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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."
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.
Argh.
But does it play ogg?
=)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
More about the phone (including a link to a large, print-quality image) can be seen at Netgear's site: http://tools.netgear.com/skype/
I'd love to have a phone like this that I could set up to use a sip server. Then I could use my "Home phone" from any WiFi point. Get enough WiFi points and I could even trash my good ol' cell phone. Well, almost. ;-)
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
Someone just needs to write an open-source SIP/IAX Skype gateway so I can use my SIP phone (now available super-cheap) w/Skype. I see there is one out there, but it's windows only, thirty bucks, and closed source.
Asterisk support for Skype, now there would be something!
There's no WPA support according to the FAQ. Also, how does it handle captive portals? Maybe it has a built in web browser, but I can't find any mention of it.
Maybe we need to convince more hotspot providers to allow free skype calls!
Anyway, wifi is still pretty rare around me, unless you want to 'borrow' home users connections, and thats getting quite dicey now.
Darren.
http://www.22balmoralroad.net/ http://www.tinynetworks.co.uk/
"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?
This is because Skype already has its own encryption layer. An attacker might be able to do something annoying once they crack the WEP encryption (such as interjecting packets), but they won't be able to listen in to your conversation without then breaking the Skype packet encryption (which is probably stronger than WEP).
However, I do share a general annoyance with devices that don't support WPA/WPA2. My wireless network is completely WPA2 based, and I have one device which does, at best, WEP. My current solution has been to disallow this device (a Palm Tungsten C) from connecting to my network by continuing to run WPA2, which is an annoyance (as it means I can't use its WiFi functionality in my home). Device manufacturers need to wake up to the fact that WPA and WPA2 are a reality, and that their devices need to support these modern standards alongside WEP.
Yaz.
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Skype under linux completely sucks. It seems after ebay took over skype, they chucked out the support for linux so much so that it doesnt work at all. Check this out http://forum.skype.com/viewtopic.php?t=32290&sid=8 0e30a3a5027922776d84bb7906d8bf1
Skype, wake me up when you have fixed the audio bug, otherwise go to the DOGS
I puchased an HP ipaq 6315 a year ago which was one of the first mobile phones to have classic cell phone service, GPRS internet, WiFi and bluetooth all in the same device. Here's what I've observed and learned, the first of which relates directly to Wi-Fi phone calling:
1) I tried making WiFi calls with Skype running on the MS PocketPC OS 2002. I *was* able to make a Skype call over WiFi... but I couldn't really hear much more than a word or two from the other person and lots of garble. Basically it was disappointingly unusable. I am not sure whether the slow 3-400MHz CPU is the problem or the nature of the non-optimizal internet connection and signalling overhead (I suspect the former). But I tried repeatedly, and I tried to move to be closer to the WiFi source with no positive effect. So this may not work great on mobile phones today. YMMV and "tomorrow" is a different story of course.
2) The cell phone seems to end up in wierd states that need rebooting. This happened once every few months with my Palm-based Treo, but has annoyingly, and ironically according to Microsoft stereotype, definitely been a once a week-type issue with my PocketPC phone. *Most* annoying is when it happens when you're on a call and you get a second inbound call and then system then gives you an unending series of dialog boxes in confusion. (By rebooting I really mean a "soft reset" where you need to push a thin object into a hole.) To be fair to Microsoft, it may be true that some fraction of those hangs might be due to bugs in the apps that lead to a platform-level hang. *But*, I can't cut MS too much slack because the MS platform doesn't give me a way to kill/restart the app it seems. (Note: I haven't had time to spend the hours necessary to research and get to the bottom of this.)
3) The cell-phone seems to lie about signal strength at times; it might show full signal but then right after I dial, it shrinks to two bars. I thought it might be a limitation of how polling/powersaving works, but in any case, I've found that I can't necessarily trust the "bar" ratings, even when I'm stationary, to describe signal strength until I actually make a call. I have zero idea whether this is caused by my phone, or just random emi interference, or the carrier or whether others have this same issue.
4) My favorite feature on both my Treo Palm and the PocketPC phone has been the ability to sync contacts on my phone with contacts on my PC (in MS Outlook, which I use for contacts but not for email.)
5) My second favorite feature has been the free downloadable musician tools available on the platform. (The selection was stronger on the Palm-based Treo.) I.e. metronome, tuner, and guitar chord charts. It's just very cool, since I always have my cell phone with me, that I also thus always have guitar chord charts in a pinch.
