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Merging WiFi VoIP Into Cellular Service
Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times (registration required) reports that
Motorola, Proxim and Avaya are expected to announce today that they will jointly develop technology to allow wireless communications to jump between networks without interruption.
This appears to involve making use of WiFi for phone service where it's available, thus converting WiFi hotspots into congestion relief for overloaded cellular networks, and, of course, making cell phones into WiFi terminals."
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Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?
The last time I checked most of today's phones aren't even hardware compatible with most other carrier networks, and phone manufactures have resorted to having to put 3 different protocols in one phone (tri-mode, etc.). Talk about inefficient.
Wouldn't it be easier if all wireless communication just ran on one set protocol that worked over multiple frequencies? Nevermind the differences in modulation at 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz, I'm talking about a true high-level/low-level protocol here.
There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.
If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.
That seems like what they are trying to do, but this seems a little late in the game. People just didn't realize all the wireless capacity we have right now just floating around -- the only problem is you need x device that supports x protocols and sometimes you need to purchase directly from the wireless carrier. I guess until now, when we have dozens of different standards and NOW we want to connect them all together.
The sad thing about it is if such a device were to be created that could mitigate across all these different protocols and networks, it's going to be one huge complex mess and is going to cost a fortune, when it didn't have to be. Maybe government regulation and forced standards are sometimes a GOOD thing.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
I was wondering when that will happen. Especially with all the delays in getting 3G up and running and with the high costs of getting normal mobile telephony switches to do higher bandwidth through all kinds of tweaks and compression, it just makes sense to use a tried and tested technology. They could mountstrong wifi antennas on each current basestation and use that for multimedia phones. That will also solve the problem of a manager sending a 101x80 res video clip of his new porsche to his mother and thereby congesting all voice traffic on that cell.
I think this should be researched further and implemented.
"I used to have that really cool,funny sig
Nortel Networks already announced this type of program back in December 2002:
w sr eleases/2002d/12_03_02_wireless_lan.html
http://www.nortelnetworks.com/corporate/news/ne
(Safe Harbor: I work for Nortel; this is a public news release at the corporate web site).
-- Straights are for fast cars, corners are for fast drivers.
Actually, not all 802.11b implementations are 'WiFi' compatible. Also, 'WiFi' also has a 802.11a implementation. Almost every 802.11 system you purchase now is 'WiFi', but when the technology was newer, often base stations and remote cards were only compatible between the particular brand.