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A Stateless IP Phone In The Works From AT&T

Posted by timothy on from the you-might dept.

Boli writes: "Ran across this broadband phone today. It appears to be based on the Virtual Network Computing work done at AT&T Labs Cambridge. The most interesting feature is that all apps run on a server while the phone is only a display and I/O device. This opens the possibility for a variety of devices to display the same stuff. Imagine transferring a call from the phone to your browser display to paste a graphics file, then transfer again to a cordless. The VNC tools are free (as-in-beer) today." AT&T says they even have a working wireless prototype working in their building. (And VNC is Free as in GPL as well, according to their front page.) How long till conventional phones are obsolete?

3 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. Not just beer by SubtleNuance · · Score: 3, Informative

    According to their dload page the whole bit is also Free as in Freedom.

  2. Echos of many dead technologies by moebius_4d · · Score: 2, Informative

    I'd really like to see this work. But, I recall too many previous attempts to deploy dumb clients and provide all services from a few central locations to be at all sanguine about this.

    For example, Java. I make a living doing Java architecure, design, and development. But I recall when Java's promise was to make the dumb web browser into any application we wanted it to be. Companies would put specific services up as applets, and we would always have the latest versions. This failed. We can talk about why, but the fact is that it did.

    Jini was supposed to do the same thing. It had a UDDI-like feature so that we would all just plug new devices onto our networks and they would all just make efficient use of each other. We wouldn't need to put all the smart technology in one box, we could distribute the intelligence. This failed.

    I could easily name others, but these two were the highest profile attempts in the last five years. And both were from Sun, who at least are masters of PR and spin: witness the popularity of Java in the enterprise. This new phone is from AT&T, of whom Jerry Pournelle once observed that they couldn't market eternal life.

    So as much as I want one, and want things like this be to successful, I would be surprised to see this take off, or even make to market. Happily surprised, but still.

  3. Re:Simple IP-Based Telephony by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    They have. Cisco has one that is very expensive, but SNOM has one that is linux based.