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Cisco to Ship Wi-Fi Phone in June
Marvinthehaggler writes "According to Computer Weekly's site, Cisco Systems plans to start shipping its Wi-Fi mobile phone to US channel partners in June, with availability in other countries soon after.
The phone communicates only with 802.11b technology and is designed for use within enterprises rather than totally replacing a mobile phone. However, Cisco is in talks with cell phone makers about the possibility of adding cell phone capability to such a device, which might carry the Cisco brand." Seems like a very limited use device, but IP telephony is getting increasingly popular.
Seems like a very limited use device, but IP telephony is getting increasingly popular.
Yes, like with that Cisco-Fed aliance in an earlier story
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Hmmm, I'm wondering what kind of impact this will have on general thruput if it becomes popular. I mean replacing any significant proportion of existing phones/mobiles with 802.11b voice devices is going to cause problem, because bandwidth is finite and shared in this spectrum.
How's it going to handle when I walk into Starbucks and the T-Mobile Hotspot wants me to log on? Right now, you have to authenticate using HTTP.
Surely I'm not going to have to pull up a tiny browser and enter my login information on the phone just to get online or to be able to get my incoming calls. That would be horrible.
What's your damage, Heather?
Running off a PBX inside the office?
I suppose the only different thing would be IP vs whatever phone, but most large companies would have the PBX machine handle such things, and the internal lines would still be analog...
Now I can listen in to all those phone calls in Best Buy with a laptop full of Vomit!
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It's not really all that different, but as many companies roll out IP telephony this gives them a way to have wireless extensions on the existing WLAN.
One day you will pay one company $39.95 for flat-rate long distance .... Whenever, wherever.
Vonage currently sells VoIP service using a Cisco box for $39.95. If you had WiFI service everywhere, you could buy a WiFi router, plug in your Cisco box, plug in a phone, and have extremely ghetto "portable phone" service. With these new Cisco wireless phones and whatnot, we will fast approach true wireless VoIP.
This is where IP takes over, and voice dies. It's a good time to be Vonage, it's a GREAT time to be Cisco, and it's a horrible time to be SBC.
In Japan, companies have PHS phones that they can attach to their internal PBX, and the phones would have an internal extention but would work throughout the company even though, say, the place had different locations. It's almost like a miniture cellular network.
The reason I bring it up is because that I can't imagine the 802.11 based phones be any better than this - especially since you would need some serious WAN/VPN between facilities for the phone to work across them. added to the fact that routing and entryption takes a bite of latency, I won't imagine using them is very pleasant at all.
That's not to mention that as far as I remembered, keeping a WiFi connection alive takes magnitudes more power than cellphone technology.
Granted, PHS is not a standard in the US (I actually don't think it's anywhere else), but for this particular usage, I actually think it's pretty cool, and very suited.
btw, PHS is different from cellular in some ways though very similar. I am too sleepy to type them up. For some +informative karma, anybody want's to explain the difference?
My life in the land of the rising sun.
for right now at least?
I think this is more just a concept idea. From the article, "Customers are turning to IP telephony because it simplifies their network infrastructures and can lower costs, and a mobile IP phone would be attractive to many companies because it would let them add mobility without paying for cell phone airtime, Pratt said."
Why not just get those Nextel mobile/radio phones then? Seems like almost everyone in corp. america has a mobile phone, this cisco one would just be an extra gadget taking up pocket-space.
Anyways, I'm sure there are many other very cool possibilities with an 802.11 phone, like practical VoIP, more seamless syncing with enterprise-wide LDAP data, etc.
We've been using Symbol 802.11b handheld phones for almost 2 years.
Actually this might be very useful in healthcare facilities for the bed side nurse.
Currently some hospitals IIR use cell phones for managers and pagers for others.
a lot of faciliteis are putting in wireless networks to support mobile workstations for staff to use with electronic documentation.
Alric
PBX = CallManager in this case.
