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Skype-Ready Phones From Motorola
Hack Jandy writes "Seamlessly integrating VoIP and GSM might not be a fantasy after all, as Motorola announced their decision to build cell phones and handsets that have Skype Internet Telephony integrated into the devices. Obviously, one could use Skype for outgoing calls near wi-fi hotspots (essentially free) but default on GSM for outgoing calls in areas that lack coverage."
Handset Maker Motorola to Build Skype into Phones
by Anton Shilov
Motorola, a leading maker of mobile phones, and Skype, a leading Internet telephony company, said this week at 3GSM World Congress that Motorola would launch a lineup of products that are dubbed "Skype Ready", including cell phones and handsets.
The two companies will explore opportunities broadly across both companies, leveraging Motorola's strength in seamless mobility, advanced technologies, mobile devices and accessories and Skype's rapidly-growing global user base and rich voice and messaging communication tools. The initial focus of the collaboration will be on co-marketing of new optimized Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products, such as Bluetooth headsets, dongles, and speakerphones, as well as delivery of the Skype Internet Telephony experience on "select Motorola mobile devices".
Peculiarities and specifications of "Skype Ready" products were not touched upon.
Skype takes communications to a new and global era with its free, multi-faceted and rich communication tools, enabling users to make free, or very cheap, voice calls and rich messaging connections via the Internet. Skype currently has more than 25 million registered users.
While headsets, dongles and speakerphones are natural enhancements for PCs or PDAs that have Skype installed on them, cell phones with Skype capability may usher a new era in mobile communications, as whenever users have Internet access, e.g., via WLAN or GPRS, they will be able to make long-distance calls at a price much lower compared to that offered by cellular network operators. Still, the cost of GPRS traffic from some operators particularly in the EU is very high and may limit benefits Skype provides in terms of cost.
Motorola "Skype Ready" companion products are expected to be available in the first half of 2005.
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We got wifi here in most places. Be it academic, residential housing, or in appartments. Even most employers have wireless infrastructure now. Could this be a major threat to the current telecommunication infrastructure and the breaktrhough for Skype and VoIP?
who | grep -i blond | date cd ~; unzip; touch; strip; finger; mount; gasp; yes; uptime; umount; sleep
Gan Family Homepage
But for how much longer will local restaurants let people suck up all the bandwidth that is supposed to be serving all of the customers?
For that matter, how much bandwidth does a Skype VoIP call actually use?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
Is there a possibility that there will be some kind of accessory to make these phones more parrot-friendly? Some variation of the hands-free devices some of you humans use while driving would work well. As you probably know, my species is very talkative and it would be great to be able to chat long-distance without paying a wing and a leg to do so.
Does it:
A) Hand off from Skype to GSM network when you go out of WiFi range?
B) Spoof call waiting when you are on Skype?
If it doesn't do these things it is fairly irrelevant for business.
Skype is doing really well in term of technology. Do they have competitors with as good tech? How about open source?
Forgive my hardware incapabilities,
but what I'd really like to see is instructions on how to run skype over a normal (non-cell) phone plugged into one's modem. It'd be even better if the phone had different (definable) ring-lengths, and would connect from the modem back into the normal wall jack (to receive non-voip calls).
You wouldn't be able to dial numbers and get someone through skype, but being able to receive skype calls on a normal phone would be great.
It may not sound like much to those of you who are huge technophiles, but the general populace likes phones much moreso than headsets.
I've been using skype for quite a while now, and even though it looks pretty cool, and the phones you can get are slick, until they support incoming calls with it, I can't really see it taking off.
I know it's just supposed to be a replacement for long distance charges, but come on people, start becoming full-on VOIP!
Or maybe I'm wrong, maybe you can get incoming (not skype-to-skype, an actual phone number) calls.
~/.sig: No such file or directory
I don't suppose the phone can be configured to automatically login to a fee-based hotspot service like T-Mobile? Bringing up a browser on the phone and keying in the username and password each time would be a pain.
Will Skype be the next dotcom sensation?
Not only does it play MP3's, act as a PDA, GPS, Navigator, Camera, Game Pod, RFID gizmo, but you can use it as a COMMUNICATIONS DEVICE!
If they don't care enough to lock down their connection, then it is free for the taking.
If Motorola is making it then it might just happen.
