Yeah, the best one I've found is the E61 from Nokia. It's a regular GSM/UMTS phone which also has WiFi and a full blown SIP client on board. And you can find it on Craigslist for ~$350.
Much better then any of the crappy Taiwanese "VoIP" phones, or anything that does Skype only.
The SIP client is fully integrated with the contacts, just overall very well done by Nokia. Plus they release firmware updates on a regular basis, which can be done from a Windows PC.
The phone detects WiFi coverage, e.g. home or work, and automatically registers the SIP client.
Since it's SIP, you can use any one of the hundreds of ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Provider) out there to make cheap international calls, if that is what you want.
Hello ICANN, what are you thinking?
on
.tel Coming Soon
·
· Score: 2, Informative
After reading the application for.tel by Telnic, the company applying to run.tel, I'm still puzzled why ICANN would allow this TLD.
Is their idea to compartmentalize the Domain namespace by TLD? So the domain juegos.tel is my phone address, while juegos.xxx hosts my private porn collection?
One explanation by Telnic why.tel is needed is, that people already have too many addresses to remember (home phone, mobile, work, fax, email, IM etc.). But it's totally unclear how.tel would fix this.
For Internet communications, there is already the addressing provided by SIP (the protocol used for VoIP signalling). And SIP uses a URI, just like an email address. So there really is no need to introduce another TLD, just to indicate, hey, you can call me with this.
With a SIP URI, one can actually use a regular email address for making calls, sending IMs etc. And it solves exactly the problem described by Telnic, too many addresses, by converging everything into a single URI.
Please, no whining that you can't enter a URI on your phones keypad. Millions of people are sending SMSs every day, and they have no problem whatsoever typing text on a numberpad..tel looks like just another stupid money making scheme. With the chairman of Telnic being the former CEO of Telefonica, the spanish incumbent, why am I not surprised that this is happening?
Even cheaper at Nerdbooks.com
on
Linux Cookbook
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Check out Nerdbooks.com, they have all O'Reilly titles at 50% off.
Can someone please point out where in the article the claim that Google will offer VoIP service is substantiated?
As far as I can tell, it's based on speculations by "Julian Hewitt, senior partner at Ovum, a telecoms consultancy".
Some comments on the article below:
"The technology that will enable Google to move in on the market has been around for some time. Software by the London-based company, Skype, has been downloaded nearly 54 million times around the world but no large telecommunication firms have properly exploited it."
The technology has indeed been around for a long time, and Skype, a proprietary walled garden system, is definitely not the first or only one to use it. So why is Skype implicated here?
"The basic cost of making calls across the internet is almost nil. The real cost is in developing the software; after that, the service exploits available internet capacity."
So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call
"exploits available internet capacity"?
"In addition, the sound quality of calls across the internet can be poor and the connections can be less reliable."
As can been witnessed by using Skype, or other applications which incorporate modern codecs, for example the freely available wideband iLBC codec (http://www.ilbcfreeware.org), the voice quality over a broadband connection is usually excellent, in the case of iLBC much better then PSTN. The biggest issue is latency, which is increased in the case of Skype, where calls are often routed over media proxies to traverse NAT's.
Overall a poor article, "By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent". But what can be expected of the Times?
Once everyone is on the internet, you'll just be able to "phone greg@home.com" and a currently non-existent protocol will resolve that to whatever communication Greg has on hand, by talking only with Greg's own equipment, not that of any provider.
Good thinking.
The protocol you envision has been around for a couple of years now, and it's called Session Initiation Protocol - SIP. It uses a URI like to find the party you are calling, and after it has served it's rendezvous function, the media is sent peer-to-peer via RTP.
There are also plenty of soft- and hardphones using SIP coming out, some even with video.
So, yes, if everyone were using SIP and the internet, the Telco's would go the way of the Dodo bird with their current business model.
Unfortunately, a lot of what is called VoIP these days uses SIP, but just to emulate the PSTN, often refered to as PoIP, PSTN over IP.
