[TSoC] A different kind of cell phone service

Anyone notice that cell providers these days tend to not charge roaming fees? Anyone notice that their phone itself might report itself as roaming as often as not, without it making a practical difference? What about pre-paid phones? How many of those aren't tied to a particular network at all?

If a cell service provider can provide phone service that costs the same whether you're on their towers or not, what's to stop a towerless cell provider from providing service using a phone that doesn't care whether it's connected to the service provider via CDMA, GSM or an encrypted SIP connection tunneled across Wifi or WiMAX? Heck, any of the existing SIP/IAX2 trunking providers could potentially expand into that arena, and people wouldn't necessarily require a POTS phone number to call or be called. (Though, rather than calling a Skype ID, someone could simply call me at phone.michael.mol.name.)

Admittedly, toggling between cell and 802.11abgn radios will reduce battery life, and the phone would have to be a tad smarter to manage more of the service provider hand-offs itself, but that price is already being paid by smartphone owners.

Ordinarily, I'd be one of those arguing back "you can take my landline out of my cold, dead hands", but I've somehow managed to never have a landline to my name, nor one that people call when they want to reach me since before I even turned 18. With the drop in landline usage, and the pervasive increase in mobile phone usage, it strikes me as imminently doable.

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:wq