Voice Only

The publicly switched telephone network (PSTN) was a marvel of engineering for decades. Call anyone in the world in seconds for just a quarter, etc etc. Now? A bunch of boring servers in average datacenters running extremely expensive and complicated software charging comical rates for cheap services.

AND THEN THERE'S SMS. The Short Message Service was cool in the 90s. Now it's... best used for spam, because it's too broken for anything else. Bonus points: if you want to send SMS without a standard carrier you need to be a business sending standard templates that can fit into a "Campaign". And it costs and extra 4 USD/mo. Only in the US, because our telecom regulators are fucking braindead.

this was a very comprehensible rant brought to you by doskel on 5 hours of sleep