Republic Wireless

[Lemur]

I'm guardedly excited about this service. A short primer:

bandwidth.com, which provides the VoIP backbone for services including Google Voice and Twilio, is launching an alternative mobile carrier called Republic Wireless. [...] [I]t will cost only $19 a month for unlimited text, data, and voice. It can offer these low rates because its phones use a special ‘Hybrid Calling’ system that relies on Wifi whenever possible, falling back to cellular connections when Wifi isn’t available. The initial cellular partner is Sprint, but Republic is working to use other carriers as fallback options as well. [...]

The first phone being offered by Republic Wireless — which users will need to buy in order to use the service — is a modified version of The LG Optimus, running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). This phone is offered by other carriers and is generally regarded as a solid low-end device (it’s not going to look great next to a Galaxy S II, but it’ll more than suffice for a lot of people). The device will be sold for $199 with no contract, and it will be available at a discounted rate of $99 through November 27 if you use the promo code ‘welcome19′. Again, that’s with no contract — there are no termination fees.

Here are additional details from the press release:

The first month of service bundled with the start up fee
An LG Optimus smartphone running Android 2.3 (“Gingerbread”)
Month-to-month freedom from contracts and termination fees
Unlimited voice minutes
Unlimited text messages
Unlimited data megabytes
Automatic default to Wi-Fi when in range
Automatic Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calling over Wi-Fi
Internet protocol texting over Wi-Fi
Nationwide cellular coverage when Wi-Fi isn’t available
No overages or roaming fees, ever
No-risk, 30-day money back guarantee

Thoughts from my brethren Orgahs? I've already applied to be in the beta.

[Lemur]

Dang it, I want in.

Once connected to my Wi-Fi network, I could make voice calls, surf the Web, send texts and play with apps--easily. The quality of voice calls when connected to my Wi-Fi network was excellent--crystal clear. When connected to the cellular network, call quality was as good as any typical cellphone. [...]

Some jaded mobile market watchers may see Republic's emphasis on community as marketing hype being used to mask a highly restrictive wireless service. For heavy users of cellular networks, that might be the case. But Republic never tries to hide what it's offering and for whom. For many consumers, who want to be part of the smartphone generation, but can't afford the crushing costs of a data plan, Republic is an outstanding alternative.

Question -- why don't more cell companies or start-ups offer this service? Most of us spend 90% of our days around wifi, and yet only RW seems to be serious about taking advantage of this fact. Strange.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Most of us spend 90% of our days around wifi, and yet only RW seems to be serious about taking advantage of this fact. Strange.

RW works by connecting to available hotspots whenever possible. This has numerous issues, chief among which is that you don't actually own the infrastructure you rely on and therefore you are rather dependent on the prevailing attitude among those who do.

[Lemur]

[Y]ou don't actually own the infrastructure you rely on and therefore you are rather dependent on the prevailing attitude among those who do.

Sorta true but sorta not-true; I don't "own" every element of my wireless connection at home, but I do control it. Likewise, the IT department at work is not "owned" by me, but I can negotiate with them.

I don't know that ownership is the right word; let's try "access."

[Tellos Athenaios]

Sorta true but sorta not-true; I don't "own" every element of my wireless connection at home, but I do control it. Likewise, the IT department at work is not "owned" by me, but I can negotiate with them.

I don't know that ownership is the right word; let's try "access."

No, I'm talking about the company. AT & T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile et al own a chunk of infrastructure and have roaming agreements with others. So they know their costs and have contracts to cover the rest. So they have some form of long term security.

RW relies/abuses the goodwill of people running Wifi hotspots to keep its costs down (cost of Wifi is a lot less than the cost of buying capacity from telco). So if a lot/too many of Wifi hotspot owners/operators no longer fancy being RW's provider of cheap bandwidth and decide that either they want some of the pie or that RW isn't welcome on their networks... RW is up a creek without a paddle. Their plan only works if they can offload enough stuff on Wifi to cut costs and recover losses made on stuff delivered over traditional telco networks.

[Xiahou]

Also, aren't there some inherit security concerns with your phone latching onto any available open wifi network for making calls / transactions?

But I agree that their business model seems to depend on being able to leech other people's bandwidth. That doesn't sound like something I'd want to hitch my wagon to. I like the price and lack of contracts though.

[Lemur]

Here's what you do when faced with a terrible wifi connection: turn wifi off on the phone. Forces the phone to cell.

[Xiahou]

Here's what you do when faced with a terrible wifi connection: turn wifi off on the phone. Forces the phone to cell.

According to their latest blog posting they're looking at allowing the user to change the Defy's default behavior to call over cellular first, then to wifi when cellular isn't available. That sounds like it'd be a very costly move on their part, but they claim its for customer satisfaction...

