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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."
Does voice over IP mean that it uses packets of data via IP and then convert it back to voice? Kinda like a shoutcast server?
I nkow some cell phone companies have offers when calling within their network (no use of minutes, extra minutes, etc.), but not being able to call out of the network at all?
As someone said, the thing is dead already.
The only thing I can think of that it might work well for is buisnesses. Think of something like a Nextel walkie-talkie cellular service, but without the 'fear' of employees calling other people.
Other than possibly that, however, this thing will never sell.
Thursdae
600 minutes/month, free nights/weekends, and free long distance on my cel plan... and I can call anyone I want.
Even if you could only call people using phones with the same technology locally, surely a solution could be devised to call other networks, as we do with areacodes and whatnot already?
The question rather becomens, does it make sense to do so?
.: Max Romantschuk
FWD is one way for SIP users to interconnect, this could well be another. Grandstream's are cheapie ip phones, but from what I read on asterisk's mailing list - they do work pretty well for the simple stuff. VOIP /will/ happen -- the protocols need to catch up -- with QOS priority usage, nat traversal issues etc. IPV6 would make these things easy, but even without it people will find a way to make things work. Keep in mind -- people may well buy a pair of these as a "free talk" solution on a temporary basis, but then move on to more sophisticated usage. Grab one of these, set up asterisk http://asterisk.org w/ a one port fxo (connects computer to a phone line for incoming/outgoing calls) card - and you instantly gain a lot of flexibility. This WILL happen -- it's only a matter of WHEN it will happen.
Its great to see VoIP finally starting to take off, it has always seemed strange to me that we should live in a world where most people have a highspeed internet connection and yet our phone system still relies on copper wires and lossy a/d converters. If VoIP really takes off then a fully digital system would mean an end to those crackly phone calls and slow connections.
What might be intereting though is if people set up their own VoIP systems over existing mobiles. Here in Europe we have GRPS which is a high speed circuit switched data system. If somebody could write a SIP client for Symbian then users could run VoIP on the GRPS sytem and cut out the extortianate charges imposed by the telcos.
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
Here's why this might be reasonably successful:
They've also had the smarts to set their SIP phone numbers as a "US area code" (don't know if they've actually been allocated it, who knows) -- no doubt PSTN access is in their plans at some stage like Vonage.
Doomed? I doubt it. While nothing here is revolutionary, the genius is in offering the total package (phone + directory service) for a one-off fee that even your grandmother could figure out how to use. All they need to add is PSTN access. If you'd like to learn some more about VoIP, I'd suggest FWD is a nice easy learning curve.
17:01 7/8/2546
... oh
phone calls are acctually free already.
well IF you have a bluetooth capable cell phone, broadband(ADSL->IP->VoIP) and a bluetooth capable
computer (if not get one of those bluetooth in a USB-device plug-ins).
too bad now one knows how to programm the stupid bluetooth cell-phones.
the lamn customer-care(sic)(evil)
acctually told me that one cannot tunnel voice thru bluetooth. they are black-listed now.
while i was reading their reply to my question "tunneling voice thru Bluetooth" i was also browsing their company web-page reading the specs to their bluetooth wireless hands-free set.
i was just wondering then, how come the headset
uses bluetooth to transmit voice thru Bluetooth
to and from the mobile phone?
soo talk about conspiracy.
must be cool to work for a cell-network-operator.
install a fat antenna (base-station). fire up your oracle-databse server. connect to main headquarter. sync with main database. sit back and enjoy while cashing in on utterly rreeddunddaanntt phone calls
and do not forget to open a cool can of beer.
VoIP (Voice over IP(InternetProtocol)) for the demented:
cell-phone talks to bluetooth-device in computer.
computer talks to network-card. network-card talks
to internet. internet talks to your friends computer. your friends computer talks to its bluetooth device. this bluetooth device talks to your friends bluetooth enabled cell-phone.
you're talking to eachother for free!
you see it's a conspiracy.
what's missing? a smart programmer from
the open-source community...
#:|
Making international call's is pretty expensive, especially in developing contries. In India, we get a device which goes between the phone cable and the phone. You press # twice (on your regular phone), it calls your ISP, goes online, checks your account balance and rings. All in about 2 mins. And then you can use your existing phone and call from anywhere to the USA for about 1.9 cents a minute. Hell, even within the US 1.9 cents a minute is pretty good.
Oh yeah, they've got a ethernet version too. No need to wait for the 2 odd minutes. And the connection is crystal clear. The callee never realizes how 'cheap' the caller is!
Creative tried it. with he VoIP blaster. While being fantastic devices and I snapped up as many as I could to use not with creative's services but with fobbit so I could use them without relying on their servers for routing and connecting.
Most people were not interesed in it because it was semi-difficult to use and made you think you needed to buy their service, which you didn't.
I use VoIP all the time. My GF lives 100KM away so that makes it cheaper IF both ends have DSL or CABLE modem. VoIP completely sucks over a dial up.... which over 60% of internet users still have as their only way of getting online.
I wish him luck, but there is cheaper and better hardware out there already (The VoIP blaster is still sold under the origional manufacturer's brand) that is cheaper and much more flexible.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Lindows commissioned Caldera, not SCO, almost two years ago for some development work. Which they never managed to do. So big deal, who knew they would suddenly go insane?
I thought slashdot was supposed to be full of people who knew what they were on about? More than half of this thread is rubbish! "Doomed, we're all Doomed!"
Saying that SIP is dead is like saying that, ooh, UDP will never take off.
It's been around for ages, and it's not just used for phones; it's a generic session establishing protocol.
Essentially, you want to set up some kind of media session between two endpoints; what you do is you send a SIP INVITE message through proxies etc. and attach another kind of protocol message (such as SDP) which describes the requirements for the session. The endpoint receives this, and establishes the session directly (without the proxies etc. in the loop). In very short.
It's just another protocol, like DAP.
SIP phones have been around for ages too - Pingtel's offering is probably the best one.
That said, I don't see SIP phones as taking off in the home, or for personal use; they're much more suited to being used in small enterprises etc.; much lower cost than a PBX. You'd have to have some kind of PSTN interface with the outside world - perhaps phone companies will start providing softswitch capabilities so that people can make their VoIP network speak to the outside world?
What you CAN do at the moment is have a mixed network - VoIP which talks via a router (Cisco 2600 for example) which then talks to the PBX which talks to the PSTN in the usual fashion.
I've been using Cisco IP phone for the past 2 years. Never had any problem with voice quality or lag. At one time we tested another IP Phone from some other company (don't remember which one). The phone was so bad that you had to wait 1 or 2 second when awsering the phone before talking because there was a delay for the microphone to be activated. The sound quality was also very bad.
Looks like the premium you pay for a Cisco phone is worth it (they are still overpriced IMHO).