and Apple stands as good a chance as anyone of providing one. Our choices are currently limited by the fact that the phone manufacturers are beholden to the carriers. I have a Nokia E61, a phone you can't currently get (as a standard offering from your carrier) because it offers WiFi and SIP VoIP as a standard feature. You can get the dumbed-down E62 from Cingular (which has the WiFi chip yanked and the SIP software missing). If you want truly advanced mobile features, you need to get the carriers out of the way.
Apple is the only company to date to take on the challenge of putting the carriers in their place. Savvy consumers want the carriers to provide the basic service of moving bits from one place to another as inexpensively as possible. Carriers, on the other hand, want to be the alpha and omega of wireless communication, and the gateway to all features (for a price). While I have no objection to anyone making money, I think the carrier-as-god model is patently stupid. In many other parts of the world the carriers are just that -- common carriers. You get your phone from somebody else. You get features from somebody else. The carrier is simply a bit pipe.
If anybody can force a change in the current model in place in the States, it will be Apple. Ignore Dvorak (King of the Trolls) and help Apple break the strangle hold that Cingular, Verizon and Sprint have on the mobile market.
I've been working with WiFi + VoIP for the past year (I'm working on Asterisk, the opensource VoIP PBX) with decent results. I've found that WLANs installed by professional wireless engineers and connected to wireline routers and switches that support QoS/ToS can support Vo-WiFi without a hitch. Tradeshows, including VON (I attended the US spring VON in Santa Clara) are usually rigged to provide email access and web surfing, not quality controlled voice services.
The other issue is the protocol in use. SIP, the dominant VoIP protocol, is extremely difficult to make work behind a NAT (which the trade-show LAN almost certainly employed) or a firewall. SIP makes use of three different ports to establish a communication session, including a dynamic RTP port that requires open UDP access on a large block of ports, a STUN server, and/or a SIP proxy that understands NAT. The Skype guys and we in the Asterisk community have found SIP so awkward to roll out in uncontrolled environments (i.e. the real world) that we employ alternate protocols designed to work with NATs/Firewalls. Skype's protocol is proprietary and secret (and we wouldn't want to violate the DCMA, now, would we?). Asterisk offers IAX (Inter-Asterisk Exchange) which is opensource an can securely cut through all but the most draconian of NATs/firewalls.
Warning - Shameless Plug
I used my IAX Phone to place calls from the Spring VON show while all the guys with SIP handsets or SIP soft-phones grumbled, checked proxy settings, cursed, checked STUN settings, etc. Asterisk supports IAX, SIP, MGCP, H323, and SCCP, as well as connections to the PSTN using Zaptel or CAPI-compatible hardware. It's free, and it rocks. We're having a user/developer convention this fall: Astricon. Check it out.
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and Apple stands as good a chance as anyone of providing one. Our choices are currently limited by the fact that the phone manufacturers are beholden to the carriers. I have a Nokia E61, a phone you can't currently get (as a standard offering from your carrier) because it offers WiFi and SIP VoIP as a standard feature. You can get the dumbed-down E62 from Cingular (which has the WiFi chip yanked and the SIP software missing). If you want truly advanced mobile features, you need to get the carriers out of the way.
Apple is the only company to date to take on the challenge of putting the carriers in their place. Savvy consumers want the carriers to provide the basic service of moving bits from one place to another as inexpensively as possible. Carriers, on the other hand, want to be the alpha and omega of wireless communication, and the gateway to all features (for a price). While I have no objection to anyone making money, I think the carrier-as-god model is patently stupid. In many other parts of the world the carriers are just that -- common carriers. You get your phone from somebody else. You get features from somebody else. The carrier is simply a bit pipe.
If anybody can force a change in the current model in place in the States, it will be Apple. Ignore Dvorak (King of the Trolls) and help Apple break the strangle hold that Cingular, Verizon and Sprint have on the mobile market.
I've been working with WiFi + VoIP for the past year (I'm working on Asterisk, the opensource VoIP PBX) with decent results. I've found that WLANs installed by professional wireless engineers and connected to wireline routers and switches that support QoS/ToS can support Vo-WiFi without a hitch. Tradeshows, including VON (I attended the US spring VON in Santa Clara) are usually rigged to provide email access and web surfing, not quality controlled voice services.
The other issue is the protocol in use. SIP, the dominant VoIP protocol, is extremely difficult to make work behind a NAT (which the trade-show LAN almost certainly employed) or a firewall. SIP makes use of three different ports to establish a communication session, including a dynamic RTP port that requires open UDP access on a large block of ports, a STUN server, and/or a SIP proxy that understands NAT. The Skype guys and we in the Asterisk community have found SIP so awkward to roll out in uncontrolled environments (i.e. the real world) that we employ alternate protocols designed to work with NATs/Firewalls. Skype's protocol is proprietary and secret (and we wouldn't want to violate the DCMA, now, would we?). Asterisk offers IAX (Inter-Asterisk Exchange) which is opensource an can securely cut through all but the most draconian of NATs/firewalls.
Warning - Shameless PlugI used my IAX Phone to place calls from the Spring VON show while all the guys with SIP handsets or SIP soft-phones grumbled, checked proxy settings, cursed, checked STUN settings, etc. Asterisk supports IAX, SIP, MGCP, H323, and SCCP, as well as connections to the PSTN using Zaptel or CAPI-compatible hardware. It's free, and it rocks. We're having a user/developer convention this fall: Astricon. Check it out.