As long as SIP [terminals|clients|user agents|phones] don't allow URI dialing, the telcos will have it their way, and the VoIP industry will profit just like the telcos, using a business model based on artificial scarcity. So make sure whatever SIP phone you buy supports URI dialing.
Great. Hopefully no one will fall for this attempt at adding proprietary stuff to open IETF protocols, since it will just create a mess for the consumer, much like what the multitude of cell phone standards did in the US (and GSM didn't in the rest of the world).
There are plenty of interoperability events going on, mainly SIPit for SIP comes to mind. These are vendor neutral, just as it should be.
Even now, what is peddled as VoIP is really PoIP, PSTN over IP (coined by Brad Templeton, I believe). It's nothing better then faking the PSTN using VoIP technology.
VoIP, or better real-time communication over the Internet - since it could be video or IM as well as voice, including presence - is a completely different ballgame.
Others have posted about Diesel cars before, but here are my 2 cents.
I've been driving VW Turbo Diesel cars since 1984 and can really recommend them. My current model is a Jetta TDI Wagon, which we bought in Texas (since the dealers in California all wanted "markup") and drove all the way to the Bay Area, getting 52 MPG, going around 80 miles with the AC all the way up.
When we filled it up at truck stops we were able to use the higher pressure truck diesel pumps, and of course the Diesel was considerably cheaper than gas. Fuel efficiency and lower price really add up, especially when you have a long trip or commute.
The modern TDI engines are great, they have tons of torque and are very responsive (TDI = Turbo Diesel Injection). Now I'm looking forward to the 310hp 5.0l 10 cylinder VW Touareg TDI coming out soon:-) (553lbs.-ft. of torque!)
I haven't looked into using Biodiesel yet, but it seems to pick up more and more. It would certainly alleviate the residual bad conscience due to the particle emmissions from the Diesel. Just read an amazing story about a family driving from the Bay Area to Argentina on biodiesel picked up along the way. Actually worthy of a/. post!
There is already an IETF standard that is bound to replace phone numbers, and it's called Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).
So yes, it already exists. Under SIP something that looks like an email address (a URI) becomes the "phone number".
SIP has many cool advantages:
Enduser Mobility - a SIP client (Soft- or Hardphone) can be anywhere on the net because it registers dynamically with a SIP server
Convergence: the same address is used for e-mail, real time communication (Voice, Video, Instant Messaging, Teleporter, etc.)!
The 3GPP multimedia subsystem (UMTS v. 5) supports SIP. Wait a little, and you'll have mobile phones that support SIP natively (be it over 802.11/16 or 3G/GSM).
Industry wide support for SIP. Have a look at SIP phones that were presented at the VON conferene recently.
How cool is that?
And of course, all of this on top of DNS:) Thanks Mr Mockapetris!
P.S. A SIP user agent can also be addressed directly via IP or a FQDN, maybe that's what Mr Mockapetris has in mind.
Thank you for this great free voice codec! I'm sure it'll become more valued with VoIP picking up.
WRT softphones using Speex, X-Lite/Pro from xten.com uses it. I think the soft PBX Asterisk (asterisk.org) uses it now also. Pingtel's hardphone might have it too, not sure.
That is exactly what SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) does. Instead of a phone number, a SIP URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is dialed (e.g. sip:me@sipcall.com). IP phones that support SIP, like the Cisco 7960, Pingtel xPressa and others, allow dialing SIP URI's via the numeric keypad. Mobile networks based on 3G/UMTS (release 5) use SIP for signalling, blurring the line between the PSTN and IP communications.
The worlds first SIP compliant videophone, DV325 from 8x8 works great over broadband. Might be a little big to carry on the road though. Nice thing is that it's standards compliant using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which makes it a futureproof investment.
What is SIP you ask? Think of your e-mail address being your phone number! Just like domain names maps to IP's, a SIP address (sip:joe@schmoe.com) maps to any number of SIP endpoints (e.g. the above phone) and can be called that way.
