| Paraphrasing TuringNYC[0] from another recent HN thread[1]: > Just a decade ago, SMS messages in the US cost 10 to 25 cents per SMS. You also got charged for spam SMS. Prices were completely disjointed from the reality of underlying costs (zero for the telcos). > In the following ten years, the tech giants sweeped in, competed, provided a better service, with better cross-platform support, for zero dollar immediate cost to the end customer -- gained a massive following (think whatsapp), and are now vilified for their "monopoly" and the "harm" it has caused.) The only thing holding back a messaging-style disruption of voice services is the universal inter-operability of phone numbers. Various apps can be used for voice calls within the apps themselves but they're not compatible with a phone call from a landline for restaurant booking confirmations and such. Google Voice achieves this and Twilio got a mention in the other thread, but I'm not sure what else is out there (I'm not in the US so it's not a problem I need to solve for myself). Seems that US telco's are still asleep at the wheel in regards to their consumer-level services and will devolve into providing purely network connectivity and losing entirely any of the services that sit atop the network. What's ridiculous is that such things have become necessary. That there's no (enforced) legislation to prevent selling any and all contact information that passes a receptionists desk. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=TuringNYC [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24749971 |