Slashdot Mirror
Vonage Testing Mobile VoIP Service Routers
kamikaze-Tech writes "In a Vonage VoIP Forum article
titled
Vonage Testing Mobile VoIP Service Routers
we learn that Vonage is doing customer trials involving a new Linksys Wi-Fi mobile service router. From the article comes the claim: "With the special router and handset, individual customers would be free to roam about their home or office, untethered from a modem or phone jack and without a connection to a laptop or desktop computer."
Suggesting the new routers are geared for installation in Wi-Fi hot spots: "In theory, someone should be able to walk into a Wi-Fi-enabled cafe, fire up a laptop, log on to the Internet and start dialing. But that now requires technical know-how and configuration hassles that most consumers don't want to deal with. The new routers are designed to do most of the heavy lifting.""
I can do this with my cellphone without a hotspot. Why do I need this?
Pamela Is A 61-Year-Old Jehovah's Witness Who Lives In A Shabby Genteel Garden Apartment In Hartsdale, New York
By: Maureen O'Gara
May 7, 2005 09:15 PM
A few weeks ago I went looking for the elusive harridan who supposedly writes the Groklaw blog about the SCO v IBM suit.
The now-famous opinion-shaping open source leader Pamela Jones, aka "PJ," doesn't give conventional face-to-face interviews. Never has, near as anyone knows. All communication is virtual. Only one person in the world has ever claimed to have met her - in the pressroom at LinuxWorld in Boston complete with a Pamela Jones badge - and described her as a fortyish reddish-blonde who giggled a lot.
[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:37 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones, as the superintendent of the building calls it, Ms. Pam Jones.]
Oh yeah? Wonder what cold crème she uses.
Pamela Jones is a 61-year-old Jehovah's Witness who lives in a shabby genteel garden apartment in desperate need of an interior decorator on a heavily trafficked commercial road at 304 North Central Avenue in Hartsdale, New York. Hartsdale is in Westchester and Westchester is IBM territory.
See, even though Groklaw treats cell phones like they were Kleenex and changes its unpublished numbers regularly, one number it left with a journalist led to this flat and - wouldn't you know it but - some calls from there had been placed to the courts in Utah and to the Canopy Group so obviously this just isn't any Pamela Jones.
Pamela has lived in apartment 1A for 10 years at least, according to the super, who says he's watched people move in, have children, and the children marry and move away.
Now, this isn't your usual anonymous New York apartment. It's practically a self-contained village where the super goes for the old ladies' groceries when there's snow on the ground and people know each other's business.
[Photo: May 7, 2005 12:41 PM - 304 North Central Avenue, Hartsdale, New York. The last known address of Pamela Jones.]
But the super didn't know much about Pamela except that she had a computer, worked at home (maybe sometimes) for a lawyer, was "paranoid" - his word - and "sensitive to smells."
He remembered how he was cleaning paintbrushes one day and she came running down the stairs screaming "Fire."
She was also missing and had been for weeks.
Nobody there knew where she was.
She had up and disappeared one day, and the super was worried about her. He said her son had dropped by and he didn't know where she was, and that some strange man that "nobody knew," as the super described him, had tried to get into her apartment while she was gone - the Medeco lock she had had installed on her door - something nobody else in the complex seemed to feel a need for - was more expensive than the door. But, as it happened, the super said, she had just sent in her rent in an envelope postmarked Connecticut.
Like an episode out of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego," the trail led to 10 Bittersweet Trail in Norwalk, Connecticut, 24 miles away. Sure enough, parked in the driveway was Pamela's car, just as the super had described it, a dark gray '90s Japanese number with a bunch of Jehovah Witness pamphlets tossed on the backseat.
The woman at the house, Barbara Jones Sharnik, told a disjointed story. She didn't know Pamela, Pamela hated her, Pamela wasn't there, Pamela left her car there because it got bumped, Pamela left her car there because she left town, and so on.
Afterwards Barbara called the cops, and then the cops called the number we left with her and the cops said that she was Pamela's mother and that Pamela was on the run and had shacked up with her mother because she had gotten "threatening mail" weeks before and that she had just gotten s
I want to test this out please.
Imagine! Phones without wires!!
We live in exciting times!
air and light and time and space
Out in public? What happens when this becomes popular and there are a few people using up all the bandwidth at these hotspots? VoIP isn't exactly the least demanding application ever.
If it becomes that popular, I can see places that offer free wireless access blocking VoIP access.
I have a cordless phone system at home (with Vonage) and I have a cell phone with global roaming. What do I get with this that I don't already have now that is simple and reliable?
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
Walk into hotspot.
Acquire connection.
Start Skype.
Make call.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
right now you might pay for a phone line, a fax line, a cellphone, cable tv and internet.
there are lots of convergences going on, but this is a big one. the day may be coming when you spend 1/4 or 1/3 of what you are paying now for the whole suite of pipes.
How about untethering yourself at the home or office by using a cordless phone? And why do you need a connection to a computer for VOIP? My service does not require a computer at all.