These phones are typically used in a "campus" type environment such as a University, large hotel or hospital where staff need to be mobile in a limited environment. Unlike standard digital cordless phones these phones can roam from base-station to base-station, so they have a greater effective range. And unlike cell phones they are simply an extension of the PBX so there are no airtime charges.
Many PBX vendors provide DECT options but these require you to install special purpose DECT base stations around your campus while 802.11 base stations can be used for both IP telephony and data.
We are currently in the early stages of a Cisco IP phone rollout at our college.. the technology seems very interesting yet it still has a few bugs - the Cisco 7940 phones we have are running new firmware versions but we keep experiencing irritating little gremlins with them.
:)
I am looking forward to these phones though.. as it is our employer just wont buy us mobile phones of any kind - it seems that senior management need them (on $75k salaries) but us on 1/5 of that have to use our own despite going off site and being around the building quite often. As the company is keen to explore wireless technology & ip telephony even further, these seem like a sure fire purchase!
A great idea.. no recurring phone bills, better range than radio handsets (provided we install a few hefty wireless base stations) and it ties into our existing phone system
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
http://www.symbol.com/products/wireless/voice_over _ip.html
With connectivity to Nortel Succession and Cisco CallManager...the only thing that's new about this is the addition of being able to swap to a cellular system.
It's true that you can only use the phone when within range of the Access Point. But for environments that already have the access points, it's perfect.
Actually, It's like a BETTER cordless phone. It's better because with a simple home cordless phone you can't roam from base station to base station. The 802.11B phones should allow you to roam from access point to access point w/out loosing connection.
I don't want my cable modem; that goes out when the wind blows hard, or the rain is a little heavy, being my means of communications. That said, I haven't had a land line for almost 7 years now, solely relying on cell service, which has dramatically increased in reliability in the past two years. (due to necessity from competition)
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Yea, the wifi phone might not be able to replace mobile phones themselves. And the article does mention using them in the enterprise. Does anyone else think the phones can be a great way for IT Managers to keep in touch with home base? Most IT people I know carry pagers, so if they are around the office, the boss pages them to send 'em over to a job, but they first must call the boss up on an office phone to get the details.
By carrying this phone around, the IT person could be easily contacted and sent where needed instantly. Good idea? No?
The company I work for actually has competent (read: not clueless) people in charge when it comes to our network and company security.
sure, we get dozens of calls per day from users wanting to know when we are going to start going wireless (same people who want to know where their flat-screen lcd monitors are). The problem is that we would have to to implement more firewalls not only at each and every access point, but also at each of the computers that would access them. Since we have chemists, physicists (sic?), and biologists working here with very sensitive data on their computers as well as our servers, we cannot allow casual access to their machines as well as the centralized data on our servers.
basically, we would have to treat a wireless network within our company like the internet...which would come out to be freakishly more expensive (and slower) than the gigabit network we already have in place.
until a wireless standard arrives with encryption "out of the box", we aren't going to touch wireless. And I'll bet that more companies out there have the same thoughts about this.
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
Does anyone else find the Cisco IP phone (software) interface extremely chunky, slow, and difficult to operate? I realize they tried to go with a "real world device" metaphor there, but failed by creating a clunky and "slow" interface. :D
As mentioned in this article, such things aren't always good ideas. Apple QuickTime player is mentioned, that basically by trying to emulate a "real world" device, it has the same "real world" limitations such as only allowing to store a few bookmarks in the slide out "favorites" tray, etc.
I haven't used Cisco IP phone extensively (it striked me as slow and unresponsive and not particularly user friendly (took me a while to figure out how to go off-hook with it)), and recommended against using Cisco software for VoIP
The problem is that we would have to to implement more firewalls not only at each and every access point, but also at each of the computers that would access them.
