LTE - 4G replace international calls
 

Hi Guys,

Not sure if you know much about LTE (4g) but handsets will be here in the UK next year, they will have broadband speeds upto 100mb per second!

I think Sweden has had it for a few years and now China and America are producing handsets.

Anyway, my question is, with a wider range than 3g, and way faster speeds there must be a way for people to use that than pay a phone charge across countries.
Sort of like Skype or Viop but for the whole of the world to use.
Do you think this will happen or will the powers at be keep us tied to phone charges?

VOIP and video chat services, such as Skype, Fring, etc. already work OK over 3G but are largely dependent on unlimited data (or at least a very large data bucket). Some carriers attempt to lock down their phones to prevent this (e.g. AT&T). Others don't seem to care. As long as the phone can browse the web and access 3rd party e-mail, there'll be no way to prevent it if applications can be written and installed without carrier approval. I think the only way really prevent it would be to introduce random latencies that cause voice delays and an unacceptable quality of VOIP service.

AT&T does actively block VoIP over 3G. It is not the best network in terms of performance but it works and is even contractually permitted.

I'll bet if one had a VPN tunnel, they'd find it a little hard to block. This is why they try to lock down their devices, like the iPhone, so you can't take advantage of work-arounds.

MobileVOIP has a tunnel. IAX/2 often works well as well.