I've already been testing a handset that lets me hop on an 802.11b network... Only thing it's missing is a web interface to permit me to click the "I Agree" button on some captive portals, and I've been told its "in the next release" (snicker). It's decent, but still B. I'm looking forward to the G version I can give my boss instead of his desk phone (since he's prone to wandering the office instead of sitting in a chair). I'd be curious to see how this does with consumers, though I think most of us are going to opt for a headset and softphone while at Starbucks, if we even bother using VoIP on a shared connection like that. ;-)
Besides, with mobile carriers like MetroPCS (South FL and some of NC) offering no-limit use for $40, and carriers like Nextel offering unlimited incoming calls for $59, why would I wander around looking for a hotspot? I don't like coffee shops *that* much.
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Tue May 17 20:54:25 CEST 2005 [8156]
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Tue May 17 20:54:25 CEST 2005 [4677]
I already use Vonage and think VOIP is great. Not quite "Mom-Easy" to setup but otherwise my complaints are few.
That said,I'm still struggling to see the market for these mobile versions. How is a VOIP phone through a WiFi hotspot superior to my GSM cell phone? I've got both VOIP and cell service and I don't see the former replacing the latter for mobile communications. VOIP is cheaper sure, but WAY more limited for mobile communications. Much better suited for office work IMO. Even assuming these new devices work reasonably well, my DSL service gets overwhelmed pretty easily if I'm using Vonage and doing pretty much anything else at the same time. I can easily see two or three of these things being brought into a coffee shop and soaking up all the bandwidth.
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Tue May 17 20:57:07 CEST 2005 [3894]
"...requires technical know-how and configuration hassles that most consumers don't want to deal with."
Yup, the 'technical know-how and configuration hassles' of many broadband connections are currently being 'dealt with' by the nice folks at the cable company, which has allowed many Slashdot readers to use their neighbor's Internet for the last year.
So now we're a year away from being able to use their long distance service too, I guess.
Vonage's tag line should be "Get your neighbor to sign up!"
The only acceptable defense of scientific results is to say that they were the product of the Scientific Method.
At the router level, you can prioritize packet types. It is no big deal to lower the VOip traffic to ensure web users maintain acceptable bandwidth. In most installations, people apply the reverse standard in prioritizing VOIP over http, but in the cafe scenario, I can see it going this way.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
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Tue May 17 20:59:23 CEST 2005 [5017]
All the WiFi phones I've seen are ridiculously expensive. Maybe if the price on these types of phones comes down it will be worth it. Otherwise it's a better deal to get an ATA for your home/office and use a regular cordless phone--and all your phones can work off the ATA instead of just one phone.
Being able to walk into a hotspot to use it would be nice I guess, but why not just use a cell phone for these occasions? The good thing is I could see this driving down the cost of WiFi phones.
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Tue May 17 20:57:25 CEST 2005 [9341]
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Tue May 17 21:00:25 CEST 2005 [541]
Next Vonage will offer 56K dialup through wifi.
What the heck do we need this for?? As a previous user commented - use a cell phone, use a cordless phone - this makes little or no sense to me. Technology for the sake of technology is not practical!
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Tue May 17 21:02:49 CEST 2005 [7930]
Because you won't get Customer Service to help you at all. I tried for the final three months I had Vonage to get in touch with _anyone_ there about the service issues I was having, with zero luck. I finally went back to Ma Bell, who will at least listen and provides the services I need.
I'll go back when they get some decent CS skills.
I currently use my laptop and softphone from Vonage quite frequently at the local coffee house that offers free wi-fi and have tried to use it at panera bread which offers free WI-FI. However, I have been able to get it to work rather infrequently at Panera. At the local coffee house I open up my laptop, load the softphone, and then attach my headset. The question people typically ask is why not use your cell-phone.
I can receive calls for free which would otherwise use my minutes, I can dial 1800 numbers which is what my university uses for its conference calls for free, and most importantly, it is the best way to have office hours when I am away from the university. I recently did my dissertation's first defense using the softphone and system to connect to all my committee members and did not have an issue. Recently, at a conference the second author of the work was unable to attend but had some new data that he wanted to present. I loaded the softphone and dialed into him and using the conference system called raindance and the conferences system, he was able to present the data without an issue.
I see the progression of Vonage being very useful for those of us that for work have seen our laptops becoming more important then the air we breathe.
* No contracts
* Your virtual phone numbers
* Calling to Canada
* Unlimited minutes. No worrying about going over minutes/roaming.
Just a couple reasons. I have a bare-bones cell phone service through MetroPCS and my home phone through Vonage. For everything, I pay about $50/mo total. Something like this might me useful to me, as I'm often in a hotspot.
One reason I'd use it is in the event that I travelled outside of the MetroPCS service area. It's not that often that happens, but it certainly does occur, and I'm very likely to find a hotspot (Starbucks... even some of the middle-of-nowhere ones have T-Mobile now) or at least an open WAP to use for a few minutes.
The turkeys that flip open their laptop and have Limewire, Bittorrent, Bearshare and Kazaa all launching and downloading cruft.
