kmk writes "In a few short years, users can expect to make telephone calls for free, with no per-minute charges, as part of a package of services through which carriers make money on advertising or transaction fees, eBay's chief executive said on Wednesday."Ads_xl=0;Ads_yl=0;Ads_xp='';Ads_yp='';Ads_xp1='';Ads_yp1='';Ads_par='';Ads_cnturl='';Ads_prf='page=article';Ads_channels='RON_P6_IMU';Ads_wrd='communications';Ads_kid=0;Ads_bid=0;Ads_sec=0; eBay Wants Voice Phone Free In Five Years Log in/Create an Account | Top | 149 comments | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 149 comments 0: 145 comments 1: 116 comments 2: 75 comments 3: 26 comments 4: 13 comments 5: 10 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. Ads? (Score:5, Insightful) by elbenito69 (868244) on Thursday October 20, @05:00PM (#13839365) I would much rather pay for phone service than to put up with ads on the telephone, of all places. [ Reply to This Re:Ads? (Score:5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20, @05:03PM (#13839407) Not to worry. Following TV and cable, you WILL pay and also have to listen to the ads. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Ads? by ScoLgo (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:11PM Re:Ads? (Score:5, Insightful) by Jonathan the Nerd (98459) on Thursday October 20, @05:17PM (#13839547) (http://slashdot.org/) It's inevitable that advertising will try to worm its way into every possible medium. Leela: "Didn't you have ads in the twentieth century?"Fry: "Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio...and in magazines...and movies, and at ballgames, and on buses, and milk cartons, and T-shirts, and bananas, and written in the sky. But not in dreams, no sirree." [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Ads? by leonmergen (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:16PMutilities by way2trivial (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:37PMRe:utilities by pete6677 (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @07:39PMRe:Ads? by Humorously_Inept (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:41PMRe:Ads? by therblig (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:52PMRe:Ads? by Rob_Warwick (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:08PMRe:In the future... by vertinox (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:57PMRe:In the future... by beaststwo (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @07:13PMYou forgot movie theatres by mindaktiviti (Score:2) Friday October 21, @12:29AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Ads? by garcia (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:07PMEcoterrorism ad nauseam by Uncle Op (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:09PMRe:Ecoterrorism ad nauseam by Seumas (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:14PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Ads? by Seumas (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:09PMRe:Ads? by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:44PMRe:Ads? by Spetiam (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:10PMRe:Ads? by Saeed al-Sahaf (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:33PMRe:Ads? by jjhall (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:35PMRe:Ads? by jonbryce (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:10PMRe:Ads? by jjhall (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:19PMRe:Ads? by Tony Hoyle (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:22PMRe:Ads? by HTTP Error 403 403.9 (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:33PMRe:Ads? by Gilmoure (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:19PMRe:Ads? by HTTP Error 403 403.9 (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @07:30PMRe:Ads? by fitten (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:47PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Not as far as I can tell (Score:5, Informative) by FluffyWithTeeth (890188) on Thursday October 20, @05:00PM (#13839369) From as far as I can tell, TFA suggests they don't mean free phone calls, but that they're trying to get everyone onto using Skype in the next five years or so.And now with advertising in it, yay... [ Reply to ThisRe:Not as far as I can tell by scdeimos (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:25PMRe:Not as far as I can tell by nickdot (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:49PMcontext sensitive ads by Anonymous Coward (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @06:34PM Yeah right ... (Score:5, Informative) by Average_Joe_Sixpack (534373) on Thursday October 20, @05:00PM (#13839373) From the company that perfected "nickle and diming." [ Reply to ThisRe:Yeah right ... by tomhudson (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:10PMRe:Yeah right ... by cymen (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @11:39PM Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad (Score:5, Informative) by davidwr (791652) on Thursday October 