What would be disruptive is an iPhone-like device with unlimited 3G-speed-or-better data loaded up with skype, a jabber/irc client, and the iphone's other goodies.

Why are we still paying per-text-message and why do we still have monthly minute limits? It's all data anyway.

The disruptive moment is when wireless net connections become as flat-rate/fast/boring as wired net connections.

I thought it wasn't all just data. Don't some cell networks still have circuit-switched voice and packet-switched data?

Currently telecom is all IP based. Telcos have a circuit switched system at the last mile for backward compatibility and profit reasons, but from your local CO to the terminating call CO is IP based. The telcos also own the internet connections as a tier one providers, so most of it is privately routed.

But yeah, the circuit switched system still exists only for backward compat. for the existing system. Cost for call routing has gone down significantly for telcos ever since the 1990s. (Some shithole countries do not apply.)

Yeah, like all of them AFAIK. And packet-switched voice isn't automatically cheaper than circuit-switched.

Hmm. Now if the quality were as good as my POTS service. I pay France Telecom about 40 Euro a month for unlimited calls across Europe and North America. That seems like a good deal to me because it always works and the quality is good.

This will become useful to me (more to my wife, actually) once they add Russia to the list of countries considered as the world.

That said, we pay ~$10-15 per month for intl. calls through skype currently, so the savings aren't that big.

Looks like they dropped SkypePro, which was the unlimited US+SkypeIn yearly bundle.

Disruptive? Really?

Wikipedia:Disruptive technology Examples of true disruptive innovations, ie. innovations that are lower in performance and lower cost, succeeding are rare. Occasionally, a disruptive technology comes to dominate an existing market by either filling a role in a new market that the older technology could not fill (as cheaper, lower capacity but smaller-sized flash memory is doing for personal data storage in the 2000s) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology)

This is HALF the disruptive technology. Now pair this service with an easy to use, portable, interface that the mainstream can get behind.

Even with this news: Skype is still mainly for expats and the tech-core.