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

Most Important /. Question

[Ohreally_factor]

But does it play ogg?

=)

Picture and info

[Zaffo]

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/

What we need is...

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Any sip account

[dpoulson]

You mean like:

http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/
or
http://www.vocera.com/ (star trek - like)
or
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/ZyXEL+P2000W

All are wifi SIP phones and work well with Asterisk

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.

Calls using "Wi-Fi phones"

[LinuxParanoid]

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