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Merging WiFi VoIP Into Cellular Service 104

Posted by timothy from the mix-and-match dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "The New York Times (registration required) reports that Motorola, Proxim and Avaya are expected to announce today that they will jointly develop technology to allow wireless communications to jump between networks without interruption. This appears to involve making use of WiFi for phone service where it's available, thus converting WiFi hotspots into congestion relief for overloaded cellular networks, and, of course, making cell phones into WiFi terminals."
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Merging WiFi VoIP Into Cellular Service More

Merging WiFi VoIP Into Cellular Service

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  • Keep on saying it.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @06:51AM (#5086771)
    ...but "wifi" is a STUPID acronym.

    The proper name is 802.11b. "Wifi" is meaningless marketroid-speak. (Or in this case, slash-speak since the slashdot editors insist on spouting "wifi" at every given chance).

    Better hope that they don't invent "wifi anime"...

    • Re:Keep on saying it.. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How the hell is WiFi meaningless?

      And even if it were "marketroid-speak" it's still more catchy and easier to pronounce than a friggin' 802.11b. It's IEEE1394 and FireWire all over again.

      You purists are free to use "the official" name all you want. Just don't expect the rest of us to do so.

      • Re:Keep on saying it.. (Score:3, Informative)

        by alannon ( 54117 )
        Actually, not all 802.11b implementations are 'WiFi' compatible. Also, 'WiFi' also has a 802.11a implementation. Almost every 802.11 system you purchase now is 'WiFi', but when the technology was newer, often base stations and remote cards were only compatible between the particular brand.

    • Re:Keep on saying it.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, O'REILLY uses Wi-Fi in thier book "802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide" when refering to 802.11 in general, so it's good enough for me.

      I don't go around calling my Ethernet network a "slightly modified 802.3 network"

      All it means is that the technology has gone mainstream. Would you rather have it called 802.11b, if it meant that it wasn't popular? Which of course means there are no hot-spots and the hardware cost 10 times more. Your choice.

  • um (Score:5, Interesting)

    by serps ( 517783 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @06:53AM (#5086773) Homepage
    Doesn't this mean that cellphone congestion will now lead to degraded wifi performance?
    • Probably, and the best bit is that the networks will probably still charge the user for making a call over the free spectrum - nice.

      Mike

  • Stop the fucking cellphones! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AAARGHHH! This would further proliferate the cellphones. As if we don't already have enough supremely annoying and arrogant yuppies waving their oh-so-expensive cellphones and shouting their "important business decisions" into them in public places.

    If your business is SO important that you have to be available every fucking minute of the day, then stay at your office for chrissake and use a landline (that way you don't have to shout, you know)!

    • Re:Stop the fucking cellphones! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Hello, what's it like back there in the 1980s?
    • Cellphones are already cheap enough, and may get even more cheap if this 802.11 thing works.

      My 15 years old cousin uses it mainly to date chicks. His phone costed him about $100 and he spends around $20 a month in calls. For the same price, you can get him anytime, and he can call, for example, if he had problems with his bike.


      Get real.

      "Computer users... those arrogant yuppies. If they have so much office work to do, why don't they hire a secretary?"
    • What about those of us who don't have landlines period? I only have cellphone service. What about being in contact with your wife or children in public places? Not every call "in a movie theater" is bad - it's those that forget to turn off the ringer. But, if I'da had vibrate on during a movie like "Basic Instinct" - I might not have known I'd gotten any calls ;) And why do you need profanity to make a point?
    • If your business is SO important that you have to be available every fucking minute of the day, then stay at your office for chrissake and use a landline (that way you don't have to shout, you know)!

      Well, there are those of us whose companies don't have landline phones any more. My former employer had none, merely company-paid cell phones for everyone plus a mobile call centre.

      Also, I gave up my own landline phone away around 1998 when I got a cable modem and the last excuse to support the local monopoly telco went away... my phone line used to cost me EUR20/month before any call costs, while my cell phone bill hovers around EUR40/month with copious calls and SMSs. So choosing a cell phone is a sound financial decision, and when I want to be unreachable, I do know how to use the off button.