:(
p2p apps + hotspots = inconsiderate behaviour.
while this might not be too practical right now, consider what happens when WiMax becomes available almost anywhere. no need for a separate internet and cellphone account - its integrated! Vonage seems to be planting the seeds so they are ready when wireless internet is available anwhere.
The day of lowered costs for phone, TV and Internet should have been here already. The holdup is that the various communications businesses bribe their congress-critters to stay in business.
AT&T saw this trend and started buying cable TV, and cell phone businesses so that they could be the ones to provide this integrated communications services. Unfortunately, they underestimated the political power that would be used to slow this integration.
Other countries surpass us in the quality of their services because businesses have to compete in those countries.
Someday, the promise of cheap, widespread, and rich communications services will arrive.
Best regards.
People seem to believe 802.11 is required for a wireless home phone but that is not true. The real point behind using 802.11 for VoIP is so you can build the MTA into the phone and use it not just at home but roam from any home/buisness/hotel/coffee shop with wireless internet access.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Mobile phones will really start to work for us when they can use any of the radio networks available, handing off seamlessly. UMA is the mobile telco's 3G coopt of WiFi. SCCAN is the WiFi coopt of 3G. And the IEEE's 802.11e makes WiFi itself suitable for heating up spots in the mobile convergence mix. There's even Bluetooth routes to global telephony. It'll take a few years to work at all, but we're looking at the ream form of the emerging mobile platform.
--
make install -not war
I'm looking forward to the day where I can use my $30/month wireless phone w/3G service to connect to a VOIP gateway over the data channel and chat with my buddies overseas for some rational fee. As things stand now, you either need to use a phone card or allow your carrier to drive a VW microbus up your nether regions to make international calls.
So, this is supposed to allow Vonage users to use Wi-Fi handsets? I'm not clear what these routers do differently than any other router that supports SIP NAT traversal. The article mentions selling this to hotspot operators; what does this router offer an operator? Can somebody explain?
Many providers are looking to converge their separate networks into a single network that is cheaper to maintain. Mobile WiFi based phone service is just a step into that direction. Eventually, I see Cell providers switching to a pure IP based service using WiFi type standards. It's not here quiet yet, but it's coming. Has anybody looked into Flarion? (http://www.flarion.com/ I believe a system like this could be a step into moving to a pure IP based system. A local cell carrier has been beta testing flarion in my area for a while and some of the cities cop cars have had flarion systems implemented into them so that they can get more detailed information quickly to their cars. VoIP may not be as stable or as secure as a typical digital cell service, but the day is coming when VoIP technology will over take the typeical cell service because it's cheaper.
Here is another reason to consider this as dubious at best. I don't know Vonage's upstream requirements but Broadvoice prefers 150 kb/s upstream for their service. You have virtually no guantee that these free wi-fi hot spots have that available. Meanwhile, your cellphone service in that area (for better or for worse) will be rather predictable.
Prospects are tha7 *TBSD 0wned.
It's like, meta-wardriving!!!
I am Spartacus
coDe.' Don't
In the future, the global voice network will merge with the global data network and we'll have realtime, always-on, p2p voice communications. Think instant messenger in your cell phone earbud. You'll be able to ask your buddy in Thailand a question as easily as asking the guy in the next cube over.
Talk about voices in the head...
When I hear "mobile", I think of traveling inside a vehicle. 802.11(*) wireless works like crap when you're trying it from a vehicle moving greater than about 20-30 MPH. Every test I' ve done, we've had to pull over and stop to get the damn thing to lock onto the signal again, and the connection will drop out as soon as we start driving again.
Other wardrivers might say, "I can find dozens of hot & open access points while driving around". Yep, airsnort can certainly find them ok while moving, but you sure can't *use* them worth crap until you stabilize your receiving platform... i.e by pulling over to the side of the road.
What we really need is true *MOBILE* wireless networking that can keep the bitrate up and constantly flowing to moving vehicles at full highway speeds.
Meshed 802.11 almost held promise, but I think there's just too much moving chunks of metal reflecting the microwave freqs around when in a road environment. I think a lower freq spectrum, prolly closer to 700-800 MHz would be much more viable for mobile use.
Clear she couldn't marketC. Therefore, and executes a Prefeerably with an have the energy God, let's fucking
ever2y day...Like Obligated to care m1nutes. If that.
Vonage is a beautiful thing and "it just works". We use them at work and it's great.
I just don't understand what this "new development" offers more than a conventional VoIP router and cordless phone ?
The concept of Hotspot VoIP is kind of dumb in my view. The magic of Vonage is that you just plug a regular phone into an IP router and it works out of the box. I don't see how they could do that in a wireless environment and I sure as hell don't feel like buying a hotspot-only vonage cell phone when my existing cell phone is relatively cheap and works anywhere.
Wireless Vonage is a pipe dream. The whole backbone of VoIP is of using the cheap, plentiful internet connectivity instead of nazified telco loops. Wireless VoIP would entail using some sort of GSM internet access which is a zillion times more expensive than voice.
-Billco, Fnarg.com