You do realize that this is not the case, correct? I mean, if you want to try to snow your users to avoid deploying wireless that's one thing. But I've got a wireless network with dozens of AP's spanning several buildings, and it does not require dozens of firewalls. It requires a small filter on the single router interface for the wireless network which limits traffic to only our VPN server. No need for a firewall at each access point. Just install a VPN client on each wireless users laptop. And if you have users who travel with laptops, you should be providing them with VPN clients or something equivalent anyway. So really, the incremental security impact of wireless can be made very low very easily.
WiFi is a bad choice for voice communication. The upside is that it is free (after the initial investitions). GSM allows companies to have their own internal phone network and selectively allow workers with a correct sim card to use this internal system. The company doesn't has to pay anything, and people get to carry around their normal cellphones. If you have a Nokia phone, maybe you have wondered what this "closed user group" feature means - that's what it means. Often, these companies outsource the creation of the voice network to a normal cellphone company, and pay them a flat fee for all internal voice communication. A organisation that uses this system is CERN, and they work together with the swiss operator Swisscom. You can find a bit of inside information here.
A mobile phone that's being released in the US before Europe/Japan? I've been waiting for this all my life!
I'd like to see vonage dump the cisco voice ip routers and let us use phones like this on our exisiting wifi setup.
And if you have users who travel with laptops, you should be providing them with VPN clients or something equivalent anyway
VPN is currently limited to our outside sales team, and from what I hear, implementing it is a total bitch with the way our network is set up (im still a lowly new guy fresh out of college, so i dont get to do most of the big-boy stuff yet). But yes, VPN is also a solution to the security thing, but it's not something that we can implement at a reasonable cost compared to the usefulness it would provide to the company (key phrase: cost compared to usefulness)
Gentlemen...BEHOLD!
-Dr. Weird
..and if you went with Cisco's LEAP you don't even need a VPN server, as LEAP is secure, unlike WEP.
You do realize that this is not the case, correct?
You do realize that's just your own opinion, right? You don't HAVE to do any security. But if you have sensitive data, a seperate DMZ interface of a firewall (doesn't necessarily have to be it's own firewall, just it's own interace) and users who VPN into the network keep someone who gets a WiFi connection but not VPN credentials from simply 0wning other bokes connected to the APs. At lease when each AP is on its own interface, it severely limits the number of boxen that are exposed at any time.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
It comes down to a business decision. Can the business be competative w/out "????" Fill in the the question marks.
.. This is a reason why Large S&P 500 companies stop being profitable.
If you are in a government protected monopoly (phones, power, schools), or a government funded organisation (US Department of anything, etc) , then you don't have to be competative, and you can chastise your engineers and scientists for wanting better tools. (What makes you think you should be as productive as possible, anyway?) You can't loose ( market share.. ) , because your the only show in town.
BUT, if you are a private corporatation, that has competitors, you are running a risk. If your higly paid R&D staff isn't as productive as possible because some IT sloth doesn't think you should need some tool or capability, your company runs the risk of falling behind... This is real.
Do you suppose the R&D staff a Xerox has been working at their highest potential for the last few years? I doubt it.. Perhaps, had they been given just a little bit more, better tools, better environment, more freedom to configure systems the way they need them, Xerox could have more quickly developed better products that would have sold more.
Do you suppose that Engineers/Scientists will be real happy with a company that never gives them the tools they want? How costly is it when Xerox looses a talented, experienced engineer to Canon, or Lexmark, or HP? It's hard to measure, but it's a real issue. If you loose all of your most talented employees to your competition, your screwed.
There is no doubt that it costs a lot of money to have good tools. And it's also clear that some things, like 802.11b have a lot of ~hidden costs that make them unexpectedly expensive to deploy.
But don't forget the cost of "not deploying."
PBX and internal lines analog? I havent seen an office with more than 10 people working in in in at least 5 years with an analog phone system. It's cheaper to get a voice T dropped in and hook the PBX up to that. Generaly the only thing that gets an analog line are the fax machines. And for wireless it's generaly one of those nearly useless headsets that connects to the phone no outbound dialing on it.
