Data Only Please

I don’t want to be forced to pay for a cellular and data plan from my carrier. I just want a data plan. When Apple introduced FaceTime in 2011 and Google unveiled Hangouts and Voice, the notion of VoIP (voice over I.P address) became popularized. In essence, you could talk to someone face-to-face without using minutes from a traditional cellular plan. Instead, you would just require a data plan. Today, we have technologies such as 4G, LTE and 3G which can accommodate high performance communication.

Apple killed the SMS text messaging business with iMessages. This works with just data and wifi. It is very similar Blackberry’s BBM. And is also very encrypted and secure.

At Apple’s WWDC event, they unleashed iOS 7. While, they showed off many new features such as control center, parallax, improved multi-tasking and a new user-interface, they curiously left out one. One that I think is a another game changer. FaceTime Audio.

It’s exactly what you think it is. Starting September 10, 2013 (or when iOS 7 is actually released to the general public), you will be able to place a voice-call to anyone with an iOS or OSX device over wifi. It’s only wifi to start (just like FaceTime was initially) as the carriers are probably worried that it too will eat away at their profits.

Apple has around $200 Billion in cash reserve. I really hope they are planning to use that to maybe buy up some carriers, satellites, cell towers. It would be awesome to see them ultimately form their own network that worked globally. Imagine a world where you can just pay something such $40 USD a month for 10GB of data. You’d get one phone number on your data-only SIM card and you could travel to any continent and still receive high quality internet connectivity. That would be just fantastic.

But this is a very optimistic omen as to what is to come in the near future.