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VoIP Cell Phones Coming

Posted by timothy on from the when-oh-when dept.

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."

1 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Why IP? by Bookwyrm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...