20, @05:00PM (#13839377) (Last Journal: Thursday October 06, @07:18PM) I pay a nickle a minute for a Wal-Mart-branded major-carrier long distance card.It still gives me an ad I can't bypass after I enter the number.At 5 cents a minute it should be ad-free. [ Reply to ThisRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by Gordonjcp (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:08PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by johansalk (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:16PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by IdleTime (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @09:48PM2 replies beneath your current threshold.It would be... by Jeff Molby (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:22PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by Bellum Aeternus (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:39PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by RicktheBrick (Score:3) Thursday October 20, @05:55PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by Bellum Aeternus (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @08:08PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by rabbitinpumpkin (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @09:38PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by bahwi (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:00PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by matth (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @09:09PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by Matt Perry (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @06:29PMRe:Wal-Mart LD card charges AND gives me an ad by darrylo (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @07:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Free..... (Score:1, Redundant) by 8127972 (73495) on Thursday October 20, @05:02PM (#13839395) .... As in beer? [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. As long as... (Score:5, Insightful) by GeneralEmergency (240687) on Thursday October 20, @05:02PM (#13839398) (Last Journal: Wednesday October 08, @02:45PM) ...the FBI has to watch/hear the same advertising that I have to suffer through because of the FCC mandated CALEA IP-taps!Sorry, I'm cranky today. [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. This is SBC (Southwestern Bell) (Score:2) by dattaway (3088) on Thursday October 20, @05:05PM (#13839432) (http://dattaway.org/) Our telephone company does this already! Even if you are on the DNCL, you will get telemarketing calls from their "partners."We had our number ported to Vonage and solicitations stopped immediately. [ Reply to ThisRe:This is SBC (Southwestern Bell) by vexx0 (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @07:14PMRe:This is SBC (Southwestern Bell) by Yakko (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @07:44PMRe:This is SBC (Southwestern Bell) by TheSpoom (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @08:14PM Ouch, sorry eBay... (Score:2, Funny) by }InFuZeD{ (52430) on Thursday October 20, @05:06PM (#13839438) (http://www.ti-news.com/) Looks like eBay is hurting... and it's not just because of the Skype purchase.From the article:"EBay said it had 168.1 registered users for its online auctions as of the end of September." [ Reply to ThisRe:Ouch, sorry eBay... by eln (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:17PM Is it worth it (Score:1) by elzurawka (671029) on Thursday October 20, @05:06PM (#13839441) Say that you want to make a call to eastern europe..your looking at paying 20c/min. a 20 min call will cost you 4$. I think that i would rather save my $4, and listen to a 30 second spot for pepsi. We do it on TV AND we pay for cable service. Why not get free voip, and listen to 30 second add for any long distance call.The more the call would cost...the longer or more ads they can run. So when u wana call africa, u might listen to 2 min ad, but better then paying 30$ for a call. [ Reply to ThisVoIP is already "free" by postbigbang (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @05:30PM Great... (Score:4, Funny) by TomServo_1 (187918) on Thursday October 20, @05:08PM (#13839457) (http://www.anticrawl.com/) 1. I call someone... while it's connecting me I have to wait 60 seconds to listen to an ad...2. Other person picks up the phone... they have to listen to a 60 second ad just to talk to me.3. Oops, it's a wrong number. So I have to go back to step one and waste another 60 seconds.4. ???5. Profit! [ Reply to This1 reply beneath your current threshold. free calls (Score:1) by POTSandPANS (781918) on Thursday October 20, @05:08PM (#13839460) wow, free telephone service and all we haveto do is have ads! what will they think of next? How about a TV service like HBO, but free! with commercial interruption to support it!or maybe it'lll work like AdSense, and whatever your talking about on the telephone will be interrupted with "directed advertising" delivering only advertisments relating to your conversation! [ Reply to