VoIP calls now allowed over iPhone data plans
A major change has happened in the landscape of the iPhone: you can now make VoIP calls over your data plan.
The makers of the iCall app, an application that allows for VoIP (voice over internet protocol) calls, announced today that a significant change was made to the developer agreement with Apple. Apparently in the latest release of the iPhone OS SDK (software development kit), VoIP calling has now been enabled for unrestricted free local and long distance calling over 3G data networks. This is a significant change as it had previously been restricted to only Wi-Fi connections.
ICall CEO Arlo Gilbert is quoted as saying, “I applaud Apple’s decision to allow iCall to extend its functionality beyond Wi-Fi and onto the 3G networks. This heralds a new era for VoIP applications on mobile platforms, especially for iCall and our free calling model. I hope that now more developers will begin using our VoIP as a platform to integrate VoIP into their applications.”
What it also means is that we could possibly, but not definitely, see Google try to bring the Google Voice application back to the App Store. It is believed that Google Voice was excised from the App Store this past summer over the fact that it could route calls around the traditional calling plans of the iPhone. While AT&T, Apple and Google very publicly fought this out, no clear reason was ever announced for what happened, and eventually the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) was dragged into it.
Beyond Google, you can probably expect a major announcement from Skype about this new development very soon. Skype has said publicly on numerous occasions that it would like to be able to place calls via data plans, so they are sure to be jumping all over this in short order.
Related Posts:
