Cisco's Wi-Fi Phone

Forbes.com has a quick look at Wi-Fi-enabled VOIP phone. If a company deploys it in more than one location you can take the phone with you, and it acts just like the phone on your desk. Calls across the country or potentially across the ocean can be as free as a call across the office. There's also plans to incorporate support for wireless phone networks.

Comments

This is cool!

[sipmeister]

Finally the time has come for affordable IP phones (as Cisco announced a $130 desktop IP phone as well). The technology to make all this useful has been developed over the last couple of years, and as much as this is being touted for the enterprise, it will impact the consumer market as well. I'm already using a Cisco 7960 hooked up to my DSL, using a SIP enabled router (Intertex IX66) to call people all over the world (for free!).

We need everything rolled into one device

[pmbuko]

What they need to do now is create a hybrid cell/wi-fi/VoIP phone with bluetooth that can auto-sense where it is in relation to your desk and/or office building.

When at your desk, your wired desk phone rings. When in the hallway/bathroom/break room, your wireless phone rings. When outside the building, calls are forwarded to your cell number on the same device.

You would be able to customize each of the 3 zones (office, building, world) with its own call-handling rule set. Higher-end models would also auto-sense when you were in the bathroom, so you could avoid those embarrasing moments without thinking twice.

Dropped

[Superfreaker]

I use vonage business VoIP services. I have calls drop and poor sound quality as is, now if I brought the unpredictability of Wi-Fi connections into play, it would only get worse.

VoIP is still not a complete solution, at least not for reliable service just yet, IMHO. Unless you go with a dedicated network. Services like vonage are affordable, but they use the net and are vulnerable to the usual traffic issues, etc...

Could IP phones be the thing that IPv6 needs?

[jonr]

I just can't help to wonder if IP phones will be the driving force behind IPv6. Millions of phones need their IP numbers. Of course it can be used with NATs and VPNs, but a real IP number would make much more sense.
J.

Re:I tried it once...

[Tmack]

Well... Cisco has been doing VOIP for some time now, on a more commercial level. I work for a telecom company that uses cisco routers to deploy VOIP telephony to our customers via T1 (bandwidth not in use by voice traffic is used for internet access). The largest problem (trouble ticket wise) seems to be more at the physical level with T1's failing (which we get through de-regulation from the baby bells), where as your problem sounds like network lag and bandwidth limits. Granted, our network was designed specifically for voice traffic, but any company that sets up a Wi-Fi VOIP network should be able to do the same, so long as no one runs the microwave thats in the break room...

TM

Re:More to it than meets the eye

[Phil Karn]

That answers the question I was about to ask. Cisco has really crippled their VoIP phones by having them speak only their proprietary "skinny" protocol. Without an expensive and proprietary server, these phones are totally useless. At the very least, these phones ought to speak basic H.323/SIP/whatever without any outside help beyond IP dialtone and a DHCP server.

The real market for these things is in the home. I would love to junk my crappy cordless phones and use 802.11-speaking phones on my existing wireless network. Not only would that reduce the number of boxes I have to plug in, but if it caught on it could really help reduce the persistent interference problems between 2.4GHz cordless phones and 802.11 networks.

But most people aren't going to want to run (and rely on) a PC 24/7 just to be able to make phone calls -- much less a dedicated Cisco VoIP server! And tunneling through some server on some distant network isn't going to work either, given the extra latency and decreased reliability that will introduce.