score:1)
I've never used a consumer level voip service/program that sounded that great or surpassed even cell phone quality. Good maybe 90% of the time, but the 5 was filled with stutter/hiccups/dead silence.
Honest question here though. Has anyone used a good VoIP solution over 3G? Any have a blackerry/android/iPhone app?
Anybody have experiences to share?
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Interesting. See, I had Vonage and had the opposite effect. It was great, but it would cut out. And cut out big time. Not like a cell phone where it would sound robotic but still go through, or you knew if you lost the person. I could be talking and hearing the person and never know the other person couldn't hear me. And then I had them do a firmware update on the adapter and had them utilize different ports. Sounded even worse. Sounded like I was underwater 70% of the time. *However,* I had my adapter behi
Am I the only one that's been impressed with Ooma? (Score:2, Interesting)
Can someone explain this to me (Score:2)
Magicjack, a VOIP provider, is now going to allow users to make VOIP calls through their smartPHONE? Why the fuck would you use this if you have a smart PHONE. Given that most data plans for smartphones are way more expensive than the talk and text part of the plan, wouldn't it make more sense to... oh, I don't know, just make a fucking phone call?
I fail to see how this could serve any purpose whatsoever.
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There are two scenarios where you would use a VoIP provider over a phone: if you are out of the country and want to use wi-fi to call home, and if you want to make international calls at rates lower than your carrier charges. Actually, there might be one more. You might want to have the VoIP setup act as a second line with its own phone number. That's a service that cell companies should have offered years ago but somehow never got around to doing, for reasons I've never entirely understood.
There's no phone service like no service at all (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the wireless phone companies have built themselves into a trap. They charge for phone calls with the assumption that they are going to get the bulk of their money from that. As people move to VOIP usage, the phone calls will end and they will be left with far less revenue.
Same thing with wire line providers - as Vonage and other data-driven systems take over the idea of a "phone" will be quaint and obsolete. Of course this means you have Verizon providing service so Vonage can eliminate Verizon from the marketplace.
What a lot of people don't seem to understand is there will likely be a day of reckoning coming along. T-Mobile is paid by voice calls and charges little for data plans. If the voice calls stop and everyone has few or zero minutes they will be faced with some tough choices, as will every other carrier. They can raise prices on data plans to recover the revenue. They can scale the company back drastically to continue operation with the smaller amount of revenue. The last choice would seem to be pretty obvious - they can just fold up operations and find some new business to invest in.
I expect most of the wireless companies to either scale back drastically (no more stores, just online sales for example) or cease operation entirely. If there isn't any money in it, and there will never be any more money in it, there isn't any point in continuing. Same thing with the wire line providers. Once the revenue reaches a low enough point, I don't think they are going to be able to continue.
Of course, what nobody ever asks is what happened to people that actually needed a buggy whip after automobiles came out?
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Telecommunications has been bizarro for a long long time. Much of the inetrnet traffic goes over lines meant for digital voice using an outmoded and very expensive protocols for synchronous circuit switching. It's so crazy that it is cheaper to nail up the digital voice circuits, overlay IP and a secondary set of routers on top, then layer VoIP on top of all that than it is to just use the digital voice circuits at the bottom of the stack. Or at least it's cheaper for the end user.
The cellphone industry is
OMG SO MANY SAVINGS!! (Score:1)
example [youtube.com]