    • I don't know what it's like where you are, but here in the UK "cellphones" (we call them mobile phones) are extremely widely used. It's getting past the stage where they are a "neat gadget" to show to your friends and is now something that is extremely commonplace.

      I've got one... a Siemens model. I certainly don't have to shout into it, and I certainly don't use it for business. In fact I don't even use it for calls most of the time; thanks to SMS, I can keep in touch with people unobtrusively. Oh, and it's an MP3 player too, so I can upload my tunes to the phone and listen through the hands free kit.

      As I say, I don't know where you live, but I think that it needs to get into the 21st Century.

      I don't think that the system described in the news item would "further proliferate the cellphones." It seems like it would provide an overflow for existing users.
    • >> AAARGHHH! This would further proliferate the cellphones. As if we don't already have enough supremely annoying and arrogant yuppies Can you imagine anyone wanting a portable communication device? Nuts. Seriously though, an asshole is an asshole with or without a cellphone, it seems you are more against the proliferation of assholes than cellphones, and amen, brother, I am with you.

  • Death of UMTS (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Koos Baster ( 625091 ) <ghostbusters@xs4[ ].nl ['all' in gap]> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @06:58AM (#5086789)
    I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.

    I guess VoIP over WLAN won't do much to their current markets, since high bandwidth isn't an issue for voice. But it seems they've lost the battle for data even before it's started...

    Or can commercial UMTS and open WLAN coexist?

    • Re:Death of UMTS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Mwongozi ( 176765 ) <slashthree&davidglover,org> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:00AM (#5086800) Homepage
      WLAN just doesn't have the range. A 3G or even GPRS cell can cover many miles, WLAN hasn't a hope of ever getting that range omnidirectionally. (Is that a word?)
      • Hmm. Yeah, but having WLAN in the 10% area which generates 80% of data traffic leaves telco's with the responsibility to cover the 90% that generate the remaining 20% of traffic. Thus, for telcos, costs stay roughly the same while profits dive down.

        Remember that even when 3G, GPRS or UMTS are available as an alternative to WLAN, no one will use it because WLAN is much faster, and probably cheaper too.
        • That's the fundamental difference, of course.
          WLAN = Short distance, fast, cheap.
          Cellular = Long distance, slow(er), quite expensive. (Charged per megabyte, usually.)

      • Re:Death of UMTS (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 2nd Post! ( 213333 )
        How about point to point wireless, due to phased array antennas?

        There are going to be a few out on the market this very year for wifi!

    • Re:Death of UMTS (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eminence ( 225397 )

      I'm sure this is what telcos have seen coming and have been scared shitless of. This will prevent them from ever making UMTS into a commercial success, especially taking into account they payed far to much for licensing the (yet-to-be-used) UMTS frequencies.

      UMTS is already dead and buried - and everybody in the industry understood that shortly after last UMTS licenses were sold for crazy piles of money. The system discussed in the article won't change the picture that much - UMTS promise didn't concern voice calls (these are quite well served by the GSM system) but rather multimedia transmissions.

      Also, spread of cheap WLAN connectivity not controlled by telecoms is only one of the reasons why UMTS is dead. Main reason is that it turned out that people at large are quite happy with just calling and sending short messages and are not interested in paying lots of money for fancy phones and then for multimedia content. All analysts agree that it will take time before significant number of customers would be interested in what UMTS promised.

      • UMTS is already dead and buried - and everybody in the industry understood that shortly after last UMTS licenses were sold for crazy piles of money.

        Very true indeed. UMTS is a comittee standard which effectively means it is not only overtly expensive but also too cautious on what people will demand of it -- half the performance of Wi-Fi with twice the price.

        Of course, as some experts see it, UMTS will become reality regardless of its shortcomings [helsinki-hs.net], merely because so many governments and institutions have put so much money and effort into it. Feh.

      • UMTS is already dead and buried [...] The system discussed in the article won't change the picture that much

        This is all true, but at some point it was unclear whether phone companies like Erikson, Motorola, Siemens and Nokia were going to support WLAN rather than (or as well as) GPRS, 3G,... And this story clearly shows they're not going to stay married to telcos 'til-death-parts.