ThisRe:free calls by 2centplain (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @06:31PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Maybe in a round-about way (Score:2) by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20, @05:09PM (#13839468) (http://www.nine-times.org/) I could understand the "free phone calls" idea. We have text chatting for free, and it's not hard to imagine that voice stuff will become more common there. As far as I can think, the only reason people get away with charging for VoIP is that it needs to transition, at some point, to the normal voice network to get phone calls to people with normal phones. If we're all VoIP, then I don't see how it's any different from other internet transmissions.What I don't see, however, is the "supported by advertising". Not if, by that, he means that you'll have to listen to advertising before/after/during the call. Maybe if he means in a round about way, like Google's jabber service is run by google, who runs on advertising.Generally, though, paying for high-bandwidth service should be enough. If we have to, we can make direct connections for voice transmissions. No one needs to be charging me for that beyond my normal ISP price. [ Reply to This Imagine if this was combined with google? (Score:5, Funny) by arkham6 (24514) on Thursday October 20, @05:14PM (#13839521) me: So greg, my friends and i were going over to the bar ...*BEEEP* you said bar, you may want to check out Punters pub, tonight we have free chicken wings! *BEEEP*me: urrg. Sorry about that, so we were going to that....place and were drinking some beer...*BEEEEP* You said beer. Have you tasted the cool, clean refreshing taste of budweister today? *BEEEEP*me: ....FUCKING THING!*BEEP* YOu said fuck, have you called 1-900-hot-chix today, for the best in.... [ Reply to This So, how's ebay gonna profit from this? (Score:3, Insightful) by Arpie (414285) on Thursday October 20, @05:15PM (#13839523) (http://www.megaputz.com/) Really just plain ads?Or will they take advantage of the new mandatory wiretapping laws [wired.com], and have automated systems that scan your conversation for keywords [podscope.com] and give you related ads?Sort of like Google adsense, but with voice content...I for one do not welcome our new phone tapping overlords... [ Reply to This ebay should scratch its own boot (Score:2) by pikine (771084) on Thursday October 20, @05:15PM (#13839525) (Last Journal: Sunday July 04, @12:18AM) rather than talk about how eBay itself should provide ad-supported auction service, why is it suggesting other telecomm companies to provide ad-supported services?and as a company whose customer service over the phone is practically non-existent, phone charge should be least of their concerns. [ Reply to This eBay and phones? (Score:2, Insightful) by krunoce (906444) on Thursday October 20, @05:15PM (#13839527) Is it just me or is this like Microsoft going into the car business? [ Reply to This Re:eBay and phones? (Score:4, Funny) by Rude Turnip (49495) <{rudeturnip} {at} {valdot.org}> on Thursday October 20, @05:33PM (#13839705) (http://valdot.org/) This is more like Microsoft going into the vacuum cleaner business and making something that doesn't suck for a change. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:eBay and phones? by vexx0 (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @07:25PMRe:eBay Out! by earnest murderer (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @07:08PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. I always wondered... (Score:5, Funny) by msauve (701917) on Thursday October 20, @05:16PM (#13839534) why it's impossible to contact either eBay or PayPal customer support via the telephone.Now I know. The cheap bastards are waiting for free phone service. [ Reply to ThisRe:I always wondered... by imuffin (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @09:18PM Captain obvious (Score:2) by Red Flayer (890720) on Thursday October 20, @05:18PM (#13839558) FTA: "What I mean by that is: the largest number of registered users, the largest number of voice minutes, the largest number of developers who develop the platform, the best product ... that users are willing and want to pay for." (emphasis mine) Yes, the 'winner' will be the company with the best product and the highest market share. Nothing about how this justifies purchasing Skype (other than the number of active customers they have now)... which was the point of the release, since eBay has taken so much heat for the purchase. Notice also that TFA states that per-minute costs will approach zero... says nothing about subscription fees. We're already seeing per-minute costs approach zero -- unlimited plans are available for traditional telephone as well as VOIP and cell phones. Besides, isn't GooglePhone better poised to take over the zero-cost telephony market? Oh wait, that's next month's press release... [ Reply to This Terrible side effects (Score:1) by zoogies (879569) on Thursday October 20, @05:19PM (#13839565) (http://zoogies.net/blog) What