I had installed XTen Lite on my Powerbook and coupled it with a Vonage service. I had been using that service for a couple of weeks in San Francisco, but when I came to India, I decided to try it out over the “almost 3G” data connection I have been using to check my email and post blog entries. I wasn’t too sure about the quality of the service for the connection speeds sometime drop down to about 50 kilobits per second. Anyway I wanted to check my voice mails in San Francisco, and dialed out – and before i knew I was pressing the right buttons, scanning my messages.
Next-up, I called a friend of mine in New York. 20 minute conversation over a data connection. Fat chance the cellphone company got to see any part of the revenues from that call. It was a few pennies for Vonage, and a quarter or so for the data connection for 20 minutes. As an aside, it costs about $0.60 cents to call back to the US from India. Times 20, it is about $12. Savings! Savings! (I cannot wait for the EDGE/UMTS/EVDO/EVDV/Whatever to roll out world wide. I think that would be the end of distance.)
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