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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.
We've been using Symbol 802.11b handheld phones for almost 2 years.
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.
Voice traffic doesn't use as much bandwidth as you would think. One full-rate PCM voice channel is 56Kbits/sec (in North America) or 64Kbits/sec (Europe/Australia etc). IP telephones typically use compression so that the actual bandwith required can be as low as 8Kbits/sec. So even 3Mbit/sec wireless is plenty of bandwidth for these sorts of devices.
If bandwidth does become a problem in a particular area, simply take a leaf out of the mobile phone providers book - deploy more cells in that area, with the added advantage that an 802.11 base station is much cheaper than a GSM/PCS/CDMA/Whatever microcell
Nonononono.... this phone will only operate with Cisco CallManager. CallManager utilizes SCCP (Skinny Client Control Protocol), a cisco proprietary master/slave IP telephony signalling protocol.
/will not/ be able to just pop onto any old 802.11 network and make phone calls. You'll have to:
You
a) Be on a network w/ 802.11.
b) Be on a network with Cisco CallManager running.
c) Be on a network with properly configured PSTN gateways.
Your Starbucks hotspot will be no good unless they decide to hook it to a CallManager, because the call has to be processed somewhere.
Please read the article. .For all other personal uses it also has a regular cellfone for which you use your local provider (and for which you pay). This will not allow you to use it in your local-hotspot.
It clearly mentions that it is for enterprise use, the ida is that a large company can setup a wifi network and use give this fone to all its employees, the authentication is built in
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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.
I belive you failed to see the point of this phone. First of all it is a SCCP (skinny) phone that talks back to a CCM (Cisco Callmanager). So unless you can vpn in back into your companies network to use thier callmanagers, and gateways.
Where this phone does come in handy is in your office where 802.11b already is or will be. You are already on your network with easy access to your callmanagers and gateways. It is NOT intended to replace cell phones by using wireless hotspots
Cisco is trying to put CDMA into the phone as well and implement more "smarts" into the call manager. So that if your phone is out of the 802.11b range (not in the office) it will automatically forward your calls from the office line to your cell phone number (same phone!). So you only have one number to reach you anywhere
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.