Change Cell Phone Billing

The latest release of the iPhone SDK enables app developers to add VoIP functionality to their apps.  This is great news and I'm happy to see Apple allowing it.  AT&T would love to continue to charge us for "voice minutes" and then tack on "data fees" on top of that.  But it's an antiquated billing scheme that needs to change.

The majority of your cell phone bill consists of the "voice plan" you're in.  You have 500 minutes or 1000 minutes of talk time each month and are billed accordingly.  If you have an iPhone or BlackBerry, you are also charged a "data plan" to account for your web activities.  Why?  Voice is data, but it isn't nearly as much data as streaming YouTube videos or browsing image-heavy websites.

Why are cell phones still dedicating voice circuits to calls?  What a waste of bandwidth.  Every cell phone should use VoIP when handling calls.  Every cell phone user has experienced "drop calls" before.  There's no need.  In a VoIP world, you just experience quality loss, but your call continues.  It's much better than having to call someone back.

Cell phone companies need to revise their billing schemes and throw "voice minutes" completely out the window.  I should get a cell phone bill each month that says, "You used 240MB of data."  That's it.  And it should no longer be called a cell phone bill, but a mobile Internet bill.