Archive for the ‘WiFi VoIP’ Category
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | No Comments »
Good article from the Wall Street Journal on the potential benefits of the rumored Google Phone, as well as the significant challenges it will likely face:
Google Inc. is close to unveiling its long-planned strategy to shake up the
wireless market, people familiar with the matter say. The Web giant’s
ambitious goal: to make applications and services as accessible on
cellphones as they are on the Internet.
In a move likely to kick off an intense debate about
the future shape of the cellphone industry, Google wants to make it
easier for cellphone customers to get a variety of extra services on
their phones — from maps to social-networking features to
video-sharing. To get its way, however, the search giant will have to
overcome resistance from wireless carriers and deal with potentially
thorny security and privacy issues.
Google is trying to loosen the grip wireless carriers have over the
software and services consumers can access on cellphones. Carriers have
considerable clout, especially in the U.S., where they control
distribution of phones to consumers through their retail stores.
Saturday, September 29th, 2007 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | No Comments »
From PC World:
The British are bringing VOIP to your iPhone.
In a demonstration at this year’s DEMOfall07, British VOIP provider Truphone showed conventioneers how to use the iPhone’s built-in Wi-Fi capability to make calls over Truphone’s VOIP network. Truphone representatives demonstrated how a call can be initiated from a handset and then routed to Truphone’s server via Wi-Fi.
Truphone spokesman Tim Donnelly Smith emphasized that the event at DEMOfall07 was only a demonstration and was not intended to be a commercial launch. He also said that the program is a native application that is installed through third-party application installers, and does not require cracking the iPhone’s SIM card. This is significant in the wake of Apple’s declaration earlier this week that "many of the unauthorized iPhone unlocking programs available on the Internet" could render the device "permanently inoperable when a future Apple-supplied iPhone software update is installed." Several iPhone users have reported that installing Apple’s iPhone 1.1.1 update rendered their unlocked iPhones useless.
Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | 1 Comment »
Via ZDNet Asia:
Traditional phone operators will be forced to change their approach as wireless VoIP technology surges over the next few years, say analysts.
Sales for wireless VoIP tech for both dual and single mode devices are forecast to generate global revenues of US$82 billion by 2012, according to a report by Juniper Research.
Basharat Hamid Ashai, author of the report, told silicon.com: "VoIP is dramatically changing the service provider market. With the advent of VoIP over Wi-Fi, it will cause providers to rethink how they retain customers."
Ashai added wireless VoIP will reduce demand for landlines, leaving the door open for non-traditional carriers, such as internet or DSL providers, to sell voice services.
He said: "The marriage of VoIP and wireless technology has gained a lot of attention in the last couple of years, with many industry experts believing it to be the next killer application to revolutionize the telecoms space."
Wednesday, February 14th, 2007 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | No Comments »
The HP iPAQ 500 series Voice Messenger features voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) capabilities, “push” email and the latest Windows® Mobile 6 operating system. With up to six hours of continuous talk time on a fully charged battery, the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger also leads the competition in battery life. As the first in HP’s new smartphone lineup, the HP iPAQ 500 series helps highly mobile professionals stay connected wherever they are.
…Additionally, the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger has built-in Wi-Fi to provide business customers a VoIP alternative to traditional office phone setups. By integrating the HP iPAQ Voice Messenger with office phone systems, businesses can eliminate the need for desk phones and benefit from streamlined communications and reduced IT management. The smartphone also includes GSM/EDGE and Bluetooth™ wireless technology connectivity options.
Press release
Tuesday, February 6th, 2007 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | 1 Comment »
Good article by Robert Poe at VoIP News on why mesh WiFi technology may harm the quality of VoIP phone calls:
Wifi mesh has a number of benefits for deployments covering large areas and large numbers of access points. Connecting APs to a high-speed Internet gateway via wireless rather than wireline/cable links makes it easier to blanket broad areas with coverage. It’s cheaper than running cables to APs on light poles, for example, and can provide substantially higher throughput than connections that rely on 1.5Mbps T1 lines. And because the architecture allows multiple redundant routes, it can be more reliable than landline-based backhaul.
… But the technology has inherent disadvantages when it comes to carrying voice. The more wireless "hops" a call has to traverse, the more likely it is to suffer increased latency, especially when the network gets busy and the spectrum crowded. The result can be voice quality problems involving factors such as cadence, echo and jitter.
Vonage Holdings Corp. 
(NYSE: VG), a leading provider of broadband telephone service, today announced that one of its subsidiaries, Vonage Network Inc., has signed a three-year contract with EarthLink 
(Nasdaq: ELNK) to offer its customers Wi-Fi Internet access in select cities throughout the United States.
Under terms of the agreement, Vonage will buy Internet access on a wholesale basis from EarthLink in all cities where the company will build, own and operate municipal wireless networks. Vonage will then sell its own Wi-Fi Internet service to consumers under the Vonage brand.
EarthLink has become one of the leaders in the emerging municipal Wi-Fi market, having been awarded contracts in Philadelphia; Anaheim, California; Milpitas, California and New Orleans.
But at GigaOm, they’re skeptical:
Reading the press release last night was a head-scratcher moment deluxe: Vonage is getting into the business of selling Wi-Fi? What, they don’t have enough scars from taking on incumbents in voice, now they’re going to butt heads over Internet access as well?
