Phones And Skype Get Together

An anonymous reader writes "MSNBC has a look at some of the interesting gadgets that will be available for purchase now that Skype has published instructions on how to build the service into phones." From the article: "We saw one other innovative product at CES that is definitely worth a Skype addict's consideration. The Skype Wi-Fi phone, coming this March from Netgear, is basically a Skype cell phone. It connects to any wireless network, letting users make Skype calls completely unconnected to a PC or phone line. If it works as well as it appeared to when Netgear CEO Patrick Lo demonstrated it during a press conference by calling Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom, the little service from Luxembourg will have officially escaped from the confines of the personal computer."

Comments

Question:

[HugePedlar]

Eventually, we may all live in wi-fi enabled areas, with constant free internet access. It's already happening in some cities. If wireless IP phones take off, it's reasonable to assume we'll all be able to make free, unlimited phone calls to each other because everyone will have access.

Will this happen, or will someone (e.g. the telcos) force regulation upon it? It seems lately that new technology that frees us up ends up being unreasonably restricted.

Re:Question:

[Firehed]

You can't stop the signal.

Though I suppose they can find some way to charge for it. I think we're being a bit too optimistic, no matter how good the idea is for everyone but the telcos. That's the problem with capitalism - free just doesn't work for the greedy. I could probably think of a dozen ways they could charge for it, but say even if it's $5/mo for the "phone port" on otherwise free wifi, it's still hella cheaper than your current long distance. At least if you make more than one call per month. In theory it's much better anyways, as they should be able to triangulate your location for 911 calls, assuming the thing doesn't have a GPS built-in (though that's all a GPS does, except it uses stuff floating in orbit rather than stuck to the tops of buildings, so in theory a "WGPS" would be more accurate.)

WEP Encryption...

[Anonymous Coward]

...AFAIK we should be going to WPA/WPA2 because there are a couple of nice vulns in WEP.

The site states though "nobody will be able to be listening in"...

Re:WEP Encryption...

[c0l0]

Yeah, WEP is often referred to as Weakest Enrcyption Possible not completely without reason ;)

new song.

[supernova87a]

"ding dong, telecoms are dead!"

Who's crapping their pants now?

step 1. Old telecom companies notice their revenue dropping like stones.
step 2. old telecom companies attempt to preserve unsustainable revenue streams by limiting the bandwidth of competitors on their networks
step 3. Customers sue over equal access to networks
step 4. company such as Google kicks their asses by offering free, unrestricted wifi in every major city around the world
step 5. old telecom companies stop whining and do what they should've done in the first place

couldn't they have saved the trouble?

Problem

[ajs318]

There is a problem with this because, underneath it all, Skype is still a proprietary, closed technology. This creates an unacceptable barrier to anyone looking to enter the marketplace: competition is not fair and free.

It's absolutely inconceivable that in a civilised country, anyone should have to licence "intellectual property" from anyone else just to do their job. This is nothing short of privatised taxation.

The telephone network -- indeed, all public infrastructures, be they roads, railways, sewers, power lines or hospitals -- exists for the benefit of Society at Large, all of us, not just those who pay money to private corporations; and it is the place of governments -- as our elected representatives whose wages we pay -- to ensure that everyone has the ability to benefit therefrom.

Re:Problem

[Yaztromo]

It's absolutely inconceivable that in a civilised country, anyone should have to licence "intellectual property" from anyone else just to do their job. This is nothing short of privatised taxation.

That's odd -- last I checked, I can call SkypeIn users from my GPS Cell phone, the POTS pay phone up the street, and from my Vonage account.

There are standards in this world for telephone systems, and Skype has to follow them in order to be accessable both to and from the rest of the world. It isn't as if Skype is the only telephony solution around, or like anyh Government is forcing its citizens to replace their existing telephony technologies for Skype.

