iPhone Voice Apps Over 3G?
From Slashdot:
Yesterday marked the announcement of the Apple iPad device, and with it came a new version of the SDK. In this new version, Apple has lifted the VoIP over 3G restrictions that limited VoIP traffic to wifi only. This morning, Fring announced that it’s iPhone app is 3G-capable starting immediately. No update is needed as apparently the app had 3G capability all along, but a server-side block prevented its use. Furthermore, apparently a 3G-capable version of Skype has been ready for some time now, and has been waiting for this restriction to be lifted.
This is an interesting shift, and if what this says is true — that the restriction was server-side and not in the SDK itself — then that actually means AT&T has decided to allow VoIP over 3G, not Apple. Â Maybe now that Apple’s contract is nearly ended with AT&T, they’re starting to play nicer because (joy of joys) people will actually have a choice.
31 Jan 2010 Mike
Actually, “server side” means Fring’s server, not AT&T’s.
In fact, AT&T has allowed VOIP since October, and immediately after, Apple announced they were going to update their licensing agreements to reflect this, but never actually did until last week.
Soon after these announcements, Fring started work on a 3G version which was ready to go and actually in users’ hands all along. It was just that Fring wasn’t allowed to let their server permit connections over 3G (however that works, I don’t know). So they just had to reconfigure their server to allow this and boom, instant VOIP over 3G.
AT&T has actually allowed VoIP for a long time, just not VoIP over 3G. I only say that it’s a switch on AT&T’s side because Fring and Skype could already do VoIP over WiFi connections, but not over 3G, and from the perspective of Fring/Skype, it’s the same data coming in on the same ports through the same protocols, so (as far as I know) there’s no difference on their end between 3G and WiFi. However, on AT&T’s side, it would be easy to block VoIP ports over 3G connections. Additionally, AT&T has a vested interest in not allowing VoIP over 3G.
Also, the post you reference says this (emphasis mine):
That would seem to be another indicator that it was AT&T’s network that was the blocking point.
I could easily be wrong, but it just seems that if I’m AT&T, and I can very easily block VoIP over 3G, I’m going to do that instead of saying, “Apple, please tell people that are developing apps for the iPhone to disallow VoIP over 3G, though WiFi is okay.” Then again, it’s also possible that they did both.
I can actually say for certain that it is the application developer and not AT&T who is blocking VOIP over 3G by the fact that you can make a skype call on your iPhone over 3G if you use Fring as your client, but not if you use the native skype app. It definitely is app dependent.
Also, VOIP over 3G has been available on jailbroken iPhones for a long time.
Well color me corrected. Seems silly that AT&T wouldn’t have blocked it on their servers, since that would be a simple and effective way of blocking VoIP over 3G (even jailbroken phones wouldn’t have been able to get around that). But I guess it’s less technical work for them to just tell other people not to do it, and work on the honor system (in combination with Apple’s approval process).
Still, this move seems more prompted by AT&T than by Apple; it’s obvious why AT&T would want to block it, but why wouldn’t Apple want VoIP over 3G?