MagicJack for Cellular phone [Telecom]

MagicJack's next act: disappearing cell phone fees

Jan 8, 12:01 PM (ET)

By PETER SVENSSON

LAS VEGAS (AP) - The company behind the magicJack, the cheap Internet phone gadget that's been heavily promoted on TV, has made a new version of the device that allows free calls from cell phones in the home, in a fashion that's sure to draw protest from cellular carriers.

The new magicJack uses, without permission, radio frequencies for which cellular carriers have paid billions of dollars for exclusive licenses.

formatting link
I saw this today at CAS, but I don't have a GSM phone.

Reply to
Steven
Loading thread data ...

I don't know about those frequencies but the FCC has always allowed you to bandit AM and FM broadcast frequencies at very low power.

My guess is the wireless carriers can't do a thing about this.

Reply to
Sam Spade

This will really benefit me. I live at the very south end of the greater Los Angeles wireless area, whatever those are officially called. I am in a concrete building that faces south two miles from the San Diego county line. The towers in the LA service area are a couple miles north, thus blocked completely by our building. The first tower in the San Diego area is about 10 miles away, so it doesn't work even though our big windows face it.

Similarly situated people have complained to the wireless carriers, which tell us to pound sand.

Since I am on AT$T I guess this could help me. But, I doubt it will handle incoming calls.

Reply to
Sam Spade

... which is ridiculous. It may be the case that they're working at under 100mw which has long been the limit for unlicensed AM and FM transmissions, but that's unrelated to whether it's in a house.

On the other hand, the article neglects to mention that this device in effect turns your cell phone into an expensive outgoing only cordless phone. While your phone is registered with the Magicjack, it's not on your regular carrier's network, so you can't get any incoming calls. It's not clear from the short description in the story whether they will assign an incoming phone number of their own like they do for the current Magicjack.

If I were AT&T or T-Mobile, I would argue that this device interferes with normal GSM operation, and it would be true.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

Does the regular MagicJack have an incoming phone number?

Reply to
Steven

Yes, of course. The company is owned by a CLEC which has numbers all over the country, and they assign one as soon as you plug in your device and it registers itself.

R's, John

PS: A 20 second visit to magicjack.com would have answered this question much more quickly.

***** Moderator's Note *****

According to an article in the Winter 2009-2010 issue of "2600":

"While the underlying carrier (YMAX) is a CLEC, MagickJack is specifically not offered as a CLEC product." The article says MagickJack claims to be a "multimedia experience which includes a voice over Internet information service feature. It is not a telecommunications service, and is subject to different regulatory treatment from telecommunications services". It's an open question as to why MagicJack's owners take such pains to try and distance their offering from FCC and local PUC regulation.

Also, according to 2600, the MagickJack software *cannot* *be*

*uninstalled*, even if a customer returns the MagickJack. The author also rates MagickJack's voice quality "between poor and terrible", and goes on to say that "In my market, MagicJack quality is so poor that the service is virtually unusable". He also notes that "... when you install the software, the End User License Agreement (EULA) has a few nasty surprises", which includes the right to send the customer commercial email messages, display ads on the computer, and supply computer-usage details to Google.

Suffice to say, I'd be very careful about purchasing *any* MagickJack offering, whether a femtocell unit or otherwise.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
John Levine

If it were limited to my house how would that be true? Especially in my case where the carriers don't provide adequate signal strength into my residence?

***** Moderator's Note *****

It's not a zero-sum game. The FCC is probably concerned that such a device could become common enough that they would have trouble enforcing the rules at a later date: I'd bet they feel it's better to nip it in the bud.

Don't forget that bureaucracies have very long memories: the FCC is, no doubt, harening back to the way the Citizens Band grew into a monster that they can't control even today.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
Sam Spade

It's not like I have much sympathy for the carriers. For one, the fact that they charge 20 to 25 cents a message for text that takes miniscule bandwidth is unconscionable.

And I'm against the selling of the spectrum that they pressured the FCC into granting.

