A Stateless IP Phone In The Works From AT&T

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?

Comments

Not just beer

[SubtleNuance]

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

Simple IP-Based Telephony

[waldoj]

I'm a bit baffled why nobody has unveiled basic IP-based telephony. A regular ol' telephone that simply has an Ethernet jack. Great for businesses, and fine for the small percentage of geeks like me that don't have a landline. The phone could be really quite simple -- the telephone equivalent of a computer with a TCP/IP stack, a soundcard and a speaker. I assume that it would have to be tied to a particular service (configuration information burned into the EEPROM), but fancier ones could let you specify the IP of a gateway, I guess. Then, any company with a sufficent number of POPs would be able to eliminate the bulk of long-distance costs, as the calls themselves could simply be routed over the Internet.

I can't say that the plan is flawless -- I leave such details up to much more knowledgable people than myself -- but I still think that this is a pretty basic goal for IP-based telephony, rather than this platform-specific strap-on-some-headphones kind of thing.

-Waldo

Re:Simple IP-Based Telephony

[dachshund]

Then, any company with a sufficent number of POPs would be able to eliminate the bulk of long-distance costs, as the calls themselves could simply be routed over the Internet.

One word. Latency. It'd be a great idea within a single LAN, though. My company has an expensive dedicated digital telephone network in house, and I can't imagine that it does anything that a standard Ethernet couldn't. And when low-latency QoS services are available from the backbone providers, cheap long-distance'll follow. With residential broadband QoS and a VPN, you could have an office extension in your house in no time.

What bugs me about this phone is the dumb-client design. I can picture banks of these phones lying around with blank screens because of a server crash. There's no good reason for this design, other than a futile desire to come up with a service for AT&T to sell. Some centralized storage for a group of phones to tap into, sure. A centralized network gateway to interface with POTS phone lines, that makes sense. But making the phone nothing more than a remote display is sort of silly.

Re:Simple IP-Based Telephony

[Detritus]

My company has an expensive dedicated digital telephone network in house, and I can't imagine that it does anything that a standard Ethernet couldn't.

There is one important thing that your expensive digital phone system has over standard Ethernet, reliability.

Most telephone systems are designed to be reliable and fault-tolerant. Most data networks are designed to be fast and cheap. They are optimized for different goals.

Want to borrow my cellular?

[image]

From their contact info page:

After reading these pages and the FAQ, if you need more information, please contact:

The Broadband Phone team
AT&T Labs Cambridge
24a Trumpington Street
Cambridge CB2 1QA
United Kingdom
Email: bphone-query@uk.research.att.com

We cannot, unfortunately, answer telephone enquiries at this time.

Emphasis mine. :)

Holy retro look, Batman!

[Soko]

Doesn't the phone on this page look an awful lot like the red "Hot Line" that Commissioner Gordon used to pick up with the cloth?

"Chief O'Hara, to the Batphone!"
"Aye. What's Batman's IP address again, sar?"
"Oh, forget it - you can't draw the Bat Symbol to save your life anyways... Last time we got 20 bottles of Ron Bacari Rum."
"Aye. Thet was noice, wasn't it sar?"

Soko
(Please excuse the rather poor attempt at typing in an Irish accent...)

"How long till conventional phones are obsolete? "

[saider]

Probably about the same time that your new shiny IP phone will work during a power outage.