Vonage iPhone Application Submitted to Apple

It will be 100% wifi only if approved at all.

No way in hell AT&T would allow this on their cellular network. Ever.

Pretty much a meh submission. Guess if you use Vonage it may be good for you? Oh well, not for me.

coolbreeze said:

It will be 100% wifi only if approved at all.

No way in hell AT&T would allow this on their cellular network. Ever.

Pretty much a meh submission. Guess if you use Vonage it may be good for you? Oh well, not for me.

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At least in Vonage's case, I wouldn't imagine it is a "new customer draw" but as a long-time Vonage user, I'm quite excited to see what they have done. I'm not so concerned with making calls through Vonage with the app, but accessing voicemail could be great. I hope they've done something nice there!

Currently I have multiple lines, personal and work-related, through Vonage, but to use Visual Voicemail, I have to have the iPhone's voicemail pick them all up or I end up with voicemails scattered all over the place. Unfortunately this means I can only have one voicemail greeting for all the lines which simul-ring with the iPhone. So I had to make it really generic to work reasonably well for both personal line calls and business line calls.

If they have a nice Apple-esque voicemail interface, and I'm not limited to WiFi-only just for retrieving my voicemails, I may switch back to them for my voicemail in order to have a unique greeting per line, yet still be able to "get" them on the iPhone easily...

If anything, the app should allow me to access my Vonage account easier (for call forwarding mainly). Vonage's website is so bloated on the iPhone, it'd sometimes take minutes for pages to load on my EDGE iPhone.

app will definitely be wifi only if it gets approved. I want to see what they come up with though.

this is welcome news. i've been on vonage for 4+yrs.

making calls isn't that much of an issue for me as much as accessing my voicemail with them and other account management tools.

i hate vonage with a fiery passion unmatched by anyone. they screwed us in so many ways, we had to get our state's attorney general to issue a statement in our favor before they would stop harassing us for illegal charges we did not actually incur. anyone who signs up for vonage is making a deal with the devil.

Jailbreak=Vonage Over 3G

Try having Vonage email you wav files of your voicemail messages. It's as convenient as visual voicemail and there's no app to hunt for. Right there in your email which is also right there on the home computer email. Other benefits include being able to FORWARD the emailed voice message to a spouse or friend. Works great!

MacRumors said:

"noting that it does have an agreement with AT&T to not allow customers to utilize AT&T's network to initiate or terminate VoIP sessions without AT&T's permission. The agreement suggests that the Vonage iPhone application, like similar ones from other services such as Skype, will be restricted to Wi-Fi only for phone calls once it appears in the App Store."

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It makes perfect sense to me. I don't think ANYONE that owned a network and invested billions to build it would want some other company using it to make money. This is why Skype and Vonage are not allowed on AT&T's network and will remain WiFi only.

So this is why their stock is up 40% today.

End the Argument...

iphones4evry1 said:

It makes perfect sense to me. I don't think ANYONE that owned a network and invested billions to build it would want some other company using it to make money. This is why Skype and Vonage are not allowed on AT&T's network and will remain WiFi only.

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I am tiring of this argument. Comcast, Timewarner, Charter, etc all built networks that others use to make money...think Amazon, Ebay, Google, Apple.

They tried to close down the experience, centralize music stores, and guide web traffic through their own portals.

Ultimately they all just sell access via their pipes. So what's the difference between Comcast and AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless? They're all just selling access.

Billing by the minute or a single SMS/Text is so 20th century. It's all just data...the music we buy on iTunes, the photos emailed to my friends or the video conference I hold with my father in London via iChat.

The sooner the telecom companies accept the truth the easier it will be for the rest of us to innovate and experience what 21st century telecommunications should be.

dixonbm said:

I am tiring of this argument. Comcast, Timewarner, Charter, etc all built networks that others use to make money...think Amazon, Ebay, Google, Apple.

They tried to close down the experience, centralize music stores, and guide web traffic through their own portals.

Ultimately they all just sell access via their pipes. So what's the difference between Comcast and AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless? They're all just selling access.

Billing by the minute or a single SMS/Text is so 20th century. It's all just data...the music we buy on iTunes, the photos emailed to my friends or the video conference I hold with my father in London via iChat.

The sooner the telecom companies accept the truth the easier it will be for the rest of us to innovate and experience what 21st century telecommunications should be.

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The cable companies receive royalties from other cable companies that use their network. When your cell phone is "roaming" on another network, your phone carrier has to pay a roaming fee to the other carrier for using their network. If Skype and Vonage want to use AT&T's network, fine, but they will have to pay royalties to AT&T. Skype and Vonage could be set up on the iPhone in a way that allows AT&T to record and keep track of every call that is made using the Skype or Vonage App, and AT&T could then charge a per-minute fee to Skype and Vonage. That would work.

iphones4evry1 said:

It makes perfect sense to me. I don't think ANYONE that owned a network and invested billions to build it would want some other company using it to make money. This is why Skype and Vonage are not allowed on AT&T's network and will remain WiFi only.