Finally the time has come for affordable IP phones (as Cisco announced a $130 desktop IP phone as well). The technology to make all this useful has been developed over the last couple of years, and as much as this is being touted for the enterprise, it will impact the consumer market as well. I'm already using a Cisco 7960 hooked up to my DSL, using a SIP enabled router (Intertex IX66) to call people all over the world (for free!).
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, the best one I've found is the E61 from Nokia. It's a regular GSM/UMTS phone which also has WiFi and a full blown SIP client on board. And you can find it on Craigslist for ~$350.
Much better then any of the crappy Taiwanese "VoIP" phones, or anything that does Skype only.
The SIP client is fully integrated with the contacts, just overall very well done by Nokia. Plus they release firmware updates on a regular basis, which can be done from a Windows PC.
The phone detects WiFi coverage, e.g. home or work, and automatically registers the SIP client.
Since it's SIP, you can use any one of the hundreds of ITSPs (Internet Telephony Service Provider) out there to make cheap international calls, if that is what you want.
After reading the application for .tel by Telnic, the company applying to run .tel, I'm still puzzled why ICANN would allow this TLD.
Is their idea to compartmentalize the Domain namespace by TLD? So the domain juegos.tel is my phone address, while juegos.xxx hosts my private porn collection?
One explanation by Telnic why .tel is needed is, that people already have too many addresses to remember (home phone, mobile, work, fax, email, IM etc.). But it's totally unclear how .tel would fix this.
For Internet communications, there is already the addressing provided by SIP (the protocol used for VoIP signalling). And SIP uses a URI, just like an email address. So there really is no need to introduce another TLD, just to indicate, hey, you can call me with this.
With a SIP URI, one can actually use a regular email address for making calls, sending IMs etc. And it solves exactly the problem described by Telnic, too many addresses, by converging everything into a single URI.
Please, no whining that you can't enter a URI on your phones keypad. Millions of people are sending SMSs every day, and they have no problem whatsoever typing text on a numberpad. .tel looks like just another stupid money making scheme. With the chairman of Telnic being the former CEO of Telefonica, the spanish incumbent, why am I not surprised that this is happening?
Check out Nerdbooks.com, they have all O'Reilly titles at 50% off.
:-).
The Linux Cookbook is $22.48 there. Linux Cookbook
I had a good experience with them. Superfast shipping and immediate tracking, and the CEO even called
Some comments on the article below:
The technology has indeed been around for a long time, and Skype, a proprietary walled garden system, is definitely not the first or only one to use it. So why is Skype implicated here? So why would Google buy dark fiber if the call "exploits available internet capacity"? As can been witnessed by using Skype, or other applications which incorporate modern codecs, for example the freely available wideband iLBC codec (http://www.ilbcfreeware.org), the voice quality over a broadband connection is usually excellent, in the case of iLBC much better then PSTN. The biggest issue is latency, which is increased in the case of Skype, where calls are often routed over media proxies to traverse NAT's.Overall a poor article, "By Elizabeth Judge, Telecoms Correspondent". But what can be expected of the Times?
Once everyone is on the internet, you'll just be able to "phone greg@home.com" and a currently non-existent protocol will resolve that to whatever communication Greg has on hand, by talking only with Greg's own equipment, not that of any provider.
Good thinking.
The protocol you envision has been around for a couple of years now, and it's called Session Initiation Protocol - SIP. It uses a URI like to find the party you are calling, and after it has served it's rendezvous function, the media is sent peer-to-peer via RTP.
There are also plenty of soft- and hardphones using SIP coming out, some even with video.
So, yes, if everyone were using SIP and the internet, the Telco's would go the way of the Dodo bird with their current business model.
Unfortunately, a lot of what is called VoIP these days uses SIP, but just to emulate the PSTN, often refered to as PoIP, PSTN over IP.
As long as SIP [terminals|clients|user agents|phones] don't allow URI dialing, the telcos will have it their way, and the VoIP industry will profit just like the telcos, using a business model based on artificial scarcity. So make sure whatever SIP phone you buy supports URI dialing.
