Vonage Over A Mobile Phone

Yes, it sounds a bit convoluted, but Om Malik explains how he basically ended up using Vonage over a mobile phone connection in India to make cheap phone calls back home to the states. He's using XTen Lite (a pretty good softphone in my experience) on his laptop as a software version of his Vonage phone. To get a connection on his laptop, though, he connected to the "almost 3G" (1xRTT) cellular connection he's been using as a data connection. Turns out that using Vonage over the connection worked fine - and it saved him a lot of money. A 20 minute call was probably under $0.30 (small Vonage fee, small cellular data fee - no cellular voice fee), whereas it would have been $12 normally. Last November, Techdirt contributor Derek Kerton contacted me on some business when he was delayed by a flat-tire in the Sierra Nevada. Instead of a phone call, we used Video/voice IM over his flat rate 1xRTT connection. Although the video was very slow, the voice was almost acceptable. See these disruptive technologies in action? While it's hardly simple now, it will get easier and easier.