http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and ... ks-1289884

I'll be giving that a go out of curiosity... But it won't be long until the privacy aspect rears it's head, lets face it.

I'd love to see the networks get a kicking too

I\'ve used various VOIP systems on phones over the years (it's part of my job after all). They vary from 'terrible;' to 'alright I suppose'. They get better as the hardware they're running on gets better an the codecs they can use get more powerful. I suspect a current gen smartphone can do pretty good VOIP over relatively limited bandwidth.

Pretty soon the carriers are going to figure out everyone is using whatsapp and voice chat instead of limited minutes & texts, and they're just going to become mobile data suppliers. Which is already in act what they are, since everything that comes out of a modern mobile is effectively data packets anyway.

I've used Viber, and Facebooks VOIP offerings and they're both fine.
The notion that traditional voice calls on a mobile network somehow differ from the offerings from various apps is a bit of a nonsense when you break it down.
It gets turned into data packets anyway. The whole notion of a separate data plan from your voice plan is an invention these days.
One day in the future, one of the networks will do away with the distinction between voice and data, and then things will be interesting.

Been using viber for this. Difference from whatsapp is viber can be used from your desktop. Works okay. Whatsapp voice is nothing new but it has a much larger userbase, and it's crossplatform.

We've all been on unlimited voice and SMS contracts for years, only the data is limited (200MB - 1GB, depending on contract).

Over here you can get unlimited calls to all networks for 19,99€ a month, with 1GB data and unlimited SMS. The only thing that costs any money is SMS - or keeping full speed internet if you reach your cap (it slows to 64kbps if you hit your cap).

The downside of WhatsApp is that both sides need it, whereas with a mobile phone you just need the number of the other party. Over here, after the WhatsApp scare in 2013 a lot of people left WhatsApp and went to Threema, for example, because it is secure. And in our family probably around 10% of them use WhatsApp.