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Michael Robertson Unveils SIPphone
JimCricket writes "After almost a year of preparation, the person behind MP3.com and Lindows has unveiled his latest venture: SIPphone. According to a CNET article, the new company sells VoIP-based telephones. I wonder what kind of latency you get with these devices." Interestingly, the CNET article reveals the telephones "...can only call other phones that use the same technology."
From their web page, it looks as if you can call any other SIP phone:
Finally, you will want to call and talk to a live person. There are already thousands of numbers you can call. If you know a SIP number of a friend, you can dial it now or look up numbers on the SIPphone white pages. SIPphone lets you call users on other popular SIP services like FWD and Iptel as well. All SIPphone numbers will begin with 747 (it's optional to dial the first three numbers).
From the FAQ:
Q: Can I use software or what is called a softphone to make and receive calls with SIPphone?
A: Although it may work, at this time we cannot offer support for anything but a certified SIP phone.
Q: Are there other SIP phones I can order besides those offered at SIPphone?
A: The SIP phones offered at SIPphone are designed to work out of the box with SIPphone with zero or minimal configuration. We also work to offer the most affordable SIP phones available in the world. Many SIP phones cost hundreds of dollars. SIPphone sells 2 phones for just $129.99. It may be possible to use the SIPphone directory with other phones, but no technical support is available at this time to support this.
Q: I already own a SIP phone and I would like to use your SIPphone directory service. What should I do?
A: First, you need to sign up with our service at SIPphone Sign Up. These are the settings that you will want to use:
SIP Server: proxy01.sipphone.com (130.94.123.252)
STUN Server: stun01.sipphone.com (69.0.208.27)
NTP Server: ntp01.sipphone.com
TFTP Server: tftp01.sipphone.com (130.94.123.253)
Currently the SIPphone directory service has only been tested with the Grandstream BudgeTone 100 phone. Please check back for further updates on "SIPphone friendly" SIP phones.
Some things are more important than an animated rat
SIP is an IETF standard for voip, surely he just meant it could only phone other SIP phones! no need for any conspiracy theories! SIP is an open standard, and you can even get linux software linphone to use it... Just need a gateway to the traditional phone system and yer sorted.
"I wonder what kind of latency you get with these.."
I would assume the same latency you would have with any application that would have taken the same network path as the 'net phone's packets?
Perhaps you are talking about an audio delay? In that case, assuming your ISP has proper routing, there should be no significant delay (around the same as many cell phones) when speaking to someone else in your same country.
I've set up vbrick devices to use two T1's bridged for LAAtlanta conferences and the delay was barely noticable.
Not since dialup on a 28.8k modem have I noticed much problem with audio communications on the web. Definitely better than the telco's international service back in the 80's. I remember talking to friends in Germany and Japan and having to stop for long periods of time between sentences to prevent cross talk.
I think this product is so-so, though. Without a subscription based access from the voip phone to a telco bridge and a real phone number, it's not going to explode in popularity regardless of it's audio quality.
SIP is not limited to just VoIP, as the name says it is Session Initiation Protocol. There already is a reasonable GNU SIP library, so let's make that better, and then we can create an open source SIP capable VoIP-phone that could interoperate with this system as well as others.
Other uses for SIP that could/should happen IMO are (starting a session of) multi-player games and messaging, conferencing software for sharing pictures, etc.
Since SIP is basically just a handshake protocol, doing all those things shouldn't be impossible. Wanna play a game of chess or go with a pal? Just initiate a SIP connection, if their end supports your game and they are available, you've got a connection. No more application specific ports to configure to get a multiuser application work.
As the name implies and the article explains, the phone uses SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol. I did some research on SIP last year and found it to be somewhat intruiging.
SIP is basically used for setting up the endpoints of a human communication channel over an IP-based network. It negotiates what kinds of communcations are supported on each end, and what protocols to use. So if a video-SIP-phone calls a regular analog phone via a SIP-PSTN proxy, the proxy would only support audio certain codecs. The calling video-SIP-phone and the proxy would negotiate to use only audio using a matching protocol and the cal would go through.
And since SIP is a protocol just like SMTP or HTTP, it is very controllable. There are dozens of SIP products popping up from SIP servers to SIP proxies... and now SIP phones. For example, you can have a SIP proxy/server be concious of where a user is logged in and re-route SIP calls to their present location. As a Java programmer, I'm looking forward to the day when I find a reason to write a SIP Servlet.
Furthermore, the latest version of Messenger in Windows XP supports SIP. I would think that this means a SIPPhone could call someone using Microsoft's Messenger on Windows XP. However, I was not able to confirm this with a breif perusal of the SIPPhone site, and they also state this only works with other SIPPhones. That may be an over-generalization to keep people from thinking it works with regular phones, or maybe they did something crazy with it.
I'm crossing my fingers that it is a generic SIP endpoint that can contact any SIP-enabled device.