That being said a wifi VoIP phone might be a realy usefull thing. You could walk around the datacenter with it while talking to outside support. It generaly works with the piles on unencrypted AP's out there. And I think the big thing is you can take it with you inside the building everybody might not need to know your cell phone so that could be reserved to the people that realy need to get in touch with you.
No sir I dont like it.
WOW, and if we don't agree with this statement we must be outside the circle of competent peole. The part that bothers me is that most people with this view formulated it solely off of a 20/20 show regarding rouge AP's deployed without any security enabled, or second hand gossip about the show. Of course if your competent staff isn't competent enough to deploy 802.11 correctly, you should NOT go wireless. There is being carefull, then there is just sticking you head in the sand.
What I meant is (and this is how we do it here), a digital pbx/phone system (such as NTT Alpha-IX, etc) connects a number of its analog input ports to the VoIP device which is connected to the (company VPN|public internet|whatever). The lines from the PBX to the handsets are, most likely digital, but that is what I meant, existing phone system is used, with VoIP gateways on the analog ports of the PBX. And yeah, if there was a compatible add-on board for the Alpha-IX that had VoIP we'd use that instead.
Yes, that maybe so, but there is no home VOIP cordless phone that I've seen. The killer app for this is a cheap way to integrate your current cell phone into your home 802.11b network, so when you are at home, you call through your WiFi connection. That router is acting like a Digital-Analog converter, sending your voice to the regular POTS. I'm in the market for a cordless phone system right now, any suggestions? (Its for my parent's house, nothing too expensive, but it needs to be long range and cool looking)
--sig fault--
... and it is avalable since a while.
My question is will the Cisco phones be IPv6 ready ?
SLK
In reply to person who asked about what would happen if you walked into Starbucks or T-mobile hotspot - it would probably work at T-mobile (for free) because their Parsippany, NJ corp offices have 802.11b "hotspot" wide open. (why should their other locations be any more secure?) Hopefully, one of their nerdier admins is reading this :) :) :(
As far as Starbucks is concerned, I don't know. Keep tipping their hot, young (female) baristas to get free coffee
WHAT? you *bucks doesn't have hotties? Sucks for you
I work at Cisco, and for a while now our IP phone infrastructure has been growing. I now have an IP phone on my desk, at home and softphone on my laptop. For those who ask 'what's so great about that?' the thing is THEY ALL HAVE THE SAME NUMBER. Not only that, but my softphone works over wireless. With my laptop, wireless card, and headset, I can take inbound calls TO MY EXTENSION anywhere on campus. My boss has softphone on his IPAQ, and gets the same deal. This appears to be just an extension of that, with a dedicated device permitting it.
Since when is IP the only layer 3 protocol one can run over 802.11? I personally see this as a great way to allow people to have 2.4Ghz cordless phones coexist with 802.11 stuff nicely. VoIP would be nice eventually, but VoIP is not necessary for these phones to be very useful.
keep someone who gets a WiFi connection but not VPN credentials from simply 0wning other bokes connected to the APs. At lease when each AP is on its own interface, it severely limits the number of boxen that are exposed at any time.
That's true. A lot of VPN software can be set up to disable non-VPN access to the client when connected to the VPN server, but there is still that window of time when the laptop is on the network but the VPN software hasn't started up yet.
Large offices already have their own phone network (normally expensive). If they do securely and inexpensive (cisco - inexpensive - not likely), then cisco can target a group which love gadgets.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Penguin this isn't specifically for you, you just looked like a good place to hook in.
1. What is the draw of this over the walkie talkie functionality of the Nortel phones? It is an honest question as I don't have one of those phones (let alone two of those phones and a friend I could give one to) - I have an ATT GSM phone (T68i) that gives me 1000 mins anytime per month (which in my case is effectively unlimited.)