Most of you out there are thinking that it will require a WiFi hot spot, maybe it does. Now, what about the possibility of the internet becoming a public service like the street cleaning or garbage collection, just saying, that it will become a part of our every day lives, it will be available everywhere. If it becomes available everywhere, then most mobile phone service providers will include internet service free of charge or low cost. Paying a low monthly fee and being able to make long distance calls under that same fee sounds good to me.
Now, can somebody make a Point to Point tunnel with SSH for phones so that uncle sam can't packet sniff your conversation about whether you are going to wear a tin foil hat or not in your birth-day with a giant penguin coming out of the cake?
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
Just something I've been wondering. Who pays for all this Wizbang Voip networking? Voip is all well and good until enough people use it (or if it's all on interconnected public wi-fi), but what about the backbones, or the Satelites used for international calls? Once it's easy and cheap to do Voip, who's gonna sustain the network?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Disagree here though--took me about 30 secs on 3MBit DSL to see the same about page that said that. Now I know what servers not to get for my site. Or Skype-ing for that matter.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Dear Consumer, Skype have based their products on a proprietary protocol. They hope to corner the market, and if they succeed in that aim, their services will not remain free. If you care about the future of VOIP, go with any other solution (even if it's currently less slick, technically), using the open SIP protocol. The choices you make as a consumer (even of so-called "free" products) determine our future.
Anyone with a PocketPC Phone Edition with WiFi capability, such as the Qtek 9090 or the HP IPAQ h6315, can already do this, because Skype has a version available for download for the PocketPC. A more interesting question is: What will phone operators do who provide mobile flat-fee internet packages (I heard some are already doing this in the U.S.A.), since phoning with Skype becomes free then any place any time where you have a GSM signal. I am not sure if the bandwidth available with GPRS is enough for Skype to run smoothly (does anyone know this?), however UMTS (a broadband version of GPRS is coming soon).
Verizon, MCI, Cingular, T-Mobile, and Virgin all announced plans to disable this feature before selling the phones to customers.
Skype, sure. It's a truly alternative internet-based voice medium that doesn't directly compete with incumbment provider/pstn networks. No +1 NPA NNX NNNN dialing or anything Aunt Tilly would be used to.
I just don't see why they would shoot themselves in the foot by supporting SIP, IAX or MGCP.
People keep talking about VOIP like its a standard. But it's not.
Try using off-brand phones on a Cisco VOIP network. Try using any regular phone on your home VOIP network.
It just doesn't work.
Maybe this Motorola phone works on the Skype network. (I wouldn't bet on it based on my past experiences with Motorola as well as Skype.)
But what about your open source, small office/home office/home VOIP setup? It's not gonna work! Until we have some real standards and maturity in the VOIP industry we aren't going to have voice over internet protocal (VOIP) we can really trust to work when we need it.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
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While I think this is a great feature and I'll probably try to buy one, this phone isn't going to be a commercial success for Mot. Around 85 - 95 % of the typical revenue from sales of these handsets will need to come from operators, and there's no way they'll buy into this design. Operators are looking for more control over their subs, not less (via DRM, "trusted" devices, secure bootloaders, etc). More control == more revenue. Don't like it? Move to Europe where they don't treat you like a criminal if you have an unlocked SIM - at least for now, not sure how long that will last.
This reminds me of when Mot was bragging about the first G3 handsets it was ramping up on production in 2000, which no operators bought simply becuase the features didn't match their use requirements. Millions down the drain on that design, when will these guys figure it out?
They waited 10 years I was hoping I could make and sell this :P
A nice interface would be a kicker on such a service, and roaming between hotspots.
with many GSM-based cellular networks now providing GPRS services too, why bother with a hand off at all when you go out of wi-fi range. GPRS services will be able to keep the skype call going. the only problem may be GPRS bandwidth. i am not sure about how much bandwidth would be available (usually about 33.6kbps, which is enough for a skype call)
the questions is will cellular networks allow skype conections on gprs?
atb
Suchetha
learn from yesterday, plan for tomorrow, party tonight
or one out of three ain't bad
Without wanting to start a flame war, I feel that Skype is the AOL of VoIP and there are many better services to use if you want. Skype is proprietory and does not adhere to the SIP standard in the same way that AOL was in the BBS days. I would hope that these phones will happily work with normal SIP services and are configurable as such. I use Gossiptel and use it to call friends that are on other SIP services, for free, without any problems, I just dial ** followed by their service providers code and then their number. Skype is for Skype users and those wanting to make cheap breakout calls, I want to call anyone including breakout calls.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Ultimately I do. At the end of the day VOIP is just data like any other.
