Microsoft To Offer Free Wireless VoIP

Strudelkugel writes "The Business Online reports: MICROSOFT has developed a Skype-style free internet voice service for mobile phones that City analysts believe could wipe billions off the market value of operators such as Vodafone.The service is included in a mobile version of Microsoft Office Communicator due to be released this year. It will take the form of a voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) application that allows Office users to make free voice calls over wi-fi enabled phones running Windows Mobile software. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer dropped his bombshell at the mobile operators' annual 3GSM show in Barcelona last week. The significance of his remarks was missed because of his effusive and eccentric delivery..." That is huge; I would hope to see the same thing coming out on the Symbian and other devices. The hard part will be getting these to market; since almost all mobile phones are sold thru the mobile telcom companies.

Comments

Service and Phone separated in Europe

[madsen]

The hard part will be getting these to market; since almost all mobile phones are sold thru the mobile telcom companies.

In the states perhaps. In Europe it's very common that you buy your phones unlockled. Here in Finland it's even illegal to sell a phone with the service included, they have to be sold separately, without connection.

Re:Hmm

[dodobh]

You only need an instrument capable of switching to GSM when Wifi is not available.

Something like this perhaps:

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/motorola-cn620-sea mless-wifi-to-gsm-voice-calls-017270.php
http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-VOIP+Phones
http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/mobile-pho nes/zyxel-dualmode-gsmwifi-phone.asp

Enjoy :P

Skype has that

[Britz]

Isn't that exactly what Skype has been offering for almost 2 years now with Skype for Pocket PC?

http://www.skype.com/products/skype/pocketpc/

Very good point.

[Andy Dodd]

Free, RELIABLE wi-fi is not available in nearly as many areas in the U.S. as even T-Mobile cell phone coverage. (Note: T-Mobile's coverage SUCKS. They still have far greater and more reliable coverage than free or even paid Wi-Fi.)

Also note that 802.11's channel access scheme is not well suited to transferring many small packets at low latency, which is required for VoIP. The end result is that even an 802.11g access point at full rate (54 Mbps) has trouble matching even a 1.544 Mbps T1 line in terms of VoIP capacity, *even with voice compression*. This is because the capacity limit turns out to be not the raw bitrate, but the number of *packets* per second that the system is able to handle. Small packets and 802.11 just don't mix for a number of reasons. For bulk data, there are packet bursting extensions to 802.11 that help a lot (Part of SuperG for example, and I think Broadcom's equivalent to SuperG also does bursting), but packet bursting introduces too much latency and variation in latency for VoIP.

There was a good analysis of 802.11 capacity for SIP-based VoIP somewhere, I can't remember where. Note that IAX trunks would get MUCH better capacity in this situation, but this only helps for actual trunk connections (for example, trunking across a long-range cantenna-based 11g link), not when each user has a different device connected to the AP.