YMMV but here are the lessons I shelled out too much bucks to learn so I pass them along to my fellow Slashdotters.
Cheers,
--LP
I wonder how long before offices around the world will start using WiFi-based phones backed by * instead of regular, wired PBX.
I am suprised that no development house (or Nintendo themselves) has yet to start developing Skype for the DS (or have they?).
....not to mention many more units of the DS sold!
/yes, we know that Nintendo already showed off a Skype-ish application with Wario on screen prior to the DS release.
/yes, we know about DSspeak but alas it doesn't have the installed userbase of Skype.
Handheld wi-fi device already in the hands of millions
+
application with an installed user base of million
=
Millions of happy people talking to each other over SkypeDS!!
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.
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
I keep seeing comments that Skype is "Luxembourg-based". Skype's legal headquarters are (were, pre-Ebay?) based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, but just about nothing else is as far as I understood it. Estonians wrote the code, and it's touted as a big success story in Estonia. The co-founders are a Swede and a Dane. Newsweek might see minimal legal headquarters as being the basis to call it its base, but from a Slashdot readership's perspective, you'd think you'd want to know where the developers are, and what they're doing now.
It's probably safest to say "EU-based". But I think Estonia at least needs a nod.
Haven't seen much mention of this so far.
These wireless handsets, as has been previously pointed out, have been available for SIP networks for quite some time, along with decent wired handsets which also don't require a PC to be switched on. One good (albeit expensive) wireless SIP phone is the Hitachi WIP-5000 which has regular firmware updates including support for new features like WPA.
The main drawback with most of these phones, though, is not just the lack of support for new security standards like WPA (many, like the skype phone, support WEP only). The biggest problem, at least here in the UK (I dunno if it's different elsewhere), is that most of the wi-fi hotspot providers do not run encryption at all. Instead, they have an open network but require you to login through a webpage, in order to bill you. This technology is fine for laptops and PDAs with web browsers but makes such phones utterly useless* except when you're at home or you're lucky enough to have a workplace which supports standard wi-fi.
I'm sure someone will come up with a wifi sip phone with a browser eventually (Nokia's new E-series supports wi-fi, so that's promising) but, at the moment, the handsets are very expensive and not being able to use them at most UK wifi hotspots is a major drawback.
Sam.
* In theory, you could clone the MAC address to a laptop, sign in with that and then swop to the phone, but that's obviously far too much hassle for real usage.
Information transfer is now relatively free and fast.
Enjoy it while it lasts. Given the lobbying currently going on by the telecommunications companies, and the relative perceived ignorance/apathy of Internet users, I think we're quickly racing towards a future where how much you pay directly affects not only the speed at which you can get information (as it does currently) but also your quality-of-service and connection priority.
You already pay extra if you want a static IP. You pay more than that if you want a synchronous connection where you can send and receive at the same speed. In some cases more than that, if you want certain ports unblocked so you can run a server. The 'two tier' internet already exists in terms of who can distribute information by running a server and who can't; eventually we're going to have that on the receiving side as well. You want to open a ton of connections and do P2P? Extra fee. You want a low-latency connection for doing streaming video or internet telephony? Definitely an extra fee.
I have a feeling that at some point, we're going to look back at these early days of 'all-you-can-eat' Internet access for all, with a certain nostalgia. We're already looking back fondly on the days when anyone could set up a server on their cable modem in their basement.
If you want a look at where the future is headed, take a look at Australia. They used to have unlimited-access internet plans there, but they practically don't exist anymore (I'm told), at least at the consumer level. Instead there are plans with varying levels of bandwidth/transfer caps.
Going forward, once the packet filtering systems get a little better and a little more widespread, you're going to start seeing plans that limit transfer by type: you get unlimited transfer to your ISP's "preferred" VoIP carrier, but if you want to use your own, that'll be $15 extra a month. Same with streaming video and internet radio. "Unknown" and encrypted traffic will be capped or throttled -- so don't try to just tunnel it.
While on the backbones we may have a "two-tier Internet," to the consumer there are going to be many subtle gradations that make up the tiers. It's going to be just like a cell phone: the most basic service costs one thing, but everything extra you want to do with it costs more.
I don't think there's really any good way to avoid this. The Internet is becoming bigger and bigger business, and at the same time the companies that effectively control it are under more and more pressure to find new ways of squeezing revenue from their assets. Given that the government is pretty toothless when it comes to dealing with large corporations and their lobbying arms, I don't think that our children will have anywhere near the unlimited access to information that we've gotten used to lately. At least, not unless we buy it for them.
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