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Really? Comcast and Charter who both sell digital phone service have never complained that I have a vonage phone on their "unlimited" data plan. Seems to me that the internet companies entered the phone service and the phone companies have entered the internet business. They're just not happy about it. I'm sorry but if you're selling me an unimited data connection to the internet then it's my business what I do with it. Comcast lost the same battle trying to keep vonage off their systems early on. Data is data. You want to sell the bandwidth then sell it. But none of this posing crap. If you're not charging enough, raise the price. Let the market decide.

bretm said:

Really? Comcast and Charter who both sell digital phone service have never complained that I have a vonage phone on their "unlimited" data plan. Seems to me that the internet companies entered the phone service and the phone companies have entered the internet business. They're just not happy about it. I'm sorry but if you're selling me an unimited data connection to the internet then it's my business what I do with it. Comcast lost the same battle trying to keep vonage off their systems early on. Data is data. You want to sell the bandwidth then sell it. But none of this posing crap. If you're not charging enough, raise the price. Let the market decide.

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And I don't want to hear that these phone calls would bring down their network. It's all part of their overall bandwidth. If I'm using vongage or skype on a cell phone, then I'm NOT using bandwidth that I'd be using with a cell phone call (which is arguably larger). If their network can't handle the traffic increase then maybe they shouldn't be selling UNLIMITED data plans, huh?

I suppose this is why there is no iChat and forward facing camera. There's no point. AT&T simply won't allow another company to use their data network for live communication.

There are 80 App Stores worldwide now.

Why does AT&T's rules in one App Store affect the other 79?

Block VoIP Apps in the US store, and let everyone else use them. Simple.

I wonder if Vonage will let me use my regular phone account for this, or will I have to buy a second line?

Could be pretty useful on a jailbroken 3g unrestricted iphone!

I hope this is a simple app that allows me to manage my services, see the call logs and adds visual voice mail.

I don't have any need to use my iPhone to make vonage calls since it already has a phone in it.

Tip: Set up a yahoo email account. Use that email for the vonage voicmail only. You can listen to voicmails in thier own section of your iPhone email. As an added bonus, vonage uses the phone number that called you in the email address so you can call someone back with one click. It really is just like visual voicemail, right now.

retroneo said:

There are 80 App Stores worldwide now.

Why does AT&T's rules in one App Store affect the other 79?

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Perhaps the other providers agree with AT&T and are just letting them take the heat and the bad rap for it? They need minute-money too...

Not Quite...

bretm said:

I suppose this is why there is no iChat and forward facing camera. There's no point. AT&T simply won't allow another company to use their data network for live communication.

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Not quite...there's neither of those for two reasons.

1. There's simply not enough bandwidth to send a constant stream of video over 3G or EDGE for that matter.
2. The iPhone isn't fast enough to do the real-time video compression that is necessary to achieve this task.

Can we please stop with the Front-facing camera BS for at least another year or so. We'll get this once we get at least a 1.5 GHZ processor or so, probably not before then.

+1 ^^^ Vonage is a den of theives; they have thugs trying to collect unverified and disputed charges. I only had them for three weeks; please DON'T approve these clowns for anything relating to the iPhone....

iphones4evry1 said:

It makes perfect sense to me. I don't think ANYONE that owned a network and invested billions to build it would want some other company using it to make money. This is why Skype and Vonage are not allowed on AT&T's network and will remain WiFi only.

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Except AT&T has let Skype run for years on WM and Blackberry phones without a peep. Now that it's a possibility on their flagship phone they are all pissy about it.

dixonbm said:

Ultimately they all just sell access via their pipes. So what's the difference between Comcast and AT&T Wireless or Verizon Wireless? They're all just selling access.

Click to expand...

That's one of the major things the FCC is looking at right now. However, there are major technical differences...

Billing by the minute or a single SMS/Text is so 20th century. It's all just data...

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That's an all too common misconception.

Cellular voice and SMS are still done over switched circuits, at least until we get 4G all-IP based networks. That means a time slot dedicated to you alone, which must be billed by time.

bretm said:

And I don't want to hear that these phone calls would bring down their network. It's all part of their overall bandwidth. If I'm using vongage or skype on a cell phone, then I'm NOT using bandwidth that I'd be using with a cell phone call (which is arguably larger). If their network can't handle the traffic increase then maybe they shouldn't be selling UNLIMITED data plans, huh?

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See above. The basic precept of your argument is false.

Morever, voice uses far less data than video or even decent file download speeds. You wouldn't want your internet access limited to less than 15Kbps like voice, would you? No. The whole idea that you're "NOT using" more bandwidth than voice, is ridiculous.

And there IS an overall bandwidth limit, both in the available amount of user slots/frequencies, and in the backhaul. Heck, many current towers only have a total of 3-10Mbps back end access.

This cannot be wished away. Wired cable companies don't have the localized airwave limits that cell towers do, which is why they're held to a higher standard so far.

In the (hopefully near) future, when cell access speeds and backhaul dramatically increase, then matters can change.

SFStateStudent said:

+1 ^^^ Vonage is a den of theives; they have thugs trying to collect unverified and disputed charges. I only had them for three weeks; please DON'T approve these clowns for anything relating to the iPhone....

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You actually canceled Vonage? I tried, and it was next to impossible to get the rep to take the cancellation..."why are you canceling?.."we'll give you a free month if you stay"... why are you canceling again..?" Took around 30 mins to cancel mine...