Telecom Informer
by The Prophet
Hello, and greetings from the Central Office!
I say "virtual" because I'm in a very different place than usual: Beijing!
Apart from enjoying the excellent Chinese food (it's much better here than in the U.S.) and exploring the vast subway system (one of the largest in the world), I'm helping to build a new Central Office. My employer is branching out overseas, and China is a recent new part of that growth strategy. It seems everything in Beijing is brand new after a massive effort to overhaul the city's infrastructure for the 2008 Summer Olympics, and telecommunications networks are no exception. And whatever it is, it's busy! With the world's largest population, China needs a network with scale to match.
Globally, the telecommunications industry is moving in the direction of selling you bandwidth and letting you slice it into voice, data, video, or wireless while running a meter the entire time. Your bandwidth bill will be consumption-based if the telecoms have their way, much as your electric and water bill are today. Oddly enough, this was the original vision of Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, who is now rotting in a Louisiana prison for securities fraud. I think ultimately we'll see data commoditized with value-added services becoming the differentiator. Companies will compete on price and content bundles.
For now, though, we're still in the build-out phase.
Telecommunications networks are available, but are not yet ubiquitous. South Korea has long been the most wired place on the planet, and emerging economies like China are working hard to catch up. The U.S., frankly, isn't even on the radar screen. It's globally ranked 20th in broadband penetration, and I've given up on policy-makers there to think beyond their own corrupt self-interest. The real action is in emerging economies like China - there are ambitious plans here, and the wherewithal to implement them.
Professional challenges aside, you might wonder how, exactly, you pick up your entire life for several months and relocate halfway across the world? The answer in telecommunications terms is more complicated than you might expect. As much as we've grown into a society where you can be nearly anywhere on the planet within two days, it's still ridiculously complicated for something as simple as your phone to ring on the number it always has once you leave the country.
My primary phone line at home used to be a landline, but in the past few years, I've been spending the majority of my time away from home. Most of the time, people don't bother calling my landline anymore and just try my cell phone.
Yes, I have a cell phone. I hate giving money to wireless providers, the non-union traitors of the telecommunications industry. Nonetheless, Sprint has a product that was hard to pass up: Boost Mobile CDMA.
Coverage spans the entire Sprint network, and you can use most Sprint handsets (although this is an unadvertised perk, and requires a bit of social engineering to accomplish) for only $50 flat per month. It was a perfect plan for me, allowing everything from tethering my laptop to unlimited voice minutes and unlimited long distance.
Certain numbers, like 435-855-3326, are blocked from the Sprint network, but for the most part it's an incredible value.
Only one problem: there is no roaming. At all. Especially in China.
And while call forwarding is available, and international rates are high but not outrageous, international call forwarding isn't available. SMS forwarding doesn't exist either. So I was stuck. Either I would have to set my outgoing message to redirect callers to another number, or I'd have to come up with something more creative.
Unfortunately, there is only one creative option, and it's expensive (probably because it is the only available option): 3Jam.com
Essentially, 3Jam does the same thing as Google Voice, but they support porting numbers in and out, and they support international call forwarding (Google doesn't support either of these features). They also charge money, and the cost of the service provides some insight into what Google Voice may eventually charge (although I expect Google's product to be less expensive, since they have more users with corresponding economies of scale).
3Jam can then forward your calls anywhere in the world (at relatively high rates), and they'll forward your SMS messages anywhere in the world too. You can also reply to SMS messages via a sort of SMS proxy server, similar to what Google Voice operates.
Unfortunately, any SMS replies you send will be an international SMS to the U.S., which can be very expensive. China Mobile, the carrier I use, charges about 15 cents each.
I've seen a lot of VoIP providers come and go, and it's occasionally gotten ugly.
According to MyVoIPProvider.com, 256 of them have gone out of business in the last five years. The biggest and most infamous flame-out was SunRocket, which literally went out of business overnight and disconnected all of their customers, the majority of whom lost their phone numbers.
3Jam may be a perfectly solid company - I have no idea. Neither does the FCC.
And I really don't want to lose the number I've had for ten years. So I left my phone number with Sprint (a company that's less likely to go out of business), signed up with Google Voice, and changed my voicemail greeting to redirect callers to my new number.
Unfortunately, people who only text and never call won't ever find out my new number, but you always lose a few friends when you change your phone number. I'll manage.
A bucket of ink has already been spilled writing about Google Voice, so if you're not familiar with it by now, you've probably been living under a rock. Google allows just about anyone with a U.S. phone number to sign up for an account, so get one and play with it (www.google.com/voice).
Google doesn't allow call forwarding to international numbers. However, my employer does (via its international VoIP network), so I forwarded my business line to my mobile phone here in Beijing and forwarded my Google Voice number to work.
It works fine, although there's plenty of packet loss and a 500 ms delay. It's almost like the good old days using C5 satellite trunks.
I also have broadband in the apartment my company arranged for me, so I decided to install VoIP. For some reason, many people think that since Gizmo5 has closed to new sign-ups since being acquired by Google, it's impossible to get a SIP account that works with Google Voice.
There is an easy workaround. I signed up for a free account with CallWithUs, configured it to work with my Linksys SPA-3000, and pointed a free IPKall number at that.
In turn, I pointed my Google Voice number at the IPKall number. And - get this - it all works fine! If I'm home, I just answer the VoIP line rather than my mobile phone. Call quality is excellent - so good, in fact, that callers have no idea I'm talking to them from across the International Date Line.
And best of all, the latency is - while noticeable to me - not noticeable to most people. Outbound calls back to the U.S. and Canada cost less than one cent per minute.
And with that, it's once again time to bring this column to a close. Have a safe and enjoyable summer, wherever in the world your life takes you! And do drop me a line if you're in or near Beijing.