Can this be used as a total replacement to At&t's SMS? Would it be under the rules for Google to develop an SMS app?
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Now that gmail SMS is here...
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From what I understand, it's just a way to send a text message to a friend's phone from the gmail chat sidebar. Whoever you send a text to will still incur text charges if they don't have unlimited text.
Paying to receive calls/SMS is ridiculous. One of the things I hated the most about the US/Canadian mobile phone system. That, and local area codes for mobile phones - they're MOBILE phones, not local phones. Same rate, wherever you are in the country, every mobile phone has the same area code so you know you're calling a mobile and that you'll pay more to do so.
Paying for receiving is bad.
Paying for receiving is bad.
You have a very good point. I never thought twice about having a local area code for my mobile phone number. Japan is like Australia. They have mobile-specific area codes that look totally different than those of the land phones. And they don't have to pay to receive calls/texts.
Now that pretty much everyone has a mobile phone, you don't really see a difference in the cost of a call. It costs me no more to call someone in California as it does to call my friend down the street.
I guess I could accept not being charged for receiving calls, but whatever.
I certainly didn't like being charged differently to call a mobile. I was in Finland and had met a girl one night. Decided to call her the next day. Had no idea that calling a mobile cost MUCH more than calling a landline, and I got slapped with a monsterous bill from the hotel (I did not have a mobile at that time). Not knowing the customs of another country can hurt!
Exactly.
When I moved in Canada I had to change my mobile number so that I didn't get charged long-distance if I called someone next door.
It's a mobile phone, not a cordless home phone with a long range.
I also had to tell people not to ring or message me on my birthday because I couldn't afford the incoming international charges. What a joke of a system.
Does gmail SMS work internationally or only within the us?
In New York, we had a mobile-specific area code for a couple years, but federal law was passed that made that open to landlines and future mobile-only area codes won't be issued, at least as they were before. It was tied to a carrier or specific carriers and that was deemed to be wrongful.
I'd never heard of local area codes for mobile phones. It's only a few months too since I heard of paying to receive calls/messages. Since I've been posting on this forum in fact. What with that and 3G just rolling out in some fairly major places it seems sort of . . . er . . . quaint.
In the UK mobile phone numbers begin with 07 and you don't pay to receive calls.
Nope, I got it here in the UK, too.
EDIT: Actually, no, it comes up but it only works to US phones, you can get free international texting like this from the UK though
The lack of mobile specific area codes allow us to take our phone numbers from a landline phone to a cell phone, and I appreciate that I could do that.
Yes but.. what if you move to a different city or state?
While I do agree with you in that being able to port your number from a landline to a mobile line is good, that's pretty much the only advantage I can think of for the US mobile numbering scheme. And I can think of a lot of disadvantages!
I just send txts to my friends via email. They all have unlimited txt plans, and I have the stupid $4.99 for 200 txts. Don't cost me or them anything extra especially since we get unlimited data transfer..
But area code and rate plans aren't related. I have a Virginia area code on my phone, but my plan is nation-wide. So when I call my friend in California with my iPhone from inside Virginia or from inside California, it's all the same.
So why does it matter what the first 3 digits are? They can set the plans up however they like. The area code has nothing to do with it.
Regardless of whether Google COULD do it, I doubt they WOULD do it.
The major incentive to send SMS via GChat is that your eyeballs stay on Gmail and it's various ads. And it just keeps you tied to google and their services.
I don't know that there's a huge incentive to google to allow people to gchat instead of sms via the iPhone. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to find a way to run it in the background, since most people don't keep their phone open to SMS all day.
The major incentive to send SMS via GChat is that your eyeballs stay on Gmail and it's various ads. And it just keeps you tied to google and their services.
I don't know that there's a huge incentive to google to allow people to gchat instead of sms via the iPhone. Not to mention the fact that they'd have to find a way to run it in the background, since most people don't keep their phone open to SMS all day.
Same here! I've never seen this anywhere else in the world. While traveling through the US for two months I had to keep buying pre-paid value just to be reachable. You just have to pay per minute when you receive any incoming call...
On the other hand, Australia is pretty expensive as well
If I compare it to here; I have now a mobile sim-only plan for € 11,- a month which gives me 300 minutes free call time + 100 sms messages per month. And what I don't use in one month I can use it the next month. I found the Aussie pre-paid plans quite expensive compared to the Dutch plans...
You can add an SMS Lab to your Gmail web page, and then put in a phone # and message and send a SMS to a phone from Gmail.
OK, this is really simple. Say you are sitting in front of a desktop and you also have you iPhone in front of you too. You want to send a text message to Joe Schmoe, but don't want to be charged for sending one (or use up a text message if you are on a limited plan). So, to get around this, you go onto Google SMS on your desktop and send it from there instead. That's it.