{"id":2611,"date":"2012-12-17T09:35:08","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T14:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/?p=2611"},"modified":"2012-12-17T09:35:08","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T14:35:08","slug":"bbm-now-does-voice-calls-will-people-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2012\/12\/17\/bbm-now-does-voice-calls-will-people-care","title":{"rendered":"BBM now does voice calls &#8211; will people care?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the only one amongst my close friends &amp; colleagues that still use a BlackBerry. I use it primarily for email. During its heyday, it was dead popular for BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2011\/03\/08\/messenger-apps-disrupting-text-messaging-sms\">group messaging apps<\/a> like Whatsapp came along to disrupt it.<\/p>\n<p>I see that BlackBerry is now finally <a href=\"http:\/\/bits.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/12\/10\/blackberry-phones-get-free-calls-over-wi-fi\/?ref=technology\">offering<\/a> free calls over WiFi for BBM users. Its unlikely to work on my aging Bold 9700, but I&#8217;m holding out for a BB10 device.<\/p>\n<p>Is this a first? No, not really.<\/p>\n<p>In the USA, T-Mobile offered this feature since probably 2007 &#8211; see more about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Unlicensed_Mobile_Access\">UMA<\/a> (Unlicensed Mobile Access). I used to be dead jealous of friends with these kinds of BlackBerries as they could be in Iceland and still call the USA for free over wifi basically.<\/p>\n<p>Now it comes to everyone on the BlackBerry.<\/p>\n<p>However, is this still important? We&#8217;ve had several generations of FaceTime that transmits both voice &amp; video over WiFi. The latest iOS 6 even allows this to happen over the 3G\/LTE networks, so Apple has just said it is OK to make use of all that bandwidth even when you&#8217;re on a mobile connection.<\/p>\n<p>Is BlackBerry being disruptive with this feature? Far from it. I think many have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bothsidesofthetable.com\/2012\/12\/15\/would-the-last-blackberry-user-please-turn-out-the-lights-i-already-left-the-building\/\">ditched<\/a> the platform. I am willing to give BB10 a go, but I have no idea if I&#8217;ll stick with it for much longer.<\/p>\n<p>And the connection between FaceTime and BBM? Most BlackBerry users carry an iPhone. Don&#8217;t forget to read Mark Suster&#8217;s good <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bothsidesofthetable.com\/2012\/12\/15\/would-the-last-blackberry-user-please-turn-out-the-lights-i-already-left-the-building\/\">post<\/a> on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m the only one amongst my close friends &amp; colleagues that still use a BlackBerry. I use it primarily for email. During its heyday, it was dead popular for BBM (BlackBerry Messenger), but group messaging apps like Whatsapp came along to disrupt it. I see that BlackBerry is now finally offering free calls over WiFi [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1251,980,361],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-bbm","tag-blackberry","tag-mobile"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-G7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}