I spend about a grand total of 15-20 minutes on the phone per month (sometimes none at all) so this doesn't bother me. Either way, there is no reason why you can't use a 3rd party program like Skype to encode audio (and video) as straight data over 4G. It's just not something the current phone software is set up to handle I assume. I always felt that the simultaneous voice/data thing was a bigger deal from a marketing standpoint than anything. AT&T makes a big deal out of it on TV yet ignores the fact that for the most part, their flagship device can't usually do more than one thing at a time anyway unless it is one of a few applications. For me, being able to flip between browser, chat, calendar, and streaming radio is much more important to me. I can't count the number of times my iPod has flashed up a message and I clicked on it without thinking, only to have whatever I am running shut off.