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.

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.

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.

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