As I’m searching the app store on my iPhone tonight looking for Skype to show up, I keep thinking about Verizon. (Oh wait, I found Skype..installing now). Back when I was still with Verizon (I moved to AT&T shortly after iPhone 3G was released), I had a Windows Mobile device and ran Skype on it. In the same fashion as Apple, Verizon didn’t like it when I ran Skype over the 3G connection. Now that AT&T was at least kind enough to say “no you can’t do that” at least I know what to expect and don’t have to reboot my phone when I’m done using Skype.
The only reason the whole Skype situation bugs me still is the carriers greed. If you make a call on your handset, your handset must turn that into a data stream and wirelessly transmit that. It’s all data, so why not just say “if you want quality, you are going to pay a premium on the cellular network, otherwise enjoy our higher latency 3G network”. If I have an iPhone data plan, do they really think I’m going to be one of those “lite” users who doesn’t suck up much bandwidth? I use 2 to 5 times the data I used to on Windows Mobile. I doubt that Skype uses as much bandwidth as a Google maps session or me downloading my video podcast on the phone.
OK, done complaining about greed and happy to have Skype back on my mobile.
