Sunday, January 2, 2011

Skype works over 3G, FaceTime still fighting with AT&T?

Skype for iPhone has been approved and released in the App Store. That's great. Video calling is getting more and more prevalent. And for those that don't have an iPhone 4 or a Mac for FaceTime can now chat video chat with all their iPhone 4 friends that were left out of the loop.

One thing that is interesting about this release, is that Skype for iPhone works over the 3G networks. Seriously. Apple and AT&T allows it. But AT&T doesn't allow Apple's own FaceTime over their network. Like wha? Really?

I think that the over-3G video quality for Skype gets dropped down to a lower bit-rate than for when over WiFi, but for those of us that prefer FaceTime, Apple's own video calling technology that's hard-wired into the phone application, we still have to jailbreak if we want to use it over 3G. Weird, huh?

I know of people that use WiFi cards like Verizon's MiFi card, carrying it with them wherever they go, just so they can FaceTime when not around a WiFi hotspot. So, isn't about time the restriction on FaceTime to go away?

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