MagicJack Femtocell Gates Cell Traffic to VoIP

olsmeister writes "MagicJack is demonstrating a femtocell device at CES that will allow any GSM phone (locked or unlocked) to place free phone calls over the internet using VOIP. The device costs $40 and includes free service for 1 year. It supposedly will cover a 3,000 sq ft house."

Comments

Any asterisk compatable solutions?

[bflong]

I would love to have something like this that interfaces with Asterisk.

Is this legal?

[marcansoft]

There's no "trick" to work with locked phones. GSM has no network-side authentication, so all you have to do is impersonate your carrier's network (this is trivial). But I can't imagine this being in line with regulations. Another issue is that encryption does not work unless you're a carrier and share a secret with the phone's SIM, which means that invariably your calls will be broadcast in the clear when you're using this device.

I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea. Femtocells are great, but impersonating carriers gets you into all sorts of sticky issues.

Re:Is this legal?

[_LORAX_]

Illegal as hell under FCC rules since this would would be an unlicensed device intentionally disrupting a licensed service. At least that's my reading, the device might as well be a DoS for legitimate users within the range of the device.

Re:Is this legal?

[ink]

By your logic, those minijack-to-FM transmitters should also be illegal, but they're not. The FCC allows people to broadcast as long as they restrict it to a certain power level that won't interfere with others.

Re:MJ is a SCAM folks

[oldspewey]

I have one.

The software/drivers are in no way reliable enough to make it a serious replacement for a "real" phone, but as a backup when you want to make free calls around North America, it's not a bad solution. The call quality is perfectly fine. It's worth the $20/year they charge, but not a whole lot more. If they could get their software (and their abominable, laughable, seizure-inducing support) to work a little more smoothly, I'd be more willing to consider additional products from the company.

I have that magicjac doodad...

[zorkdork]

and now I can call all my friends for free.

And then I realized, I have no friends.

FOR SALE MAGIC JACK, used twice. $1

Frankly, I don't give a damn about magicjack,

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

When it takes only slightly more tech-fu to get a real SIP based setup working. However, if they are actually planning on selling a $40 USB peripheral than functions as a GSM femtocell, I am interested. Very Interested.

Reverse engineering the sucker, and getting a Free driver built would be a hell of a boon to small scale asterisk setups and similar. Most devices running asterisk or other software PBXs have at least one USB port, and being able to set up your own asterisk integrated femtocell would be awesome(either to let you take advantage of a lower priced/fewer minutes plan by doing all your home calling over a cheap SIP trunk or simply to take advantage of the fact that used and/or low-end GSM handsets are substantially cheaper than decent Wi Fi based SIP handsets are).

I don't assume that they would approve(and I can't imagine that team traditional telco would be too happy either) but if MagicJack is actually planning to make femtocells as cheap as USB wifi dongles, they get a gold star from me.

Re:Why femto?

[Clueless Moron]

Put simply, because the names microcell and picocell were already taken.

The names are not meant in the traditional mathematical sense; they just refer to coverage. A microcell will cover roughly a hotel, a picocell a typical office floor.

Re:MJ is a SCAM folks

[Jaysyn]

Consumer Reports likes it.

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumer-reports-science-shows-magic-jack-is-actually-worthwhile.html