Reply to
David Kaye

Sounds much like a clone of the Verizon femtocell unit (officially known as a "Verizon Wireless Network Extender") that people have been talking about elsewhere in the newsgroup.

If Verizon can do it "legally" there is no reason someone else can not do the same thing provided they don't step on someone else's patents, but then again phone companies seem to hate competition from startup companies. Especially if the competitors product actually works.

***** Moderator's Note *****

The problem is that it's _NOT_ the same thing as a Verizon femtocell: it is, as another reader pointed out, only a way to turn a cell phone into a cordless phone. The Verizon offering gives customers access to their regular cellphone features, such as voicemail, but the proposed MagicJack product does not.

Bill Horne Moderator

Reply to
GlowingBlueMist

Not really. My presumption was being able to receive a call made to my cell phone number. It appears call forwarding would have to be used to make that work, which in this circumstance, would be a giant PITA.

Reply to
Sam Spade

Can I throw my $0.50 (inflation, you know) thoughts into this?

Yes, it's [expletive deleted] annoying that they charge this amount, but:

a: it's not a life saving necessity. People have the choice whether to use this service or not.

b: the business world is filled with products where the marginal cost of manufacture/distribution is just about negligible. Since we're discussing telecom, just ask yourself how much it costs a satellite tv company to add another subscriber?

Reply to
danny burstein

Putting on my mobile carrier hat, I would say that there is no way to tell where someone might install one of these things, and it's clearly being marketed as a way to bypass the carriers' network, not as a signal booster.

I'm not a big fan of any of the mobile carriers, but this does not impress me as a viable way to circumvent them. If the mobile carriers weren't such doofuses, they would give you a free real femtocell if you'd promise to keep service on your cell phone for some period, a year or two.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

It would depend: in my case I got a $500 Visa Gift Card for signing up for Dish. I would have anyways, but it costs a huge amount, [and] I also got all the Premiums for free for 6 months

Reply to
Steven

Depending on what cellular service and Internet service you have, and whether you're willing to invest approx $200, a femtocell could possibly be a good solution for you.

[From a recent convert, in a similar situation.]
Reply to
AES

As best I understand the situation (not an expert), I agree it's NOT the same. To have a Verizon femtocell, you have to have a full-bore Verizon cellphone account, and a Verizon cellphone that talks to that account through a regular tower when it's near one, and through your little femtocell tower when it's the closest/strongest "tower".

Reply to
AES

I actually looked up Part 15, and it looks like you are allowed substantial unlicensed emission above 1 GHz. Enough emission that from 30 feet away you should be in the 60 mV/m2 range which is probably plenty of power.

So, the more I look at this, the more I think this probably _is_ legal, probably _is_ unlicensed, and probably is going to be pretty effective. --scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

OK, they can capture the 1900 MHz band, which could work so long as there isn't a perceptible 850 MHz signal. AT&T phones will use the home network 850 AT&T signal even if the 1900 signal is stronger.

As someone else pointed out, there is a pool of patents you have to license to build GSM equipment. I wonder what, if anything, they're doing about that.

R's, John

Reply to
John Levine

I have a set of Motorola S9 earphones. They use Bluetooth to connect back to my iPod.

Noticed some interesting behavior. If I try getting it to connect to the iPod when it is anywhere near my laptop it won't do it. I have to shut off the Wi-Fi on the laptop to get it to sync.

Reason for this is because they both run in the 2.4GHz range, one for Wi-Fi, the other Bluetooth.

Now when I'm outdoors another interesting phenomenon occurs. I can tell which cars have bluetooth interfaces in them just walking by or having one drive by me.

The signal on my earphones drops out momentarily.

Reply to
T
[ snip]

Same thing would probably occur if someone with a BlueTooth phone walked near you.

Which leads to the fascinating option of monitoring who and what passes by you... And if you put a bunch of similar Bluetooth scanners around town...

formatting link

Reply to
danny burstein

That's just the way things are in the ISM bands. Most of the time it works, and if it doesn't work, you have to live with it. It's like the wild west of the RF spectrum.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.