Skype being propretiary is a problem, but not for the reasons you give. If you want to compete against Skype, it's not a problem -- Gizmo seems to be making a go of it without any serious problems. So long as Skype intergrates with the rest of the International telephony network, there is no problem -- competing with them won't be impossible at all, and won't require you to license anything from them.

Also on Skype's side is that at least they appear ready and willing to license their technology to a variety of hardware manufacturers.

The big problems with Skype being propretary are:

1. Platforms Skype Ltd. isn't interested in targeting won't be able to connect to Skype's network (at least without some software developer licensing the protocols from them). If you're on OS/2 and want to run Skype, you're SOL, and always will be.
2. You have to trust Skype Ltd's security analysis of their encryption and associated protocols. Much of Skype's protocols are currently "security by obscurity", and while they may well be up to the task, it's hard to prove this point due to a lack of source code,
3. You have to count on Skype Ltd. to improve the product over time, and have no ability to do so yourself.

This might come as a shock to some, but some people are okay with such things. Personally it's not for me -- I have Skype installed for those times when I must communicate with other Skype users (although given the choice I prefer iChat AV, or the X-Pro softphone that is attached to my Vonage account when I need to call a normal phone system user from my laptop while away from home), but otherwise wouldn't use it as my primary telephone system. But not all people are me, and not everybody cares so much about the use of open standards, so long as they get what they pay for and the cost is low.

So in conclusion I agree witth you that closed protocols are bad, but in this case not for the reasons you have given. The underlying telephone system is sufficiently open that any Skype-competitor can arrive on the scene and doesn't have to pay Skype a single penny for the privledge.

Yaz.

Re:Most Important /. Question

[Ziviyr]

I'd think Speex was the better one to ask about here...

LIPA and Govt Security

[Unknown_monkey]

What you can expect is that the Landline Phone Industry Association, LPIA, will begin a propaganda war against the wi-fi phone users, bringing back the phone phreaking icons to convince Congress that this wi-fi phone phreaking is destroying society and endangering the youth the same way as drugs and rock and roll.
They will cite examples where someone uses one of these untraceable and unmonitored wi-fi phones to buy drugs while listening to rock music published by indie labels or worse yet, stolen from the internets.
Then the governing bodies will generate laws to make it unprofitable for Netgear and others to manufacture the phones by loading up Federal Surcharges and eventually banning the phones because of international security concerns. The phones could be used by foreign agents to orchestrate activities that could harm our people. They must be stopped and their phones must be stopped.

Re:LIPA and Govt Security

[arivanov]

If Skype gets anywhere close to mainstream it will be forced to provide mandatory legal intercept without any need for inventing fantom associations. This will be regardless of its use for drug dealing or not.

And here comes the most interesting bit. In order to provide legal intercept capabilities it will have to provide law enforcement access via a remote control interface to computers serving as supernodes in the P2P network. These computers are not even owned by Skype and may be outside the jurisdiction of the party requesting intercept. In fact intercepting on them may be illegal in the country where they are located. This is bound to get very entertaining at some point sooner or later.

And by the way using specially dedicated nodes for legal intercept only will not work because one of the requirements for legal intercept in telephony is that it should not be noticeable to either party in the conversation. A node located in a strange place will very happily show up in the netstat on both Linux and Windows and writing a utility which shows which address block is the supernode you are connected to is a piece of cake.

Free as in idiot?

[MosesJones]

constant free internet access

Let me get this straight, you think that in future access to the internet will be completely free. So who will pay for the wireless access points, for the people to install them, to maintain them and for the monitoring of them? Some one will have to... or do you mean that internet access is an right granted by the US Constitution? If you are talking about goverment provided internet access for all then this is NOT free its paid for my the tax-payer.

It really gets my goat that people seem to regard health-care as something for the rich, but internet should be provided to everyone (read the middle-class and above). Its one screwed up country that thinks that free internet, but not free-water, free-gas, free-electricty and certainly not universal healthcare is something to aim for.