One solution that we believe has promise is actually addressing the need for handover itself. If you’ve used our Wi-Fi+ app, you know that it preemptively checks the call quality of a Wi-Fi network before allowing the call to go through as VOIP, otherwise it will send it over cell. We believe we can offer you the option to “reverse” the hybrid calling logic to prefer cell first, Wi-Fi second. Simply put, this would turn your DEFY XT into a traditional cell phone, only with the added benefits of Wi-Fi calling and texting whenever you don’t have cellular coverage. This goes against our core belief of “Wi-Fi is better,” and will definitely cost us financially, but we believe it’s a worthy sacrifice to give all of you so that you can have a better experience.

[Tsar Alexsandr]

The Wi-Fi was out, but Republic lets you use the Sprint network if the Wi-Fi fails. My mistake. It still works, even when the Republic symbol isn't lit up. I was using it over the Sprint network today.

[Lemur]

Well, it's official.

"New phones are coming late this year, but what is gonna happen to the DEFY XT?"

From the comment section:

"In a couple of news interviews about new phones, our CEO mentioned Summer, and then fall, but, due to contractual agreements with our hardware manufacturers, the official release window for new phones is 'later this year.'

You cannot imagine how badly we want to talk about these new devices. Every single post on this page, regardless of topic, has questions about the new phones on it. All we can say until we get the 'ok' from our partners though is 'later this year.' But, everything is right on schedule."

[Xiahou]

Rumor / Speculation has it that the new phones will likely all be Motorola phones due the Motorola being owned by Google now.

People have been guessing that the MotoX could be the "good" or low end of the new phones. If they can offer that phone at a reasonable price (around the $200 mark), I'll be all over it.

But, this is all speculation at this point... which is all we have to go on

[Lemur]

Well, looks like everybody's on board with our company using ReWi for the Android phones. Our Alpha Geek was the hardest sell; he wants the phone with the biggest possible display at all times.

But he came around.

Looking forward to November.

[Xiahou]

He'll just have to make do with the MotoX... the poor guy.

I want to hear some feedback on the MotoX roll out and hopefully some news about the DVX before I jump to RW. But I hope it doesn't take too long- I'm losing money every month by staying with Verizon.

[Lemur]

@Xiahou, if you're trapped in an abusive relationship, the first thing you have to realize is that ... you are trapped in an abusive relationship. So apparently Verizon decided to make up for the lack of new customers by raising prices on their existing user base. Stay classy!



Verizon increases cell bills 7.1% for 95M customers

Verizon didn’t sign up as many new cell phone customers in the third quarter as Wall Street expected — but it still earned more than forecast as it managed to increase the average bill of its 95.2 million wireless customers by 7.1 percent.

The average Verizon Wireless bill jumped to $155.75 a month as of Sept. 30 from $154.63 last year, the company said Thursday.

Verizon, the No. 1 wireless carrier, said its ability to ratchet up customers’ bills fattened operating profit margins to 33.8 percent from 31.8 percent last year.

[Xiahou]

I hope they raise my rates. Then I can bail out of my contract without paying the termination fee.

It is nice to hear that they were able to boost their meager 31.8% profit margin to 33.8% by further ripping off their customers. There's better priced competition out there (RW) and the more Verizon gouges, the more people will look to their competitors. They seem to think they still have a captive customer base- but that's becoming the case less and less now.

[Lemur]

Hells to the yes. With my own money, no less. Tired of waiting for the other thing to sort out. No shipment notification yet.

[Lemur]

Got phone last night, up and running in short order.

Holy amazeballs, this is a nice phone. My iPhone addicted wife even said, "Maybe I should get one of those."

The screen is 720p, which is entirely appropriate for this size, and it's gorgeous. Deep, rich colors. Fired up Netflix and was gobsmacked.

So incredibly nice to be on a current version of Android again. Now maybe the other kids won't beat me up and take my lunch money.

Overall impression:

[Xiahou]

Awesome.
Any thoughts on the (improved?) VoIP call quality? Or how about the wireless-to-cellular hand-off?

Also, do you know if you can recieve texts via email? For example, with Verizon if someone sends an email to mynumber@vtext.com it comes in as a text message on my phone. I kind of need that feature to receive after hours pages.

[Lemur]

VOIP is definitely improved. I wonder if the hardware in the old handset was part of the difficulty?

Haven't had a handoff yet, might force it today to test.

Needed to run some Sprint-level updates through the software settings to get texting working completely. No biggie. I live in the sticks, so OTA updates from a cell carrier are always an issue with any phone around here.

If you want to test email texting, I can PM you my cell # and we can try it out. Never used that feature.

MMS texting appears to be functional with Verizon (wife) and Sprint (BFF).

-edit-

Never mind, there is no email-to-text gateway.

-edit of the edit-

Or is there? Seems like there's an potential workaround, based on the "secret" Sprint # your phone uses in cell mode.

Your phone has an underlying Sprint number which means you can use the Sprint SMS Gateway (xxxx@messaging.sprintpcs.com where xxxx is the Secret Sprint Number).

[Xiahou]

If you try the "secret method" let me know if it works.

I may see if I can just use a normal email address for on-call pages. On a smart phone there's little difference I suppose...