July 2nd, 2007 posted by alexander drewniak

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: VOIP handsets are the future of mobile telephony. At Rebtel we‘ve taken the first steps towards that future by enabling any user of any handset to start making VOIP calls using their inclusive minutes. Sadly Apple doesn’t seem to share that vision. Not only has VOIP been disabled on the iPhone, but the remarkable deal that Apple struck with AT&T to bring the iPhone to life is turning out to be very disappointing for the lucky few who managed to get hold of one…

Reports on the botched AT&T activation process for iPhone are now starting to flood in. The issue that turns the iPod into a veritable iBrick is that for the thing to work at all, it needs activation through its simcard with AT&T. That means that if you switched from, say, Verizon, to AT&T, you’re in line, just as you were in line for an iPhone. You now have this wonderful machine, but cannot do anything with it (yet) because you’re waiting for activation by AT&T!

Says “judpop” on the Apple support forum:

It could be worse, my iPhone won’t let me transfer my number from TMobile. It just says “The phone number you entered cannot be transferred. You must uncheck the transfer number option and clear the information in the text fields to continue.” Worse off, I want a good explanation for this, not some dinky you have to tell everyone you know what your new number is.. ugh… and yes i have triple checked all my info.

So with all the attention being on the hardware, it shouldn’t be overlooked, ever, that phones are solidified software and services. Why the iPhone’s functionality should be tied to activation through AT&T is beyond me. It’s probably an operator thing, as was the decision to disable VOIP on the iPhone. So iPhone buyers get a beautiful machine that’s horribly crippled by the stranglehold AT&T now seems to have on Apple. A shame, and harmful to Apple’s reputation as a challenger brand.

It’s also a good demonstration of how the telephony market works: handset manufacturers and operators are in the same bed, and that means that we, their customers, are being deprived of functionality that could be ours if only….

To my mind this is not a sustainable business model. As the growing controversy about iPhone activation shows, we, the customers, want to be set free.

Once VOIP handsets become available, users of mobile services will be able to band together and circumvent mobile protocols altogether. It’s only a matter of time before the first VOIP enabler hacks appear for the iPhone. In the meantime, the first step towards reclaiming at least some of the territory now occupied by the operators is to use their bucket plans to free ourselves from their outrageous pricing schemes. And for that, you know where to go…

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