...is to jerk off, or wank, as the Brits would say. My recommendation: don't wix too much, it gives you blisters ;-)
Great. Hopefully no one will fall for this attempt at adding proprietary stuff to open IETF protocols, since it will just create a mess for the consumer, much like what the multitude of cell phone standards did in the US (and GSM didn't in the rest of the world).
There are plenty of interoperability events going on, mainly SIPit for SIP comes to mind. These are vendor neutral, just as it should be.
Even now, what is peddled as VoIP is really PoIP, PSTN over IP (coined by Brad Templeton, I believe). It's nothing better then faking the PSTN using VoIP technology.
VoIP, or better real-time communication over the Internet - since it could be video or IM as well as voice, including presence - is a completely different ballgame.
I've been driving VW Turbo Diesel cars since 1984 and can really recommend them. My current model is a Jetta TDI Wagon, which we bought in Texas (since the dealers in California all wanted "markup") and drove all the way to the Bay Area, getting 52 MPG, going around 80 miles with the AC all the way up.
When we filled it up at truck stops we were able to use the higher pressure truck diesel pumps, and of course the Diesel was considerably cheaper than gas. Fuel efficiency and lower price really add up, especially when you have a long trip or commute.
The modern TDI engines are great, they have tons of torque and are very responsive (TDI = Turbo Diesel Injection). Now I'm looking forward to the 310hp 5.0l 10 cylinder VW Touareg TDI coming out soon :-) (553lbs.-ft. of torque!)
I haven't looked into using Biodiesel yet, but it seems to pick up more and more. It would certainly alleviate the residual bad conscience due to the particle emmissions from the Diesel. Just read an amazing story about a family driving from the Bay Area to Argentina on biodiesel picked up along the way. Actually worthy of a /. post!
So yes, it already exists. Under SIP something that looks like an email address (a URI) becomes the "phone number".
SIP has many cool advantages:
- Enduser Mobility - a SIP client (Soft- or Hardphone) can be anywhere on the net because it registers dynamically with a SIP server
- Convergence: the same address is used for e-mail, real time communication (Voice, Video, Instant Messaging, Teleporter, etc.)!
- The 3GPP multimedia subsystem (UMTS v. 5) supports SIP. Wait a little, and you'll have mobile phones that support SIP natively (be it over 802.11/16 or 3G/GSM).
- Industry wide support for SIP. Have a look at SIP phones that were presented at the VON conferene recently.
How cool is that?And of course, all of this on top of DNS :) Thanks Mr Mockapetris!
P.S. A SIP user agent can also be addressed directly via IP or a FQDN, maybe that's what Mr Mockapetris has in mind.
Thank you for this great free voice codec! I'm sure it'll become more valued with VoIP picking up. WRT softphones using Speex, X-Lite/Pro from xten.com uses it. I think the soft PBX Asterisk (asterisk.org) uses it now also. Pingtel's hardphone might have it too, not sure.
Imagine "dialing" in the form of domain names.
That is exactly what SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) does. Instead of a phone number, a SIP URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) is dialed (e.g. sip:me@sipcall.com). IP phones that support SIP, like the Cisco 7960, Pingtel xPressa and others, allow dialing SIP URI's via the numeric keypad. Mobile networks based on 3G/UMTS (release 5) use SIP for signalling, blurring the line between the PSTN and IP communications.
The worlds first SIP compliant videophone, DV325 from 8x8 works great over broadband. Might be a little big to carry on the road though. Nice thing is that it's standards compliant using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), which makes it a futureproof investment.
What is SIP you ask? Think of your e-mail address being your phone number! Just like domain names maps to IP's, a SIP address (sip:joe@schmoe.com) maps to any number of SIP endpoints (e.g. the above phone) and can be called that way.
Finally the time has come for affordable IP phones (as Cisco announced a $130 desktop IP phone as well). The technology to make all this useful has been developed over the last couple of years, and as much as this is being touted for the enterprise, it will impact the consumer market as well. I'm already using a Cisco 7960 hooked up to my DSL, using a SIP enabled router (Intertex IX66) to call people all over the world (for free!).
well, 2nd. Sorry, had to :)