Slashdot Mirror
BT's Converged Wi-Fi/Cell Phone
judgecorp writes "BT has been talking for more than a year about "Bluephone" - a cellphone that roams to a wireless network, when you are in the house. Just when we thought it was all hype and vapour, BT is revealing more details. Good news - it will move to Wi-Fi, when Wi-Fi handsets are cheap and good. The first version will still use Bluetooth, because Bluetooth works.
Bad news - it's not a SIP phone, and therefore not really a converged phone. It doesn't roam calls onto the Internet, or even onto the landline, where they would be cheaper. Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is just an alternative for the first few feet of the call. Takes a few calls off the cell network, but doesn't do a lot for the user, apart from giving you just one phone to lose."
I know cisco is working hard on this too. A cisco show I recently attended said that they are planning on having a similar product out sometime that will switch from cell to your phone system when you are within range. I thought their target date was sometime this year.
I thought a while back when PCS was first coming out that it was supposed to stand for "Personal Communication Service" and it was going to offer a way to hook up to your home phone system. Basically when you were at home you would be connected through your land line like a normal portable phone and then you would roam onto the network when you were away from home.
I still can't see the purpose of this unless you get bad reception from home.
"Bad news - it's not a SIP phone, and therefore not really a converged phone. It doesn't roam calls onto the Internet, or even onto the landline, where they would be cheaper. Wi-Fi or Bluetooth is just an alternative for the first few feet of the call. Takes a few calls off the cell network, but doesn't do a lot for the user, apart from giving you just one phone to lose."
Okay... how is this better than a combined GSM/DECT phone? (They used to make them anyway, do they still?)
I could see the general idea useful in an office which already has a 802.11b/g infrastructure in place to route calls to. But this device doesn't really seem to be aimed at that market. But that could actually be pretty cool if they got some working QoS going and SIP to connect to the central office telephone switch. But this doesn't seem to be it.
Although a real combined 802.11g SIP phone and GSM might just be useful in that respect.
My Siemens SX 66 (HTC Blue Angel) does cell/SIP/Skype/etc. now via 802.11/bluetooth/etc. A number of other phones (other incarnations of the HTC Blue Angel as well as the HP 6315) can do all this stuff, too.
And, if you're looking for this sort of thing without the cell phone, there are existing products for that, including the KW2000 IP Connection WiFi Netphone.
Q
Don't vote for Eugene Papansanovich for Congress!
The frequency of the transmitter isn't what you should be worried about; the power is. The transmitter in a cellphone is a lot more powerful than a bluetooth or wifi transmitter (or an ordinary cordless phone). If cellphones used transmitters as weak as those used for bluetooth, there'd need to be a dozen cell towers on every block.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
There's virtually no VOIP in the UK so why would they bother?
There are some things holding back takeup:
1. VOIP is more expensive to call out than 3rd party analogue (eg. call18866)
2. VOIP uses premium rate number for incoming calls so unless you hate all your friends you've got to have an analogue/mobile anyway.
3. VOIP runs over DSL - which requires a voice line, so you end up paying rental twice (three times if you count the DSL).
4. You can't buy VOIP retail in this country, and nobody except a few slashdot geeks have even heard of it (there are lots of 'digital' phones but they're all DECT not SIP).
unless you get BT communicator?
e ss ionID=@@@@0367275130.1106859812@@@@&BV_EngineID=cc cdadddjlfjdhlcflgcefkdffndfkk.0
http://www.bt.com/btcommunicator/index.jsp?BV_S
hmmmm took me 10 minutes to find on BT.com... still free calls for a month!
gee....
--------------------------------------------- "In the end, we're all just water and old stars."
British Telecom has existed as a separate privatised entity since 1981, and styled itself as just BT since 1991.
BT's debut album was released in 1995.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group was formally announced in 1999.
BitTorrent was introduced to the world in 2002.
There are plenty of good reasons to knock BT the telecom company - I'm a bitter former customer! - but the name isn't one of them.
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
If they use Class 1 Bluetooth (100mW), it has great range: we use it and can count on >50 meters indoors in real-world conditions (walls, steel beams, and so forth). It uses frequency hopping, making it even more robust than WiFi at half the power consumption or less. Bandwidth is much lower than WiFi, but plenty for voice.
Most folks are familiar with Class 2 or Class 3 Bluetooth (2.5mW and 1mW respectively, I think) designed for cell phone accessories and so forth, which are very short-range, and would stink for this application.
Wifi is an awful battery hog.