Slashdot Mirror
SkyQube Squared Shakes Up International Calling
Max Matakino writes "CNet.co.uk has stumbled across a very interesting box indeed out at CeBIT: 'The SkyQube Squared from Qool Labs is a VoIP gateway that enables you to forward calls and messages made to your mobile phone or landline via SkypeOut to another number anywhere in the world.' This means that if you receive a call to your house phone while you're in China, you can get it forwarded to a Chinese cell phone or telephone for the relatively very cheap price of a SkypeOut call. I'm guessing wireless carriers aren't going to be happy about this one."
You should also check out http://www.latenightpc.com/blog/archives/category/ asterisk/ for a couple of tips on how to set up an Asterisk box with VOIP gateway...
Something Witty Goes Here
This is a cool thing, but I wonder about the lag time. First, there is the typical lag you get on a mobile phone, and added to it is the lag time you will get from VOIP.
Best Windows Freeware
...and added to THAT is the lag time for the second mobile on the other end. It may work well but its hardly likely to be lightning fast.
meh, for a free international cell phone call?
I hear UK residents pay for phone service by the minute. If this is indeed the case, this deal is not so good. It is good for us in the US and Canada who pay a flat monthly fee that enables us to make as many call as we wish and to talk for as long as we want.
I have a colleague in Chennai who picked up each and every call from his girlfriend to his Chennai mobile - "when he was in San Jose, CA". The bill was $8000/-. The company paid the bill but wtf If he didnt know about international roaming charges, I bet he wouldnt have heard about this beauty either. ByteMePlenty
If your goal is cheap international calling (mobile or otherwise), one thing Vonage can do is forward calls from your number to any other number by simultaneously ringing your Vonage phone and the other number. Another thing you can do is bring your Vonage router with you when you go to another country, say China. As long as you have a high-speed Internet connection, it'll work and calls to your home phone number are just like you were at home. Combine the two features -- get a cheap, throw away Chinese cell phone and you can also have the Vonage # forward to the Chinese cell phone number. Now, you'll pay Vonage's international calling rates, but these are much cheaper than paying the exorbitant rates charged by your mobile phone service when you take your GSM phone with you to another country, and with some plans certain countries are even free.
My blog
"I'm guessing wireless carriers aren't going to be happy about this one."
It really won't make a difference. When you forward a call from a mobile you're still using your airtime so your provider gets what they want. Overseas roaming charges originate from the expensive roaming agreements with the overseas provider, not from your carrier. It's the provider in Thailand or where ever whose network you're using that charges your carrier for the usage.
Cool product, btw.
We have witnessed the creation of yet another /. mantra, the assumption that anything relating telephony to the Internet is a threat to wireless carriers, and that the carriers will try to quash it.
If it's an assumption, it's not newsworthy. Drop it or don't mention it.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
meh, for a free international cell phone call?
Umm, no. Skypeout calls to mobile phones are far from free. Cheaper than your wireless carrier, but definitely not free.
(This from someone who is making a lot of Skypeout calls to mobile phones at the moment.)
For people who live in france and have a freebox, this isn't really news.
I remember when my cousin from Central America visited me in the States. He installed Skype on my PC while I was at work. When I discovered this I began getting stomach pains. I didn't want to make him feel bad so I let him tell me how great Skype is and how he uses it for personal and business needs. He said everyone he knows uses it it Latin America. That scared me. Mainly because I know from experience what Skype can do to my PC and even after I have "uninstalled" it, (Time to clean the Reg). BTW, I was using the stand alone version, not the bundled crap. I wondered how many people who dont know any better just plug along using Skype all the while with their bandwidth and system resources being eaten up. Not to mention the all forced port assigments. I guess if your are constantly making International calls then its worth it in the long run. But I would use a cheap, dummy box for only Skyping. Bring on the Skype lover flames, bitches!
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
If you're going to do a slashvedrtisement, especially one as obvious as this (nothing really new and exciting, has been done a million times by people with a PBX or any normal phone who can fwd their calls to their skypeIn number who in turm forwards to your PAYG throwawy SIM card.).
The right title should have been "SkyQube Squared shakes Up International Roaming charges".
This article was especially poor in substance and novelty.
And don't expect to see this thing explode the sales chart. It'll most probabl be +200 dollars given that it has GSM radio.
Geeks only. 2000 units shipped tops. 800 will be sold and we'll all call it a day.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
So...This whole story is base on a comment by a banker??? Research please!
Not A Troll!
Sorry folks, but for my time and money, I want total client/server control. So I'll go to Nerd Vittles and download myself a Trixbox (in a CentOS VMware image). It'll do it all, and the docs there are great, including how to migrate to real hardware should you want.