During a Monday morning phone call, we tried to talk some sense into Vonage chairman Jeffrey Citron, but he refused to be dissuaded. Bundling Wi-Fi will make it easier for customers to sign up for Vonage VoIP, he said. And if they are already Vonage customers? Lower acquisition costs, Citron replied.
Maybe it was the fuzzy connection (Citron said he was calling from one of the noisy show-floor booths Vonage has at CES), but we still weren’t convinced that reselling EarthLink’s not-so-fast Wi-Fi would be such a big bonus for Vonage.
This strikes us as a questionable deal, too. Especially given how competitive the fixed WiFi Internet service market is already with existing firms (e.g. t-mobile), let alone the mobile broadband services which are getting better, faster and cheaper (e.g. Verizon, Sprint).
Saturday, October 21st, 2006 | Posted in WiFi VoIP | 1 Comment »
Barablu, the free calls community, demonstrated the world’s first free calls between several Symbian Series 60 based Nokia GSM mobiles and Microsoft Windows Mobile based GSM mobiles. Barablu’s announcement extends VoIP interoperability to two of the largest and fastest growing categories of Wi-Fi enabled mobiles. Using its small footprint download, Barablu also enables IM sessions, video calls and conference calling all for free within the Barablu community.
Any Barablu enabled device (PC, PDA or Mobile) can also be used to make Barablu Out calls outside of the Barablu network at rates competitive to Skype.
The company believes that the benefits of interoperability, mobility and presence awareness will drive greater traffic to the network that first offers it as a complete package. The combination of free mobile-to-mobile cross-platform calls, free chat, and a unique PC-to-mobile instant messaging service, delivers Barablu a substantial competitive advantage. Barablu plans to drive growth by strategically linking with Wi-Fi network providers, manufacturers, mobile operators and PC and IP phone[1] manufacturers to offer more choice, therefore appealing to the widest audience.
Barablu CEO, Pascal Isbell, says "Millions of people globally now benefit from free PC-to-PC calls via VoIP. Now they want to add mobility to this facility. Barablu is the first company to provide consumers with this technology interoperably in the mobile arena by offering free mobile-to-mobile cross-platform calls, utilising VoIP, via a Wi-FI standard."
Interesting story on T-Mobile launching a WiFi VoIP and cellular service next month:
T-Mobile plans to launch a Wi-Fi-cellular converged phone service in Seattle and potentially one other market next month on September 12th, sources say. More markets will follow soon after. The city of Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area are the likely candidates for a possible rollout.
T-Mobile’s converged service is based on a standard called Unlicensed Mobile Access, popularly known by its acronym, UMA. The news that T-Mobile has been doing trials of services using the wireless convergence standard UMA have been slowly coming to light. Business Week points out a service targeted at in-home cell phone users called T-Mobile-At-Home, which seems like UMA, but the article doesn’t name the standard. Engadget had also posted information about the UMA trial.
We’ll see if T-Mobile can meet its planned launch date, but the company is eager to start deploying UMA given it can not only take a piece of in-home calls, but can also use UMA to handoff in its thousands of T-Mobile WiFi hotspots. UMA is a standard that enables the handoff of calls between cellular (GSM only) and unlicensed wireless like WiFi.
More than any other carrier in the U.S. T-Mobile has the incentive to use UMA — it ranks behind the top 3 U.S. carriers, only reported 613,000 net new customers for the second quarter of this year, and owns valuable WiFi real estate that it can use to grow those subscribers. The company would only confirm that UMA is one of the technologies that the company believes will help replace landline calls.
A new study by market research firm In-Stat finds that within the next four years WiFi GSM phone sales will take off, with more than 132 million devices having WiFi and cellular capabilities.
"In the end, most US cellular carriers will embrace Wi-Fi in their handsets, as carriers know that if they don’t, other carriers will, and these carriers will likely steal away some of their customers," says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. Combo handsets also offer carriers opportunities to provide services such as VoIP over Wi-Fi, lessening impact on their cellular data system.
(more…)
Seamless connectivity between WiFi VoIP and cellular is the holy grail of VoIP service (at least in the near future):
Wojtek Felendzer held a mobile phone to his ear as he walked across the room, the call automatically switching behind the scenes from a Wi-Fi wireless hotspot to the regular cellular network.
"Can you still hear me?" the Nokia Corp. employee asked.
"Yes," the reporter answered.
"That’s good," he said. "This is seamless handover. The voice didn’t drop. Nothing bad happened."
While Felendzer took only a few steps, his demonstration at the CTIA Wireless 2006 conference here proved that mobile Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, technology has made a meaningful step forward.
For years, Wi-Fi telephones and walkie-talkie-like communicators have been available for hospitals and offices. Now, manufacturers and mobile carriers are preparing to link standard cellular networks to the mishmash of Wi-Fi hotspots, a move that will expand coverage and perhaps make cheaper mobile minutes a reality.
The technology, called Unlicensed Mobile Access, or UMA, will help those who have high-speed Wi-Fi routers overcome any poor coverage in their houses or apartments. It’s also a way for mobile carriers to expand their footprint without spending lots of money on new infrastructure.
UMA could enable users of souped-up handsets to wirelessly download content at broadband speeds at home and take that on the road when they leave.
