So I’m out of the country and for some reason my mobile phone is unable to make or recieve phone calls or send/receive sms. It’s supposed to work in this country and my colleagues on this trip can make calls just fine.
I’ve got a trouble ticket filed with Verizon Wireless. They tell me it will be up to 5 days before the problem is resolved. (I’m leaving tomorrow).
Anyway.
I am getting data thanks to decent wifi and i also get 3g data service to my mobile.
So for a day and a half, here are my quick feelings about life without voice
–Kik has been a lifesaver (disclosure: we are investors in Kik). My wife and I are working on an important project together and we are at a stage where there are a lot of questions and decisions that need to be resolved quickly. Kik is awesome for this. It’s fast and it’s nice that I get to see the status of my Kik messages to her. Kik shows you when an message is sent, delivered and read.
-I tried to make a call with Skype on my iPhone over the data network. I tried a few times and the call quality was unusable. It must be connectivity down here – I’m not sure what Skype’s bandwidth requirements are for decent audio but obviously I’m below that.
-email works just fine and i’m able to follow up on important messages while i’m away. and i get my voicemail transcribed by Phonetag so I can deal with voicemail that I’m missing.
i think i could live in this world without voice for a few more days. it’s nice and peaceful. the only thing is that i miss my wife and kids and text just doesn’t fill the void.
So late last night and this morning I used Skype and Google Voice from my MacBook Air from the hotel room to talk with my family. At least from this location, Google Voice has much better audio call quality. (Is that the case for others as well?)
i’ll be back in the States tomorrow night. And this voiceless experiement will be over.
Oh, speaking of voice, i picked up a Jambox last week (got the red one). I’ll write up my thoughts on that product in a few days.