        Main reason is that it turned out that people at large are quite happy with just calling and sending short messages and are not interested in paying lots of money for fancy phones and then for multimedia content.

        While true for the majority of users, I believe there are some fringe cultures and businesses for which relaying data is tentatively gaining. Phones with CCD cameras (MMS) appear to be a mild sales success and there's some innovative stuff going on in logistics and distribution companies that will rely on wireless communication with 99% coverage. This doesn't (yet) concern high bandwidth, but ultimately having WLAN eating the most profitable areas will slow down the spread of UMTS networks even more. But sure, its no secret that UMTS is never going to be profitable.

    • Re:Death of UMTS (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Katalyzt ( 546182 )
      Isn't the 2.4 GHz band meant for PRIVATE citizen use not business? At this rate commercial 802.11x operators will swamp the limited bandwidth leaving nothing for individuals.
      • The division between public and commercial organizations isn't that clear. There's no law against opening your access point in exchange for access to other peoples'. As many initiatives have already proven, it's not even an obstacle to have a non-profit / commercial organization to administer these voluntary access points. I.e. it may not be likely that the traditional telcos eat up the 2.4 GHz frequency, but there may be other groups / organizations that will.

        Note however, that legally speaking you're free to use "amateur" frequencies only without effectively blocking it from others (though in this case, law may not concur with simple physics).

    • Re:Death of UMTS (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zarhan ( 415465 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:43AM (#5086905)
      This is hardly the death of UMTS. Of course, I'm an engineer, so the techical terms may not be the same ones used by the public at large.

      Anyway, in upcoming UMTS versions (starting from rel 5 I believe), the UMTS network can actually use WLAN as an access technology. It can also use xDSL, for that matter. The "old" WCDMA is of course still there.

      The basic idea is to converge all those different networks so that telcos that act also as ISPs don't need duplicate systems for user accounts and stuff. This way there can also be easier integration (access your mail account from your phone WITHOUT any hassle -> everything is configured into your subscriber SIM card) and stuff like that.

      Actually, the official position for most telcos deploying UMTS (as in "WCDMA") seems to be that they are back to their original plans. Original meaning the same plans they had before the IT boom. The boom was supposed to speed things up a bit => well, it did not, and everyone lost some money, but what the hell, show must go on.

      (Disclaimer: I may have myself confused some of the terminology above. Currently I'm 100% certain only of the "IMT-2000" umbrella term :))
      • I help out with a mom-and-pop BBS that provides dial-up access.

        We're still getting new customers, and we'd like to expand into wireless. (Anyone have references on raising antennas by balloon?)

        I keep seeing advances in telecom equipment, but we generally can't take part in it because it requires high-cost rented space (for DSL) or owning the landlines (cablemodem). You generally have to be a large company in order to get these things, and the largest companies are getting more and more of the market share.

        For an analogy, consider what would happen if one company owned all of the cable providers in the US. Kinda like Microsoft...

        Of course, the FTC isn't going to allow many of the mergers this would require, but that doesn't mean the companies aren't still absorbing small businesses and providers.
      • "The basic idea is to converge all those different networks so that telcos that act also as ISPs don't need duplicate systems for user accounts and stuff."

        The telcos don't really want your business all that bad. If they did, they would have technology that would allow xDSL to work outside a densely populated metropolitan area.

        I live in one of the most populous areas of the country, in a relatively wealthy county, and since I live 5 miles from the central office, I can't get high speed internet from the phone company.

        Not because it really isn't possible, but because they're so witless and slow-moving that they think its too much trouble.

        Meanwhile, the *cable* company figurd it out.

        What does it tell you when the cable company has better and smarter technology that you?

  • No karma whore, no reg link (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    here [nytimes.com]

  • No registration links. (Score:4, Informative)

    by I am Jack's username ( 528712 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:00AM (#5086799)
    Submitters, please use news.googled links [nytimes.com] instead.
    • I'm "sick & tired" :) of registering everywhere.