I don't know much about international telecoms but presumably any pipes and satellites that currently switch telephone calls internationally could be repurposed to carry 'generic' data (if they don't already). Presumably VOIP is more efficient in bandwidth terms than traditional telecoms as the encoding will minimise the amount of data sent and therefore it should be less expensive.
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Unfortunately nothing that I know of. The main thing that's missing is a good networking layer that goes through NATs. That's something I've wanted to do for a while, but my main expertise is in codecs (see sig). If anyone is interested (and serious) about making a VoIP that goes through NATs and the like, let me know.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
The problem with NAT is that it is the device behind NAT that has to open the connection. Skype goes around this by having those people without NAT also transmitting data for NAT users.
I'm a bit disappointed with mobile phone companies regarding the number of bluetooth profiles phones support.
For example, GSM's don't support the headset profile, so you cannot use a GSM as a headset for another GSM or as headset for Skype. This is a big miss because the hardware to support this is all there, it's just a software issue. So now I cannot use my GSM with skype while at home.
If you design hardware with bluetooth, please support all profiles your hardware could possibly support, even if it doesn't seems usefull, it might in the future.
... I wonder which mobile phone provider would like that. In the end they are missing out on call charges if phones support this technology - aren't they?
I know that... and I don't see why we couldn't have an open-source app doing this too.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
Absolutely nothing prevents is as the many Gnutella clients show. What I meant is that the required thing would be a similar peer to peer structure, as the other option of centralised server will require too much bandwith.
Why is it everyone seems to forget that the creators of Skype are known spy-ware peddlers?
They have proven that in the past they are willing to use such dubious business practices, so why should we give them any business now?
Yes Skype may be good and useful, but its a proprietary protocol.
What we need is for someone to get behind the open VoIP protocols and give us phones that use those, preferably with encryption.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/05/203222 0&tid=95&tid=215&tid=185
/.ers. look who's talking now. skype is making headlines. it's aslo integrated into HTC phones too.
so my dear criticize-anything
http://www.msmobiles.com/news.php/3397.html
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I wouldn't get one of those phones just for Skype use, because I'd be afraid of getting cut off by Skype's incompetence.
Right now you can call out from Skype to a regular phone, as long as you have a credit with them to cover the low cost of the call. But there is apparently *no way* for me to give them any credit! They won't accept my credit card, they won't accept Paypal, they won't accept a cheque in the mail. They refer me to Moneybookers, who won't accept my credit card, won't accept Paypal, and won't accept a cheque in the mail.
Skype is fine as a free service (for as long as that lasts), but they haven't a clue when it comes to supporting customers. It's not as though *wanting to give them money* is an exotic request.
I use VoIP through a NAT without any problems whatsoever. I have to use a proxy but if that is what you are objecting to then I think you are looking for problems. I would not know how to use Skype in this way for the reasons I mention in my other post.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
How exactly is nearly 3 cents a minute to call a real phone "essentially free"? I've got calling cards that are no worse. For my $50/month cellular phone I don't need WiFi access to call and I use 2-3 thousand minutes a month, which would cost MORE at 2.6 cents a minute.
Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see this mature, but big whoop at this point!
- Brian
VOIP is by definition an area where network effects are going to play a prominent role, and the uptake of Skype means that it just gets stronger. Skype is something my parents could probably use without problems, whereas I'm dubious about some of the "fancier" systems. All I want is to be able to make a call, and if my parents are around, they answer, and we don't pay the phone company more than they already rip us off for DSL.
I'm particularly interested in something open source, though, because Skype doesn't run on my ppc-linux system.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
I'm confused. Networking is quite new to me. Can someone explain to me how something like http://www.phonegaim.com/Phonegaim differs from Skype. Adding voice functionaility via SIP to gaim is a great idea if a little poorly thought out in this case. I hear they had to rewrite some poorly written opensouce code anyway.
I'm all for an opensource version of Skype but I need someone to explain to me why phoengaim isn't that.
we need CDMA2000 or WCDMA quick!
