VoIP Going Wireless

imashoe writes "CNet's News.com reports on the wireless future of VoIP. Similarly BonaFideReviews.com has published an interesting article that attempts to predict what the future of voice communications will be like. The two editorals seem to agree that VoIP is going mobile and in a big way."

Comments

Can You PH33R M3 Now?

[Orrin Bloquy]

Hopefully encryption will make this a little more secure than regular cell communications.

Re:Can You PH33R M3 Now?

[SoloFlyer2]

Hopefully people will stop pushing the propriatry nonsense that is Skype and look toward the future and the open protocol SIP...

and btw the SIP already permits crypto negotiation.

Re:Can You PH33R M3 Now?

[SoloFlyer2]

Please Dont Twist My Words!

I never said Skype didnt have crypto, i didnt know if it did or it didnt.

I never said Asterisk had support for SIP crypto, I said the SIP protocol had support for crypto it just isnt implemented in asterisk yet, but it is implemented in other products and asterisk can route/forward the encrypted packets it just cant transcode/decode/encode them.

I dont like Skype because i belive that proprietry protocols requiring license fees when used by third partys, ARENT helping progress in the VoIP industry.

I also belive that the Skype protocol is inferior to SIP, as SIP Is very well thought out and has lots of support for future enchancements, whereas Skype was developed much earlier on when it was harder to see where VoIP was going thus lacking the same level of flexability.

I have nothing against the makers of Skype or the program that they have created both have played their part in making VoIP what it is today... i just belive that now that there is a suprior standard protocol available they should convert to it rather than standing in the way of VoIP progress by try to push a proprietry protocol.

Re:Can You PH33R M3 Now?

[6*7]

I didn't twist you words, I just used all info that was available at that moment:

-posting about encryption
  -you reply: don't use skype, use SIP which has support for encryption
    -me replying: skype has encryption

Next time either stick to the subject or elaborate like you did now to avoid you feeling attacked.

oh no!

[yagu]

Okay, here's the thing that bothers me about VOIP going wireless: I already find cellular (wireless) unacceptable in quality. I already find VOIP unacceptable in quality (though I will concede under perfect conditions, it can be quite good). I may not be able to pick out different brands of beer on a bet (actually, I can), but I can smell a cellular call 12,000 miles away. And I can tell a VOIP call 5 "route" hops away.

I assume this development implies some marriage of the technologies (I wasn't able definitively to tell from the article). I can only shudder at the thought. Can you hear me w8erfjkldfa?...., Caeoa yow hear ewlrkj now? FSCK!

Maybe the most irritating thing in this is the stampede to not offer great technology for what I'll call "comfortable" conversation/communication, but instead: Get there first; Maximize throughput; and Make lots of money. The technology on the other hand is quite capable of delivering the high quality land line users are accustomed to... but, you're never going to see (hear) it in the competitive sleezy crappy quality and service world of wireless.

When was the last time you had to constantly repeat yourself on land line to land line phone conversations (not attribtutable to non-understandable help desk support)? Yeah, technology marches on, I just wish it would spiff up its uniform.

Re:oh no!

[ciroknight]

Everything in life is a trade off. Here, we trade off Quality for Convenience and Price. WifiVoIP (Wifyvoip! try saying that 10x fast) will probably be the lowest cost alternative, available practically everywhere, but also with medium grade quality. Meanwhile Cellular is a bit more expensive and a bit higher quality. That's pretty much all you've got wireless (satellite phones I've demoed ages ago had worse quality than yesterday's cells, so I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to go this route), so you immediately drop to the inconvenience (and high quality) of being tied to your desk all day long.

Personally, I'm all for the lowest price here, and as VoIP goes wireless, so will I. I already hate signing contracts to use my phone, and I also don't like the severe gouging that cell companies try to slam you with when it goes to the "no-contract" phone service. And on top of all of this, they want you to buy a new phone or get a new chip every time, which is ridiculous as it's just a piece of flash ram...

Different strokes for different folks is the lesson learned here.

Quality

[evildogeye]

I notice a quality difference between VoIP when I am directly plugged into my router and when I am using WIFI. And VoIP sound quality is already subpar to begin with. Eventually, wireless VoIP will be king. As it stands now, however, wired VoIP still needs some significant quality upgrades.

VOIP should work with email

[backslashdot]

Not sure how many VOIP providers offer this .. but VOIP voice mail should be sent as an attachment in an email. And when a person makes a VOIP call .. they should have the option of sending a text message or listening to a custom message .. or .. when you make a VOIP call .. you may be able to get IM'd back (text to speech if the caller isn't logged into IM?) or an IM that reads "I'm not here, leave an IM".