      Requiring registration makes a service NOT FREE . It costs you part of your information and FREEDOM

      Somebody explain the guys at NYT that a registration can't be free . Of course, I'm talking free as in "free speech", "land of the free" (if that means something) and not "free beer" (not that I don't like free beer).

      For the interested: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html [gnu.org]
      • I'm sick & tired of people using this argument. There is more then one fricking definition of free. Free as in beer. Free as in speech. Free as in Dmitry. The registration is free in the meaning that 99% of the world thinks it means. It does not cost any money out of your pocket. Does it cost money to someone...yes. In a technical sense, nothing is free...it comes at a cost to something somewhere.

        All that NYT is asking is a little information about you. You don't have to give up your life's story. If it is a big deal, you can lie about the information or just use some other news source. Your not giving up any of your precious freedom by telling them your name.
    • Or even better, why can't Slashdot just call up the New York Times and ask to become a partner as well? This site must drive more traffic to nyt.com then just about any other partner (they get slashdotted, what?, once or twice a day, which means upward toward half a million hits) and it's readers are notoriously anti-registration.

  • This is called vertical handover (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Google has more information [tu-berlin.de] about it.

  • Common wireless protocol? (Score:5, Informative)

    by hyrdra ( 260687 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:03AM (#5086806) Homepage Journal
    Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?

    The last time I checked most of today's phones aren't even hardware compatible with most other carrier networks, and phone manufactures have resorted to having to put 3 different protocols in one phone (tri-mode, etc.). Talk about inefficient.

    Wouldn't it be easier if all wireless communication just ran on one set protocol that worked over multiple frequencies? Nevermind the differences in modulation at 900 MHz, 2.4 and 5 GHz, I'm talking about a true high-level/low-level protocol here.

    There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.

    If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.

    That seems like what they are trying to do, but this seems a little late in the game. People just didn't realize all the wireless capacity we have right now just floating around -- the only problem is you need x device that supports x protocols and sometimes you need to purchase directly from the wireless carrier. I guess until now, when we have dozens of different standards and NOW we want to connect them all together.

    The sad thing about it is if such a device were to be created that could mitigate across all these different protocols and networks, it's going to be one huge complex mess and is going to cost a fortune, when it didn't have to be. Maybe government regulation and forced standards are sometimes a GOOD thing.
    • There is... It's called TCP/IP. It can run on Ethernet, WLAN, ATM, GPRS, tunneled through PPP, SSH...

      Why reinvent the wheel?

      A general purpose physical layer protocol is unlikely though. IMHO anyway.

    • Re:Common wireless protocol? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zayin ( 91850 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:24AM (#5086855)

      Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all? Kind of like something as ubiqious as TCP?

      The IETF has quite a few RFC's on the subject:

      For transport: RTP [ietf.org]
      For call setup: SIP [ietf.org]
      For resource reservation: RSVP [ietf.org]
      SIP is actually being used in UMTS networks for call setup.

    • but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all?

      You mean, like GSM and UMTS [3gpp.org] ? Nah, sure it is open, free, secure, proven, whatever, but it is NIH.
    • " Don't know if we already have this or not, but don't we first need a common voice protocol that is agreed upon and used by all?"> Yes, it's called GSM (and the next version UMTS). Sorry, but by 'all', I understood the whole world except the USA, maybe you took the other 'all'.

      To answer the other answer : TCP is layer 4, IP is layer 3 -> GSM and all 802 protocols (ethernet ,wlan) are layer 2

      If you want a common layer 3 protocol, IP goes without any problem over WLAN, GSM (in its GPRS flavor), UMTS.

      If you want a common wireless layer 2 protocol, for me, it's better to have different protocols for different purposes. Just think of wired communications, there are lots of protocols. Would you really like to replace all of them by ethernet ?

      • It's been a while since my networks class so maybe you could clarify for me... Is IPv6 currently being used? Isn't that what was necessary to do voice over IP correctly? Or is the prevailing theory that there is enough bandwidth so that bandwidth guarantees aren't necessary.