Short answer- yes with an 'if'.. long answer- no with a 'but'..
Proud Rememberer of the BBS Days.
Can someone please explain to me how the SIP protocol differs from Skype's and how this supposedly makes the phonegaim http://www.phonegaim.com an inferior voice messaging client?
I totally agree with the parent on the difficulty of implementing a working handoff/handover when going from one network to another. Technically it is probably feasible, but really costly (just remember that the main technical hurdle for 3G was seamless handover between GSM/GPRS and WCDMA networks).
I said it is feasible, but it requires close cooperation between both networks, signalling has to be exchanged, and so on. Does anybody think that cell providers will be interested in cooperation with a technology that will hurt them so much?
In the office I hear people using IP phones, they sound like mobiles with bad reception (breaking up a lot).
:-)
So, in the future where we have spent billions setting up good coverage, and microwaving our innards, we all start going around saying 'can you hear me now? now?' the funny thing will be those not aquainted with network congestion, they will try and move around for better reception, when it is network traffic causing the delays
LOL!!11
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
You've got it all wrong. They'll just charge you their data rates... In addition to any minutes you may be using.
The ______ Agenda
I wonder how long it will take for most major cities to become hotspots. I'm envisaging a scenario where one can have a 802.16 phone and use it for calls Mobile Operators would have an advantage in that they possibly can utilize their infrastructure for the same services.
How exactly will Skype 'corner the market'?
They know full well that as soon as they started charging for Skype->Skype calls, people would just migrate to other programs.
The big problem here is that you can't hand off an in-progress call easily (or at all) between VoIP and GSM. So, a call that starts VoIP has to stay VoIP. So, if you start a call on a VoIP network (say at a wireless hotspot), you can't wander outside without dropping your call.
Also, a lot of WiFi hotspots charge for access (e.g. Starbucks). Obviously those are out, limiting usefulness.
Also, forgive my ignorance on Skype or other VoIP protocols, but how do they handle the occasional dropped packet or connection interruption? Having used WiFi in a Panera bread (where it's free) on several occasions, it seems that there's a lot of load on a pretty limited amount of bandwidth, meaning occasional connection hangs while I'm msurfing the web. NOT what you want during a phone call...
And, yes, I realize "Free WiMax everywhere!" could help with these issues, but I'm skeptical of that happening anytime in the near future (read: before this phone becomes an obsolete model).
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:ZatWt8r-_yIJ: www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/2005021605374 7.html+motorola+cell+phone+%2B+skype&hl=en
Not sure why anyone links to the direct site... its a sure fire DOS attack with all the traffic /.'ers create.
Still, the cost of GPRS traffic from some operators particularly in the EU is very high and may limit benefits Skype provides in terms of cost.
Flat-rate plans for GPRS do exist here in Italy, but (as the author of TFA might have expected) operators explicitly ban VoIP in their contracts.
In addition, actual connection speed are ridiculously low here, I guess even the 5 kB/s up and down the line are prohibitive in most areas.
As far as I'm concerned, Skype isn't true VoIP. It's a proprietary protocol without a large portion of H.323 or SIP's functionality.
Skype works by distributing user's traffic across all the other users. Are these phones going to do the same? I don't see it working.
And like every version 1.0, I bet it will work perfectly.
Has anyone here even used skype? The quality is atrocious.
What? What did I do ...
... (goes back to sleep)
Oh
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
run Linux?
No, really.
www.shopjohn.net
imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies!
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not
I don't get what people love about "skype." I tried it, and the voice quality is 10 times worse than my cell on one of it's worst days, it's simply not usable. Motorola should be working on SIP compliant products, for the majority of professional VoIP services that have the capacity, and bandwidth to provide a QOS assured call. If a user discovers "skype" they are robbing themselves of the true experience of a proper VoIP call. So, Motorola should focus on products that are standards compliant, rather than attempting to support an useless product.
Motorla already has a solution for handing off between wifi and cellular with WLAN... just depends how much tech gets dumped into these offerings too...
SIP plays well enough with NAT as long as the user agent is NAT-aware. I've used several software and hardware ones that work just fine through NAT with no special configuration of either router or client.
It's completely false that VoIP using SIP can't be encrypted:
S/MIME Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)
Requirement for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3711.txt