Calls to reach me should not have to know which device I am currently on. That is .. am I on my desktop? Or am I out with my cell phone while my desktop happens to be logged in? Or is my desktop and laptop off? AIM solves some of this by enabling multiple simultaneous logons .. which is great because I never have to be signed off .. I can sign in to AIM from work and then sign off from work ..all the while my home desktop stays logged on.

But on the top of my feature list is encryption end to end encryption. Along with this notion of encryption is the call blocking/receiving capability .. callers would have to prove their identity before a call gets through (for example if i only want certain people or people from a certain group/company to get through). If I am on vacation I only want friends to be able to contact me, not people from work ,,they can get forwarded to email or IM depending what I choose.

If a VOIP service can offer me these services and cell phone integration .. then I'm in. Seems like google, msn, or yahoo would be able to deliver on these needs.

Start developing the anti-spam software now

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is falling over themselves predicting how big this will become. But even now, with telephone calls costing a reasonable amount there are telemarketers calling day and night. When the cost of a telephone call is only marginally greater than that of an email (including infrastructure and the like), how many spam calls are you going to receive a day? Hot on the heels of any take up in VoIP is going to be VSPAMoIP.

I don't see any way this can be stopped (look at the lack of impact of several years of quite serious efforts to reduce spam). I'm not throwing my phone out yet.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

[Karl Cocknozzle]

this may be a little off topic, but funny! check it out if you're not browsing at -1

I'm with you, man. Why must we moderate to death something that is only slightly off-topic. It has been said before here that the "Meta" category is the smartest thing about kuro5hin. Maybe Slashdot needs to (finally) follow suit? Rather than waste tons of effort trying to smack down people who criticize slashdot on slashdot, it would give Taco and company some reasonable suggestions.... From time to time... On full moons... When a goat has been sacrificed at dawn the preceding Sunday... A goat purchased the preceding Wednesday from a one-eyed monk...

But, in all seriousness, it would also give witty, funny posts that are meant as both loving criticism and humor an appropriate place to be "on-topic." Everybody wins. Introspection is good for any community, and slashdot is no exception.

Re:Hmm

[saridder]

Everything you mentioned sounds fine on paper, but in reality congestion in the cloud rarely happens. If that was the case, Skype, Vonage, Google Talk, and 100's of other VoIP services that travel over the internet wouldn't work, yet they do, right?

There's a bandwidth surplus in the cloud due to overinvestment and most problem happen where you described them, on the last mile/in your equipment. Plus with de-jitter buffers and other mechanisms most VoIP end devices use, losing a few packets once in a while isn't a big deal.

Latency!

[Tmack]

Whats your avg. latency on a normal pots phone? Barely noticable. Same on VoIP (unless you are attempting it over dialup to a far away country). Avg satelite latency? Very noticable, ever watch the news when they have a correspondant "Live via Satelite"? The local anchor asks a question and then you sit through a few seconds of silence while the question goes across satelite to the correspondant, and a few more while the answer comes back. Satelite phones have the same issues, though maybe not as severe. Satelite broadband has the issue as well, though the uploads go through your dialup connection (in most setups). Not to mention the cost associated with taking up time on a sat link...

tm

Appropriate uses and the long-term view

[0-9a-f]

In the First World, we live in hyper-wired environments. I have over 30 wired IP telephones in sight of me right now, as well as a choice of cellphone providers and technologies (CDMA or GSM). I also have a choice of wired and wireless IP providers - again over a variety of technologies including dialup, cable, xDSL, ATM, or even Ethernet, as well as WiFi, WiMax, and 1xEvDO.

In the Third World - and probably in two-thirds of the world besides - it just costs too damned much to roll out and maintain cabling. Cellphone technologies like GSM and CDMA are really only useful for a voice service (unless the end user has cash to burn).

IP technologies make so much sense, since you roll out voice AND data all in the one roll-out, and don't have to worry about tracking down the badly soldered joins, or the waterlogged junctions. It also gets the equation around the right way - instead of trying to run data over a voice service, you're running voice over a data service. Brilliant!

Get the technology right in the world where we've already got so many choices, and the rest of the world will be so much better off.

Re:wireless is great! VoIP is great!

[Bulmakau]

VOIP is nice and wireless could be handy ;) However, what I don't understand is... "VOIP over wireless IP".. shouldn't IP be IP? wireless or not? and VOIP over wireless should be non-issue since it is designed to work over IP network, and the focus should be to make wireless IP networks good enough to be able to carry VOIP? I mean, the original article here is about VOIP going wireless.. but VOIP doesn't need to go nowhere.. its already VOIP and working over wireless IP network should not be an isssue here.