        The times I have used voice over IP, it was just annoying enough to bother me. It's been a while since I've tried it though so maybe its gotten better? Anyway, I've also had the same experience on cell phones occasionally but it is usually good enough.

    • Re:Common wireless protocol? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What IS it with you Americans? Everyone else has one standard, that works fine, gives us all the features that Joe Consumer is seen to want, call handoffs between networks is invisible - Joe Consumer doesne have to know a thing about cells and which network is currently carryng their call.

      GSM GSM GSM GSM GSM GSM GSM GSM. Pah.

    • > If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it.

      Yeah, you are right - the problem is that some standardization body would have to produce some kind of standard and then companies would have to adhere to it. GSM has been exactly that idea but it was conceived long before anyone seriously considered anything more than making voice calls from a device just little smaller than a brick.

      Main problem now would be the legacy devices and systems - and the investment that went into building them. Implementing a common wireless communication protocol would take even more time than developing it - and then in few years another technology using electromagnetic radiation would come that no one thought of while developing this standard.

      And - BTW - how do you think - would such a standard be an open standard?

    • As has been said, GSM is (shock horror) quite a good voice protocol.

      It can also hand over between cells.

      It can also support micro-cells inside buildings etc to fix congestion problems.

      Surely enough money has been wasted in the telecoms sector. Lets wait until some truly revolutionary concepts are developed, something that brings genuinely new and valuable features to the market place before rolling out another half baked infrastructure.

      And don't talk to me about WAP or MMS!

    • There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone.


      I see no reason why not. I dont know where you are coming from when you say high priced and low battery life.

      First, they have 802.11b tranceivers in the compact flash and memory stick form factors. They dont cost that much to manufacture, certainly less than $100. Im sure the 802.11 technology would be even smaller and cheaper if it were designed for a high volume (im avoiding the phrase "mass produced" since mass production has been superceded by lean production) cell phone design.

      Im guessing an 802.11 tranceiver would require less power than a phone...not more because, in general, you are much closer to your WiFi access point than you are a cell tower.

      Next, 802.11b is likely much cheaper to implement than a custom designed cell phone based on the ARM processor... Ive worked in that industry and can tell you that every single handset is unique and represents millions of dollars in development costs. Standardizing on 802.11 could save a lot of money for the handset manufacturers.

      Finally, the real cost savings would be in the distributed network infrastructure. No cell phone towers to maintain. Just route calls through public access points. When you think of the billions of dollars wasted on the 3G networks, WiFi is like a free/cheap 3G infrastructure that is building itself all over the world.

    • "There is no way you're going to be able to stuff an 802.11b/a transceiver into an already high priced, low battery life phone."

      Hmm right. Never heard of Moores law then?

      Take a look at this:

      An IP company who are already well on the way to doing this. I'd put money on a combined 802.11 / GPRS (or 3G) smartphone being avaliable for about £300 before the US has a nationwide cellphone system.

      Anyway GPRS / GSM / 802.11 PC cards are ALREADY in the market.

      "If we had a set protocol for doing all things wireless, then it wouldn't be a matter of what physical network you're on, even what type of network you're using or who owns it."

      I can't help thinking a protocol that was all things to all men would be complete overkill for many wireless applications - for example a lot of non critical telemetry applications don't even need bi-directional communication. On the other side of the coin a safety critical applications would require lots of error checking, redundancy of data etc. which would be complete over kill for internet type applications where the whole system is set up to just retry if packets are lost - if there were multiply redundant copies of packets specified in the standard that could get really slow.

    • What do you mean by a common protocol? You have an entire protocol stack here, ranging from the physical layer upwards.

      Maybe you are talking about implementing a common voice codec, such as the AMR codec, which is optimised for wireless performance (a completely different thing to a standard wireline codec).

      Maybe you are talking about a common standard for the higher protocol layers in the control plane - such as SIP, RSVP or H232 family.

