Less than 24 hours after the iOS 4 jailbreak went live, according to MacStories, some crafty developers have devised a way to make Facetime work over a 3G connection. As of now, Facetime only officially works over a WiFi connection, and is cited as a huge limitation of the popular video chatting service. After all, what good is mobile functionality that isn’t fully mobile?
Jailbreakers aren’t the first to have access to 3G Facetime. Fring was actually the first app to feature this, and last we checked, it didn’t go over so well. The sudden surge in 3G video calling bandwidth forced Fring to temporarily decrease service to their Skype user base, causing uproar at Skype that ultimately led to Skype pulling out of Fring and threatening legal action. Fring still offers video chat over 3G, but it became pretty obvious that giving the entire iPhone 4 user base the sudden ability to use large amounts of video bandwidth was no small task. A relatively small amount of users will be jailbreaking their phones, so the risk of another run on bandwidth is somewhat mitigated. However, AT&T is already suffering from bandwidth congestion as it is. Another slew of users transferring video over the crowded 3G connections is certainly not something they’ll be happy about. AT&T hasn’t made any comment yet, but don’t be surprised if this behavior is fought in an update.