2. If Cisco REALLY wants to sell these things they need to do the following : Make it something they can wear on their hip, create a small curved triangle gold pin to stick onto the users shirt a little higher than his heart (nearer the shoulder) that would turn on and off the speakerphone. That way all the geeks can walk around tapping their gold communicator going 'Kirk here - what seems to be the problem?'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
It is called the MCI Neighborhood, go to www.mci.com and check it out.
Snippet -
With Neighborhood Complete get the following for one monthly price of $49.99 - $69.99, depending on your state.
Unlimited long distance calls*
Unlimited local toll calls
Unlimited local calls
One company, one bill
Call Waiting, Caller ID, Speed Dial and 3-Way Calling
Personal Voicemail & Message Center
* You can call anybody, they don't have to be MCI customers.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Could a phone like this be used for making calls from my home network? I have a wireless access point and a cable modem. This phone would pay for itself very quickly if I could use it for long distance calls.
-the Hun
I'm a Tasty-vore. If it's Tasty, I'll eat it.
That's true. A lot of VPN software can be set up to disable non-VPN access to the client when connected to the VPN server, but there is still that window of time when the laptop is on the network but the VPN software hasn't started up yet.
That's why your VPN client distribution should always inclide BlackIce in an unmanaged install configuration so users can't touch and don't know any different.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
Spectralink has had an 802.11 VoIP phone for a few years. It hands off from AP to AP totally seamlessly.
I have also used the Symbol phone. Not nearly as nice.
The reason a corp would buy this instead of a cell phone is there is no reason to take the 802.11 phone home.
Ah yes most PBX's have the option to do analog for fax machines etc and you could hook up some cordless phone to that but look at what you would loose compartivily.
Lack of full phone functionality you realy only have a normal phone nothing like the feature set of a standard pbx phone. This would be ok for the ocational tech call but not good for say a roving manager.
Range with multiple AP's you can get complete coverage the best I have seen a cordless do is 2 basestations.
Roaming VoIP phones can gereraly work anyplace they can get a DHCP address be that your local starbucks or an airport. Now this dosent sound like much of a feature compared to say forwarding to a cell phone.
Now I dont see why you woulden forward call to your cell phone instead of dealing with a cordless assuming you have a plan with free incomming there is just the base monthly cost associated with it.
No sir I dont like it.
Working at a company writing CTI software applications, I went to a Cisco presentation that demoed the phones. The phones interface only with Cisco's 802.11x VOIP network, and are made so you can be communicated with when you're in the office but away from your desk.
And as far as that goes, the things were pretty sweet.
So now, In addition to the sterility induced by the wifi enabled laptop sitting in my lap, I get to expose my brain to the same microwaves when I talk on this phone?
How providential. Just yesterday, Cisco people were here demoing a product that has gotta be what is described. The item we saw demoed was the Vocera Communications System, which is just what is described, a nifty phone that works via 802.11b, has no keypad, and uses voice commands for operation. Very cool, very slick. Folks in the office loved it.
I've got a nice slicksheet on it, the www is www.vocera.com
Now that Cisco has bought LinkSys will this mean that we will soon see Linksys branded IP telephones for home use?
So how do you prevent a black hat on the wireless network from owning one of the wireless clients and then getting back into your network via the VPN?
-no broken link
Folks that resist installing wireless LAN tend to be quite shocked when somebody runs a survey and turns up tons of AP's. You do have WLAN in your office; you just don't know it.
Controlling rogue AP's is the number one reason to deploy an enterprise WLAN infrastructure. Securing them is not nearly as hard as most people think.
802.11b technologies still lack Quality of Service (QoS)! There are some standards currently being developed to change the model of 802.11b from a contention based network (think hubs, collisions, etc) to one of polling (Token ring, SNA, etc). This is the only mechansim to furnish QoS in a shared spectrum environment at the moment. Yes, they can provide Layer-3 QoS using differentiated services (DiffServ), but with the lack of Layer-2 QoS you still have a bunk network.
