VoIP Cell Phones Coming

bp33 writes "Wireless Newsfactor is running a story about how the wireless vendors are climbing over themselves to get Voice-Over-IP cell phones. You might ask "why bother? We already have wireless voice now." But with an open platform for wireless (Symbian, JavaPhone etc), your "voice" (er .. audio) just becomes bits that your programs can manipulate before sending."

Comments

Why IP?

[NitsujTPU]

Why do we do everything over IP? I mean, honestly, it's a good protocol and all, but it's not perfect for everything. There are already digital wireless phones, and not all of them use IP.

Why would one want to use an ATM/IP/IPX/IP network when they could just use whatever works best for that application?

I think that everyone out there wants to just use IP so they feel like they've made some sort of "internet device" when really they have just another damn device with an IP. You can always tunnel just the portions that you want over IP rather than forcing EVERY square peg into that round hole. /rant

Re:Why IP?

[Bookwyrm]

Why do we do everything over IP? I mean, honestly, it's a good protocol and all, but it's not perfect for everything. There are already digital wireless phones, and not all of them use IP.

Why would one want to use an ATM/IP/IPX/IP network when they could just use whatever works best for that application?

You are confused because you are thinking like an engineer, rather than a philosopher or an idealist. Ideally, we could just have one protocol (to rule them all, in the darkness bind (v9.2) them...), but it is not a very practical solution.

I rather suspect there is this problem with people getting the network protocols confused with the applications that run over them. The "everything over IP" crowd seems to be mostly the same group that feels that NAT is a bad thing -- i.e. that everything should be one big network with the same addressed space (i.e. the Intranet, really, rather than the Internet, because the latter implies connections between different networks.) From this point of view, the "everything over IP" is the equivalent of saying, for example, "everything over copper wire, and only over copper wire -- it does not matter if fiber optic cable makes more sense for certain specific applications, you would need a converter to convert between copper and fiber, and that would break the end to end connection!"

If you can pry the application out of the network protocol (i.e. IPv4), such that the application is independent of the underlying protocol (as it ought to be), then you could more easily use the apropriate protocol for the apropriate application when necessary. However, as long as the masses believe there is some magic inherent in end-to-end un-NAT'ed networks, IPv4 will remain God, and IPv6, among other things, will never arrive. (It's not magic, it's bad design which requires end-to-end transport without allowing for the possibility of transport conversion.)

It is a bizarrely almost Luddite mindset. I mean, honestly, is it just me, or does anyone else feel that the "IP is your Lord god, and you shall have no protocol before IP" mindset is intellectually stifling?

And now the modding down may commence...

Concerns

[cadillactux]

Maybe it's just me, but I am forsee so many problems with this. With VoIP cell phones, your phone would bascially become another 'computer'-like node on a network. Look at the problems facing computers today.

First, as mentioned a few posts above, it would be simple to add a voice filter to any phone. Download a program into it, and it will manipulate the bits making your voice unrecognizable. While in some cases, this is a plus, with the annonimity of cell phones now, this could be used for all sorts of prank, and malicious phone calls.

Viruses will run rampent(sp)! A simple cell call from one VoIP phone to another could potentially carry a virus embeded into the bits. Answer a phone call, and your phone's screen starts flashing with Devil horns... or an IE logo... Your phone is now dead.

In addition to viruses, 'dialer' type programs could potentially be downloaded to your phone, and used to call other phones to spread. Your think pr0n dialers now are bad, imagine your phone bill coming in only to notice that your have 100 out-of-country calls on it.

These are only a sampling of the problems we could face. DoS phone attacks, worms, everything that attacks a standard computer now could be used against your cell phone, after all, they are all built about bits sent back and forth...

What's wrong with this picture?

[Animats]

From the article: "A completely new infrastructure is needed with fatter pipes." Huh? We need a new infrastructure for voice so it will work worse and cost more?

This looks like yet another dumb justification for 3G cell phone technology. If you just want to ship the voice over long distances as IP, there's no reason to do it in the handset. Do it someplace where you have the connection to a fat pipe in place, like the cellular CO.

Voice over IP is an artifact of telecom pricing and history, not a technical advance. Circuit switching and packet switching now cost about the same (and they're likely to both be over ATM at the bottom.) But voice is billed by the minute, while the Internet is typically a low flat rate, and many countries use landline voice to subsidize other stuff.

But cellular has less of that heavily-regulated history. Where's the justification for this?