will happen to all those poor retired NFL quarterbacks? They'll have no more commercials to do. [ Reply to This I'd hate to be the point-1 (Score:1, Redundant) by scdeimos (632778) on Thursday October 20, @05:20PM (#13839571) Fromt TFA: EBay said it had 168.1 registered users for its online auctions as of the end of September. Ooh, that smarts. [ Reply to This Yeah so? (Score:1) by Winckle (870180) <mwinckle.gmail@com> on Thursday October 20, @05:20PM (#13839575) Ebay wants free phone calls? Well I want a solid gold toilet, but we're both going to be disapointed, eh? [ Reply to ThisRe:Yeah so? by Dekortage (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @05:27PM Great. Just fucking great. (Score:5, Funny) by Caspian (99221) on Thursday October 20, @05:21PM (#13839582) "So I was at work, right? And in comes this customer and.... **We interrupt this call to bring you this exciting informational bulletin! Is your toilet getting messy? Try new ShitWipers, new from S. C. Johnson Wax! For a 5-minute instructional tutorial on how to use your new ShitWipers...press...one! To speak to a representative about new ShitWipers...press...two. To learn about our exciting Web site at ShitWipers dot com...press...three. To hear why ShitWipers are superior to competing toilet wipe products...press...four. To resume your phone call, dial...pound...three...five...seven...one. This message will repeat in 5 seconds. **>FIVE<I'm sorry, but you didn't respond quickly enough. This message will now repeat. We interrupt this call to bring you this exciting informational bulletin! Is your toilet getting messy? Try new ShitWipers, new from...>FIVE<I'm sorry, you cannot press buttons until this announcement has completed. We interrupt this call to bring you this exciting informational..." [ Reply to This waste of 4 billion. (Score:1) by digitalPortal (583193) on Thursday October 20, @05:22PM (#13839592) in 5 years, every little computer app will allow you to make free calls via the net. its really not that hard to stream sound/audio once bandwidth limitations are overcome. Meg Whitman overpaid for Skype. [ Reply to ThisThe problem is not bandwidth... by msauve (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @07:26PMRe:The problem is not bandwidth... by John Miles (Score:2) Thursday October 20, @09:53PM No thanks. I'd rather pay. (Score:3, Insightful) by Ssolstice (198935) on Thursday October 20, @05:26PM (#13839640) I'd rather pay for a service that is free from advertisements than get a free service that I can't use when I want to. Most of those "free services" require you to sit through ads before you can use them, such as many website video streams. My time is not free. [ Reply to ThisRe:No thanks. I'd rather pay. by MerlinTheWizard (Score:1) Thursday October 20, @07:32PM Ad-Based Calling in Action (Score:2, Funny) by kubevubin (906716) on Thursday October 20, @05:26PM (#13839641) (http://www.kevinski.com/) Ha! I can't wait for this! I'll be talking to my mom on the phone, only to have another incoming call, indicated by the usual beep. However, this time, it isn't a person; it's an ad for penis enlargement. [ Reply to This2 replies beneath your current threshold. The miracle of advertising (Score:1) by FishandChips (695645) on Thursday October 20, @05:28PM (#13839657) Hmmn, advertising is being touted as some kind of miracle cure-all for IT industry troubles these days, much as medieval peasants waved religious relics around and bought and sold saint's bones (or what they claimed were saint's bones) to ward off plagues and famines. It didn't work then and in any case there weren't enough credible relics to go round, so you had, say, 14 different churches all claiming to contain Christ's right arm or whatever.It won't work now, either. There isn't enough advertising money in the world to underwrite the number of allegedly clever ideas all based entirely on advertising revenue. Advertising coarsens and corrupts everything it touches. Perhaps we all need a human rights and privacy law which is the freedom to be let alone from advertising. By law, a telephone carrier for example would be obliged to offer an advert-free service to those who willing to pay for it.Besides, this might help some companies to formulate credible business plans that are based on charging for your products instead of giving them away and then wondering why you go bankrupt shortly afterwards. [ Reply to This Well (Score:1) by shoelessone (924433) on Thursday October 20, @05:31PM (#13839689) (Last Journal: Friday October 21, @12:10AM) I've heard that the owner of the Skype system is turning to pananism, and in turn has decided to make the calling services assosiated with Skype free, in order to combat what he claims is, "eBays continued plans to take over the global internet buisness". He later added that, "The internet is serious buisness".Anyway, I dont know. I guess we'll see what happens. [ Reply to This Communication pricing structure outdated? (Score:1) by manarth (919856) on Thursday October 20, @05:38PM (#13839765)