Thursday, August 02, 2007

Talk as long as you want, the call is free

How long before you get to say that to your friends? This Engadget post quotes FCC Chairman Kevin Martin saying users will be able to "use any wireless device and download any mobile broadband application, with no restrictions." This means we may soon be able to buy phones that operate only on internet telephony over the (soon to be) free 700MHz spectrum. No wonder, then, that the leader of free (read Google) has promised a whopping 4.6 Billion to sweeten the deal for FCC.

Google is already in talks with Wistron NeWeb for development of Wi-Fi phones with Google Talk compatibility. Once the product is available to customers, there'll be no reason to stick with AT&T and their subscription plans. Free is obviously the best subscription plan (yet). Expect a surge in usage as telephony goes free. Also, the services available to cellphone subscribers will fade against the applications Google will encourage users to create.

What services would you like your free phone subscription to provide (besides contextual audio ads)? Leave a comment.

2 comments:

Sudhanshu said...

Not just that I think, you'll have mobile phone which work through it. Soon I guess, there would be phones where you would pay only for GPRS and not for the actual calls...

But alas, none of it is going to come to India very soon. BSNL and MTNL are here to suck our blood...

Anmol said...

Hmmm... Maybe there won't be a need to pay for GPRS as well! Data transmission will be over TV frequencies, not the Cellphone frequency.

Hopefully the Indian TV networks will go digital soon too :)