T-Mobile Bobsled adds free calling for iOS and Android, expands group messaging

T-Mobile’s Bobsled Messaging and VoIP service has been slowly expanding its reach. The calling features were originally Facebook-to-Facebook, then to outbound calls from the desktop to regular phones. Now the service allows for free calls from your Android or iOS device to landlines, in addition to the PC and Facebook calling, and the group messaging features, which were originally T-Mobile-specific, now work from the desktop “in the cloud” or from the iOS and Android mobile apps. While we’re not thrilled to have another BBM / FaceTime / ChatON / Skype / Google Voice competitor, but Bobsled’s inclusion of free calling and cross-platform compatibility is at least an improvement. We also like that Bobsled can be tied to a phone number or to another ID (pretty soon T-Mobile will even be able to give you a free unique phone number if you’d like, just how Google Voice does), and of course the fact that this doesn’t burn minutes doesn’t hurt. In addition to T-Mobile’s existing Wi-Fi calling functionality, Bobsled makes the carrier look great for people looking to cut costs and rely more on IP and multi-device communications. Like most of us.