News - Google finally launches Voice app for the iPhone

[HEXUS]

Apple is obliged to play nice with rival Google over its unified communications app.

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[miniyazz]

IMO things like this could see us switching to an entirely data-driven system. Why pay for x minutes, y texts and z data when it could all be encompassed under data? It would bring an end to the days of paying for 70 gazillion texts and 800 minutes, which I for one would welcome given my typical usage of <200 texts/month (often half that).

I'm not sure how much it would be welcomed by phone companies though, since I think data is currently the cheapest form of communication for consumers (e.g. a text = ~12p on PAYG and carries ~150 bytes. Assuming an obscene amount of overhead of 512 bytes total and only costs 10p, this means you're paying £200/MB Granted, you don't pay 12p or 10p/text when on contract, but still)