Additionally, compressing voice to 8-11k requires RTP header compression across the WAN links. If the 802.11b connection/voice stream terminates on or immediately behind the AP, you could support the voice compression. Else, your G.729a VoIP protocols will run you about 22kbs.
Its one thing to say you can do voice via 802.11b. You still need to provide voice quality service which implies a need for QoS.
Does anybody know if these phones will also be supporting ad-hoc mode? That would basically mean walkie-talkie functionality. But a lot more interesting when combined with infrastructure mode (wifi using accesspoints) and regular cellphone technology. That way, one could have a phone which would support seamless roaming between wifi-hotspots and cell-networks, while also allowing (free) calls to other nearby cellphones (with the same functionalities) through direct wifi-connections!
Furthermore, 2.4MHz wi-fi would also leave ample bandwidth for high quality audio.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
-Pat
When I was working at various Intel (Hillsboro, OR) campuses six months ago, this is exactly what they were doing.
:)
Several of the newer buildings (Ronler Acres site, Jones Farm site) had AP's mounted upside-down above the cube farms every 30m or so. And occasionally in hallways near conference rooms.
It was a pretty nice setup. I always wished that I had a wireless card when I worked there, since I visited different campuses all the time and hated plugging in (or trying to find a place to plug in) at every cube I was at.
BTW: Intel's security is pretty tight. By default they let people be administrators on their own machines. But the firewall doesn't trust outside or inside traffic (even SSH is blocked!) so it works out pretty well. The firewall was a smart type, I guess, because trying to set up sshd on port 80 or 443 didn't work either. It was HTTP/S, email or forget it. That's why I setup modssl, then installed a secure proxy and started using Horde/IMP.
Of course, their *physical* security kinda sucked. Anyone can walk up to the back of the Amberglen AG4 warehouse (loading entrance). No card swipe. If you stole someone's Intel badge and just vaguely flashed it at the warehouse manager, he'd let ya walk right in. Right inside is the receiving area for all the shit Intel is donating to STRUT (student-run recycling). Lots of goodies, like older Xeon processors (and 4-way mobo's!) and other stuff came through while I was working there.
The rest of the campuses are basically ok. Some of them are installing revolving doors that only let one person in at a time (I tried to shadow someone once). But most are security guards checking badges OR having you walk through a badge-checker/revolving door. Course, there are no cameras that verify your face is the one on the card, and the guards don't normally look when a badge-checker is in place. A stolen ID would get you a long way.
Have fun, kids!
Exocet Industries - Taking over the world, one computer at a
Any ideas how I would go about using a notebook with wifi to make a call using a computer with a voice modem over the internet?
Not having interference is what I think the real advantage will be. Right now when I talk on my cordless phone I lose my Airport signal if I am near the coverage edge. If my laptop and phone were using the same protocols they would not be so prone to stomp on each other. Personally, I think this is a killer app that will be ignored for a long time because the WiFi manufactuers are going to try to target the enterprise market. Consumers will be where the real market is, because that is who is deploying WiFi right now.
I can see the sales reps now expounding on why you _MUST_ have this. Cisco's IP phone stuff is pretty darn pricey too.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Spectralink has had a wi-fi phone for several years, and the company is just about to announce a whole new family of Wi-Fi phones.
SpectraLink is the market share leader (60%+) in the in-building wireless system market. Avaya, a previous competitor, exited the business and now re-sells SpectraLink systems.
Wi-Fi in the enterprise is a growing market, and putting voice over that network makes perfect sense.
The reason SpectraLink has the best solution is because they can seamlessly integrate with any legacy or IP PBX!! This is hard to do and took Spectralink 10+ years to learn. Furthermore, there are 100s of legacy PBX's in the marketplace, and they turnover only 4% a year... To my knowledge Cisco cannot yet do this...Cisco's wi-fi phones will only work with CISCO's IP-PBX.
Take a look at their website for yourself.
www.spectralink.com