Slashdot Mirror
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.
Gan Family Homepage
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?
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/
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
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
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.
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
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
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
well, I fully agree with your points, but the fact remains, the competing products are not as easy to use or do not work well over NAT.
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/
Well in that case we need to extend the current open protocols to include NAT traversal.
:)
As it is, with NAT pretty much sidelining IPv6 (Its my belief that if we didn't have NAT we WOULD have IPv6 by now)
If NAT is here to stay, NAT traversal should be built into all relevant protocols.
I dont think that "because it's convenient" is any real reason for using something that is tainted.
Another thing to throw into the net - how difficult do you think it is for Skype to intercept, record and playback conversations on their network. Sure, the phone company probably has it easier, although they can only tap you at "addresses" that they know you will use - I assume Skype uses a username/password system to identify you to the network. Add to this the powers that govenment has, a possible change in the law that Skype have to keep copies of all communications going through their network (an extension of the email retention stuff in theory) and anything you say could come back to bite you.
Now where did I put my tinfoil hat........
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
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).
imagine a beowulf cluster of these babies!
sig: Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not