Mobile Phones Surpass Landlines

Not exactly new, but I guess I missed it last month when the CDC reported that there are now more wireless-only households (20.2%) than landline-only households (14.5%).

The report also noted that Americans who are more likely to have wireless phones only: are adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (60.6%); rent their homes (39.2%); are between the ages of 25 and 29 years old (41.5%); live in poverty (30.9%); or near the poverty level (23.8%).

There are still far more households with both cell phones and landline phones (60%). Among these households with both landline and cellular telephones, almost 1 in 4 (24.4%) receive the majority of calls on their mobile phone. These "wireless-mostly" households, in turn, make up 14.5% of all households.

Voicepulse quietly TRIPLES their rates

Voicepulse had been offering outbound SIP termination for about a half-penny a minute to many (most) US regions. They had a "flex" rate where rates to each number varied, and some numbers were higher, but many were in this half-penny range.

Well, it looks like around June 8, Voicepulse went to flat-rate for the US but that new rate is 1.9 cents per minute. You could argue that this is FOUR times the old rate, but since it was a flex rate, I'll call it only three times the old rate. But THREE times! All in one day, without any warning.

I would expect anybody who had a large balance at Voicepulse to be really upset by this. There are many services offering better rates. The first punch to Asterisk users was when Voicepulse dropped support for IAX protocol. Now they've slapped us with this outrageous and totally out of the blue rate increase. I'm surprised I haven't seen more talk about this around the net.