AT&T to Allow iPhone VOIP Apps to Use Their Network

On Tuesday, AT&T announced that iPhone VOIP apps would no longer be restricted to wi-fi hotspots. That is a great move, because that sort of restriction reduced the utility of those apps, but also because other smartphones had VOIP apps that used AT&T's 3G network.

On the other hand, this is probably not welcome news for some AT&T iPhone customers, who see a lot of dropped calls (30% is average in NYC) and other issues. Many believe these are simple representative of an overtaxed AT&T network.

For those who might think this might signal that Google Voice may soon enter the App Store, that's unclear. Google Voice is not a VOIP app. Any calls made via that app use up your own minutes, as opposed to a VOIP app, which uses the Internet to route calls.

However, Google Voice's utility is the ability to use one phone number to ring any phone you want, or more than one, as well as to use that same number to send SMS messages. In reality, the app allows you to spoof both SMS and voice calls using your Google Voice number, rather than your own number.

Apple has never said it rejected Google Voice app because it was a VoIP app (in fact, it continues to deny it has rejected the Google Voice app). Rather, it blocked it because it said it emulated many of the features of the phone portion of the iPhone, and would confuse customers.

Right, we know that iPhone owners can't tell the difference. In reality, people would probably default to using one dialer, and probably not the one Apple would like.

Well, with this move, we can hope, can't we?