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Re:Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting... by technofiend on Saturday August 10, 2019 @03:54PM (#20664169)
Taking to my friends who are heavy WhatsApp users it's less about text chatting and more about voice chat over data because it's far cheaper per minute than crossing the PSTN.
Re:Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting... by jjeaff on Saturday August 10, 2019 @04:42PM (#20664419)
Signal has great voice calling. At least, I rarely have any trouble and the calls are usually crystal clear.
Re:Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting... by tialaramex on Sunday August 11, 2019 @05:57AM (#20667363)
Specifically, Signal's secured VoIP is Ogg Opus (better performance than the technology your phone uses to make actual phone calls) but in CBR mode (compression but with a fixed ratio so that a frame of audio is always the same number of bytes, thus a MITM attacker can't determine anything except how long your call lasted)

An unencrypted voice chat app could do VBR Opus, which would need slightly less bandwidth on average for the same quality but might mess with flow performance estimators in the network and make the experience worse by mistake.

One of the inadvertent benefits of Signal's strong centralisation of control is that they could just go "Opus CBR is great, we're using that now" and do it. No multi-year phase-in with most calls still being "legacy", no need to accumulate "buy in" from third parties who might not prioritize this work, they just did it.

Re:Telegram introduces feature to prevent users from texting... by newscracker on Sunday August 11, 2019 @03:04AM (#20666795)
All these apps have voice calling, including Telegram.