For SIP (etc.) clients, I'll take a Nokia N95 please, which is a fancier version than the nearly 1.5 year old Nokia N80i, but with better specs.: DVD video plus GPS/maps. (Otherwise, the N80i, for about 375 euros) will connect you via 802.11 to your Trixbox, plus offers a 3.2 MP camera, good video, and syncs to Lotus Notes or Outlook (but using Windows software, I have yet try; the N95 is yet-to-be released). For client-side software, go to Project Gizmoand get your SIP client for your little phone.
Notes these phones will not be bundled with any carrier plans.
- - - -You can't be ahead of the curve if you're stuck in a loop.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Here here.
What makes matters worse is they are married to skype/ebay.
They've already flushed a couple of suitcases of cash down the toilet, I'm not sure why they didn't just colo some voip servers in specific markets they were targeting. At this point VOIP servers and POTS bridges are not rocket science. From there a simple bridge to the customers skype account and you are done.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
How long until your home broadband connection can be a local relay for you to call or get a call from anywhere on your cell/home for the cost of a local/skypeout call?
stuff |
I've been using Yapon.net
It doesn't rid me of the roaming charges but it has sure cut down on my long distance bill.
I have vosky that can do this as well. It's pretty cheap, got it for about 40 dollars. You hook it up to your computer via USB. It can take incoming landline calls and forward them wherever you want via Skype Out, or route Skype In calls to a local number (such as your mobile phone) via the landline (ie calling out via the landline). I live overseas, but have a vonage number. So, someone can call me on my Vonage number, Vosky handles this like a local landline call, and I can have it forward to my local cell phone. Also, I can call home, Vosky answers, and I can use the device to call anyone I have programmed into my Skype speed dial, and it calls out via Skype out..saving me on calls back to the States (or any country) and giving me the flexibility of being able to call from any local phone, be it cell or landline, and not being tied to only making Skype Out calls when sitting at home.
"Relatively very cheap price." Is that kind of like "Almost sometimes always a cheap price"?
Why are you doing that? There are much cheaper ways to call mobiles.
One of the easier ways is to pick a service from Betamax (link is to a 3rd-party price-comparison grid that will help you pick the Betamax service with the best rates to your destinations).
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
It looks like a nice plug-n-play setup (how many people are *really* going to figure out how to install and run something as complex as asterisk for this?), but what do their marketing people think they're doing? Not that they're any different from most, but I go to their site and they say "look at all the cool things we have" (spelled in a "witty" way, of course!). Do they have any information at all on how to actually *buy* one of their cool products? Not a peep. Are they doing PR or trying to sell a product? And I won't even get into driving away customers by having annoying music on by default, or a stupidly fixed size tiny window of info...
Yes indeed, Asterisk FTW.
While Skype is popular (I occasionally use it on my mobile phone), its proprietary model is annoying and limiting. Here in AU, voip is really starting to take off, and it's all based on SIP, the official standard for this sort of thing. From my normal home phone, I can make free calls to Asterisk setups or any other SIP client, including friends & family's voip phones, and PCs running Windows Messenger, Jabber or GTalk (via gateways if necessary). I can call overseas to any fixed phone for 20c/hour, and nationally for 10c untimed.
However, there are still some friends who are still using Skype instead of SIP, so I can't just pick up my regular phone and ring them for free (instead I have to pick up my mobile, connect to my wifi and call them with Skype instead). A SIP-Skype gateway might help, though I've never found one.
Perhaps Asterisk could be rigged to manage it, but there's this whole proprietary-protocol problem, see?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Why are you doing that? There are much cheaper ways to call mobiles.
Because:
(1) I am in Australia, my wife is currently in the UK
(2) I spend days at a time away from home myself
(3) I have an absolute requirement that the application I use to call from has to be cross-platform
(4) Sometimes it is just not worth the trouble of shopping around SIP providers just to save what amounts to a few cents.
I could probably go on at considerable length. Yes, I know Skype is far from perfect, and no, I'm not enthused about the proprietary nature of the client. But nevertheless, the concept is good, and the roaming contacts list is very useful.
In any case, the redirection might not save any money, depending on the way your phone billing system works.
My wife and I both have mobile phones on the same account. We often call each other when one is overseas. The cost of the outgoing side of the call can be very cheap with any given VOIP solution, but the mobile phone that is away from home (Australia in my case) gets slugged with a massive charge from Vodafone to receive the call.
Let's not forget Xcelis who plays in this space, too, with the PC-VOIP. Drop in a SIM card linked to an add-on line on your cellular plan. Hook up a phone wire to your VOIP TA, and the gateway will now route calls bidirectionally between your cellphone and the VOIP always using mobile-to-mobile and (hopefully) unlimited VOIP minutes. Supports speed dial, registered users, remote configuration using DTMF, and configurable inbound forwarding.
$350 + $10/mo on Cingular, for indicative pricing. Three years payback ROI if you can drop enough minutes to save $20/mo on your plan.
Intelligent Life on Earth