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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."
From TFA
At the most basic level, voice over Wi-Fi treats voice as just another kind of data. It runs voice over IP and uses SIP addresses to route calls across the Internet. This is anathema to the cell networks, who have no intention of allowing voice over IP. For them, data is a means to squeeze more revenue from reluctant customers, not a means to let customers get voice services for less money.
Sadly this has always been one of the major stumbling blocks, and I'm not sure there is a viable solution in sight.
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.
This isn't going to be a replacement for cell phones. I don't think the bluetooth capability is that much of a benefit. Needing the base station really limits where you can use it. They did say that they'd have a WiFi version in 2006 though... that has potential :) Cell + data coverage is just unnecessarily expensive.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
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.
..with right drivers(I don't know about xp's own) you can use bluetooth handsfrees to talk on whatever VOIP you want.
so.. this is pretty weak.
more than that. there's a fundamental problem over here.. once you make those wifi networks the operators will just lower prices.. so it's kind of worth it and kind of not because you'll never make wifi as good/effective(that means 'cheap') for large amounts of voice users like cellular networks.
(my cellular bills aren't really killing me anyhow, not enough to even bother with skype most of the time)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"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.
I work in IT for a large (35 sites) K-12 campus. We have Wi-Fi spanning most of the area and I use a Cisco 7920 to make/receive calls anywhere, internal and external.
Granted we're running Call Manager for this to work, but it's pretty sweet none the less.
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.
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.
A lot of posts here seem to be missing the point.
The point is NOT to let you use VOIP with your cell phone. They aren't making this so that you can walk around your house talking on Skype or with some SIP service. I think that the actual reason behind this technology is quite smart.
I have a cell phone. The phone works great and has great reception when I'm out and about, at college, etc. But, I live in a suburban residential area. It is by no means "rural", but still there is not very good cell phone coverage in the area of my house. So, I can use my cell phone wonderfully out in the city area, but not very well around my home, which is the major reason I haven't switch yet to cell-phone-only. I am far from the only person I know who is in this situation. Great reception in general, but weak or no reception at home.
This technology would solve my problem. If I am out and there is cell phone coverage, the phone would use the cell towers. When I walk into my house and the tower reception goes away, the phone would switch right over to my bluetooth access. Sure, it wouldn't be cheap like Skype. But, chances are you'd pay some regular monthly fee (maybe higher than normal...) and this access point would be enabled.
So, the point isn't to make calls cheaper, it's to give you access in the one place that many people don't have it already.
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.