On 08/01/2020 16.20, Anton Aylward wrote:
On 07/01/2020 13:37, Carlos E. R. wrote:
You live in Canada, so you probably don't realize. Many Canadians and your southern neighbours use SMS to communicate, to do "texting"; it is gratis for you.
Depending on the plan, yes-sort-of. My plan has recently upgraded to give "unlimited local voice", unlimited in-Canada TXT. I'll have to check about the rest of North America. But yes, to Europe I pay C$0.20
It is cheaper for me to make voice calls to European land lines via my VoIP service. I pay less than $1/month for the basic service and $0.005 for calls in Canada. Calls to the USA are outrageously twice that! $0.01 UK mobile is $0.0149, land-line is $0.0079 Spain: Orange-Mobile is $0.1349, land-line is $0.0126 Vodaphone is too expensive to consider
Heh I have an Skype account, with money, time ago. I did calls to landlines in Canada, back in the day prior to M$ purchase. There they were surprised by the unknown number in the call-id, were tempted to not answer. And sometimes the voice did not work both directions, and I had to call the standard way to explain, that it was me and sorry for the noise. On this side, I was using the desktop upstairs, with a long earphone/mic (two earphones, actually) cable going downstairs so that my mother (which could not climb stairs) could talk with her sister for a long time without worrying for the cost. I did not have a laptop at the time. What times!
In Spain, and in most of Europe, sending SMS had a cost, maybe 20 cents each one. Much more if you sent photos. So here became popular applications that would do texting using Internet, which is "almost" free, such as Whatsapp. This one in Spain is a "must have", except for some paranoid people who may use Telegram instead, or a few others.
[...]
So, here, probably the most popular video conferencing app is Whatsapp.
They only need to be aware of their internet plan, or being in WiFi area.
So I could SMS you using Whatsapp?
No, you would text me using whatsap or telegram :-D That's the hard part, convincing people in Canada to install that app and use it. At least when I send something :-D Google is starting a new system, a successor to the SMS system that requires collaboration of providers, which are very reluctant (because it is free). I don't remember the name. It works in two European countries so far. And uses the standard Android Google messaging application.
On computers it is different.
Indeed.
-- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org