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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."
...but "wifi" is a STUPID acronym.
The proper name is 802.11b. "Wifi" is meaningless marketroid-speak. (Or in this case, slash-speak since the slashdot editors insist on spouting "wifi" at every given chance).
Better hope that they don't invent "wifi anime"...
Doesn't this mean that cellphone congestion will now lead to degraded wifi performance?
"Einstein argued that [...] God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer." ~ Brooks
I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.
I guess VoIP over WLAN won't do much to their current markets, since high bandwidth isn't an issue for voice. But it seems they've lost the battle for data even before it's started...
Or can commercial UMTS and open WLAN coexist?
Submitters, please use news.googled links instead.
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
Cellular operators perceive WiFi as a threat, because there has been long feared that cheap, community operated wireless networks ("guerilla networks" in corporate speak) would wipe out operators own WiFi offerings. What seems to anger operators most is that the whole concept of local wireless networks is not in line with the operators' idea of monetizing every single byte transmitted over the air. Also operators feared that someone would come up with an VoIP-WLAN phone that would offer very cheap voice calls in the WLAN range. WLAN networks.
Now the impact of this new device (and system) that this partnership is going to produce depends on whether it would be oriented towards operators (and would thus require deep integration with GSM operator's infrastructure) or rather corporate customers (and would therefore be more like an software over-the-Internet VPN solution but also for voice communication). I think the first option is more likely and then the operators would be in position to control to some extent the WiFi market with local WLAN operators reduced to being just local bandwidth providers. The most important part of making this work would be the SIM card (or its equivalent) identifying the user and interfaces connecting a registry of users to authentication mechanisms of various visited networks. Most of that is what GSM operators already have.
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
Cellphones are already cheap enough, and may get even more cheap if this 802.11 thing works.
My 15 years old cousin uses it mainly to date chicks. His phone costed him about $100 and he spends around $20 a month in calls. For the same price, you can get him anytime, and he can call, for example, if he had problems with his bike.
Get real.
"Computer users... those arrogant yuppies. If they have so much office work to do, why don't they hire a secretary?"
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Seamless handoff between 802.11 and CDMA was demonstrated at the recently concluded CDMA Americas congress.
Motorola is in trouble because they are missing the 3G-boat in a big way. Their infrastructure implementations of both 1xRTT and WCDMA suck, and they are getting no orders. They have chosen not to implement 1xEV-DO. So right now, they have no data solution to offer their customers. They are coasting based on their handset sales, and their proprietary lock on Nextel. This announcement is just another tactic to muddy the waters and to buy them time from relentless competition from Nortel, Lucent and Samsung.
Magnus.Cell phone companies trying to screw over customers, freenets. News at 11.
They want to use 802.11 networks to "relieve congestion on cell-phone towers." In other words, "we don't like building new towers. I know, let's use the WiFi network that our customers are paying for to cheap out!" This will, of course, dramatically increase the load on the the WiFi networks, increasing the cost of commercial ones and making FreeNets more expensive to run. Your cell-phone service stays at the same price, though. This is remarkably dishonest.
Hopefully it'll backfire and people will just start using dedicated VoIP services once they realize that they're paying for the network anyway. It'll still hurt FreeNets, but at least it'll smack down the telco monopolies.
...but does that mean that the phone companies are going to use /our/ wifi points when they get congested?
I mean, in a couple of years it's concievable that we use palmpilots or ppc's with VoIP in combination with wifi to get in touch with each other (in the same kind of way that ICQ has worked....when enough people use it, it crosses a critical threshhold and becomes useable for the masses), using, I dunno: URL's or something as phonenumbers.
All it takes is one in five geeks in a city to buy a good wifi point and someone to write good switching software, and you have a free urban VoIP telephone service. Then maybe use some good geek's T1 line to connect the wifi network in that city to the internet, and you can patch multiple wifi networks together, creating a secondary, free, VoIP telephone network.
It just seems to me we need more wifi points, more PDA's and a switching protocol to get free telephony to other geeks like us....or am I making a huge mistake in my thinking?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
This isn't about getting high-speed data on to your cell phone, it's about using your cell phone with your office telephony servers.
Imagine being on a conference call at your office. You tap a button on your fancy Avaya 4620 IP hard phone, and your cell phone rings. you pick up and it's your conference call, coming through IP over the 802.11 network. You continue to listen on your cell using NO 'plan' minutes at all since this is your campany's private network, until you decide to go to Taco Bell. When you drop out of range of your office WLAN, voila - automatic handoff to the cell network. You return and you're back on the 802.11 network.
The point folks, is that if we do this right, you won't even _need_ a desk phone... Unless you want one.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?