Click to See Complete Forum and Search --> : First Post - wi-fi phones in the home


yonah
09-08-2003, 11:34 AM
Wow, I get the first post in this forum!

So here is my question, I have Vonage at home. Vonage is a consumer oriented VoIP service that offers phone service over broaband. Essentially they own pops all over the country, and terminate calls there. Any calls coming into the system get routed over the Internet.

They ship you this Cisco ATA box, which you plug into the Internet and a regular phone. It registers itself with them, and essentially converts your phone to an IP phone. What is cool about it is that you can take the box anywhere and plug it in. As long as you are on the net, your calls will find you - i.e. You can get a New York phone number and put it online in London if you want.

The downside is, that to travel with it, you need to take this wired-only box, a regular phone, power, etc. In theory, Cisco's ATA box contains the guts of an IP phone. I am just wondering if there is a wi-fi phone that can do this - so that all you need is a phone and a wi-fi connection!

Any thoughts?

jsicuran
09-08-2003, 02:37 PM
Yep look at X-ten and sjlabs for soft phones

http://www.xten.com/

http://www.sjlabs.com

plus with the advent of Broadcom's Airforce one single wifi chipset (see today's news section) compact flash and SD type cards can become smaller or the chipset can be embedded into popular PDAs. What does that mean, well that little pda can no become a SIP based VOIP phone. The current Wifi IP phones from Cisco and Spectralink are expensive($400 and up). Running xten or sjlabs on you pda or laptop you can make calls across a hotspot to others or over the internet. However some ISPs block popular voip ports. I have been testing with laptops via my rooftop stumbler antennas and the calls I make and receive are pretty good around my test cell even when driving.

Also check out these guys for cheaper ATA gear and some interesting stuff if you want to avoid using vonage and make your own wireless voip phone

http://www.pcphoneline.com/

Fun times indeed.

Regards..

/JS