He's Still Building Blue Boxes

Before the iPhone came along, there was this thing called the Blue Box. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built the first digital version and made quite a bit of money selling them to university students. Because if you had a Blue Box - you could make long distance calls to anyone in the world...for free.

In other words - Steve Job got his start by creating technology that was ripping off AT&T.

Did I mention that Blue Boxes were illegal?

Fast forward a couple of decades. Got an iPhone? Know someone else with an iPhone? Did you know that if both of you have Viber you can call each other over Wi-Fi or your 3G data plan? Viber uses your iPhone's data (rather than cellular) plan to make phone calls to other iPhones. Once you download and install the free app you authenticate your cell number associated to your phone, which then nicely syncs your contacts and indicates anyone that already uses Viber.

Viber to Viber calls are free. You'll pay only for data.

Why use Viber? Data is data, baby. But your phone company charges you widely varying rates based on the data type. For example:

• Text Plan: If you're paying 10 cents for 160 text characters that's roughly $650/MB. That's over $600,000/GB.
• Cell Plan: $60 for 15 hours (900 minutes). Of course this doesn't include roaming and international calls.
• Data Plan: $25 for 2GB. Over 50 hours of talk time (at 3MB/minute).
• Wi-Fi: Nearly ubiquitous. And frequently free. And nobody is going to notice a 1MB/minute hit to their network while you talk to your friend around the corner (or world).

Wouldn't it be interesting if Apple bought Viber and bundled it into every iPhone? Many have suggested that Apple wants to enter the cell phone provider market. But I don't think they'll do this by entering the present cellular playing field. What's more likely (and interesting) is Apple disrupting the cellular market by entering VOIP and bundling the technology with every iPhone sold.

But in the meantime, it seems like Steve's still in the business of building Blue Boxes. It's called the iPhone. And AT&T can't do a damn thing about it.