Carriers see communication services as their turf, and they go to byzantine lengths to protect that.
Politically it can get funny.
If you work at a handset manufacturer, and sit in on sales calls, and one of your team members brings up anything remotely related to this or VOIP, you might see the carrier buyers get visibly upset and literally walk out of the room.
I could never tell if they were 'actually' upset, or 'pretend professionally' upset.
You know what upsets me is that I can call people on my phone and the audio quality is terrible if they're not on the same carrier (T-Mobile in the USA). I had to tell my friend to just call me on Skype the next time cause it's always a struggle to hear them clearly over the phone. I can't believe that my carrier has "HD Calling" but everyone else sounds like the calls being patched through a sewage pipe.
I doubt it’s any consolation but I have the same carrier and don’t have that problem.
I used to be really frustrated with a few things a few years back but thinking back on it they’ve improved a lot since.
The only thing that still bothers me is the coverage. It’s usually fantastic where I live/work and outside of that it’s ok to great with really rare dead spots. To their credit it used to be non-existent/terrible to great.
What’s shocking is the first time you go from a cell phone to a high quality office phone (yes, I’m young). Holy crap are modern phones crystal clear, the stuff we’ve accepted on cell phones is garbage in comparison.
Old ma bell was a monopoly and long distance cost over a dollar a minute, but land lines were crystal clear for half a century and more. The shape of old phones also were really great for isolating the phone conversation from everything else.
Even on the same carrier, the call quality can be terrible. I've had this problem with Verizon for years now. (No, it's not the phone since it gets upgraded every 2 years or less)
This. I default to FaceTime audio calls over direct phone calls with fellow iPhone owners. Crystal-clear every time. T-Mobile call quality is completely awful.
>>If you work at a handset manufacturer, and sit in on sales calls, and one of your team members brings up anything remotely related to this or VOIP, you might see the carrier buyers get visibly upset and literally walk out of the room.
Is your anecdote over a decade old? That may have happened to a much weaker extent before IMS[1] carrier deployments became widespread, and before the consolidation of the Android and iOS platforms. Not to say that VoIP apps like Skype, Viber, WhatsApp, WeChat Voice, KaoKao, etc. plug into carrier IMS cores, but carriers definitely did see the writing on the wall and prepared for the cannabilization of their voice revenue for quite some time.
Note that Apple devices enabled voice-over-LTE as part of their iOS 8 rollout on iPhone 6's or higher[2], and Google recently figured out how to do the same for some Project Fi phones back in Feburary 2017[3].
The last remnant of strong wireless VoIP app vs. wireless voice differentiation practices is mainly the Middle East, but I believe handset manufacturers around the world generally do not experience such vehement (or even any) pushback from carriers these days.
Carriers will fight tooth and nail, 2018 and long beyond for anything related to data, voice, texting, essentially anything services related.
The bulk of their revenues at least are still made up of 'voice packages'. Do you think that they are just going give that up?
They will fight any handset maker on this - and by the way apps, and search.
Tooth and nail, balls to the wall an only Apple can basically do as they please.
They'll try to negotiate a cut of VOIP revenue, they'll demand that such apps cannot be preloaded, they'll demand a cut of search revenues from Google. They'll demand a cut of app store revenues. Or demand that their own app stores be installed.
Anything voice, data or services oriented they want a cut of.
" but carriers definitely did see the writing on the wall and prepared for the cannabilization of their voice revenue for quite some time."
They are not - moreover, there are 10's of billions to be made in the meantime as voice wanes - moreover, I think we'll see regular voice services with 'phone numbers' for a very long time yet.
Consider net neutrality - it's an attempt by carriers to undercut major players and demand more revenue for QoS etc..
No, it's a huge, huge turf war. One of the biggest 'open wars' in business because the fault lines are always changing whereas in most other industries there are many norms and practices that have developed between different layers of the value chain that have stabilized over time.
Between carriers, handset manufacturers ... it's blood.
Carriers see communication services as their turf, and they go to byzantine lengths to protect that.
Politically it can get funny.
If you work at a handset manufacturer, and sit in on sales calls, and one of your team members brings up anything remotely related to this or VOIP, you might see the carrier buyers get visibly upset and literally walk out of the room.
I could never tell if they were 'actually' upset, or 'pretend professionally' upset.
But it's funny the games that are played.