      But the lower layers are all different depending on the technology. 802.11a/b is different to Bluetooth is different from GSM/GPRS/EDGE is different to UMTS or CDMA2000, because their featureset depends on the frequency range and the underlying technology. For example GSM (a TDMA) system only supports hard hand -over (this means you are always connected to one and only one cell), wheras UMTS(a W-CDMA) technology supports soft handover (where one can be connected to 2 or more cells simultaneously). Don't underestimate the infrastructure differences that this can result in - the changes back up right the way into the network core.

      Best regards, Treefrog

  • Energy Requirements (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think we will find that WIFi is too much of a power drain in its current guise but techonologies like Bluetooth which have been designed with VOIP in mind to a certain extent should work better and allow you to make calls which last longer than 10 mins.
    • You might be right about WiFi, but Bluetooth? Um, Bluetooth is for _extremely_ short range inter-device communication - like, on the 10-20 foot range at the outside. I really can't see how it would be very useful as an alternative to the cellular network.
      • Bluetooth is no substitite for a cellular network but as for the range try 100m range i.e. 300ft as a maximum with 10m 30ft as the lower bound.

        It all depends on the class of the device.

        See Blue tooth specs. [bluetooth.org]

        or
        article discussing bluetooth range. [infoworld.com]

        Its pretty handy when you want to ditch cables for laptop / pda to phone connections and for in car use with a BT car kit ot head set - you can upgrade you phone without dumping the car kit for a start! Can be a pain in the ass to set up with some devices though.
        • That was me earlier. by the by. What i understood the post to be about was an attempt to create mobile phones/ devices / whatever that would use the cheapest possible means at all times. Therefore when a bluetooth network is available then the phone would route the call through that and when an 802.11 connection is available it would use that. At all times the cheapest/lowest energy consumption / criteria_of_choice means of communication will be used. Obviously it ain't simple enough yet. And handovers are a huge issue. But.....

  • GSM operators nightmare – or not? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Eminence ( 225397 ) <akbrandt@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:17AM (#5086842) Homepage

    Cellular operators perceive WiFi as a threat, because there has been long feared that cheap, community operated wireless networks ("guerilla networks" in corporate speak) would wipe out operators own WiFi offerings. What seems to anger operators most is that the whole concept of local wireless networks is not in line with the operators' idea of monetizing every single byte transmitted over the air. Also operators feared that someone would come up with an VoIP-WLAN phone that would offer very cheap voice calls in the WLAN range. WLAN networks.

    Now the impact of this new device (and system) that this partnership is going to produce depends on whether it would be oriented towards operators (and would thus require deep integration with GSM operator's infrastructure) or rather corporate customers (and would therefore be more like an software over-the-Internet VPN solution but also for voice communication). I think the first option is more likely and then the operators would be in position to control to some extent the WiFi market with local WLAN operators reduced to being just local bandwidth providers. The most important part of making this work would be the SIM card (or its equivalent) identifying the user and interfaces connecting a registry of users to authentication mechanisms of various visited networks. Most of that is what GSM operators already have.

  • Finally (Score:4, Informative)

    by mrselfdestrukt ( 149193 ) <nollie_A7_firstcounsel_com> on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:19AM (#5086843) Homepage Journal
    I was wondering when that will happen. Especially with all the delays in getting 3G up and running and with the high costs of getting normal mobile telephony switches to do higher bandwidth through all kinds of tweaks and compression, it just makes sense to use a tried and tested technology. They could mountstrong wifi antennas on each current basestation and use that for multimedia phones. That will also solve the problem of a manager sending a 101x80 res video clip of his new porsche to his mother and thereby congesting all voice traffic on that cell.
    I think this should be researched further and implemented.
  • Am I the only one who suspects that this well never really get off the ground because of the fact that nobody seems to be able to conform to standards any more? It seems like a good idea in principle, but I'm sure that one of the players named above, or some other company will muddy the waters with some proprietary standard to enable them to leverage their intellectual property and put an end to the show for everybody else.


    • With Wi-Fi networks in "hundreds of feet" and with E911 location requirement in "tens of feet" it will never work.

      Phone carriers have to meet E911 / CALEA requirements in the next year.
      (The order applies to wireline, cellular and broadband PCS telecommunications carriers.)

      CALEA [calea.org]
      FCC E911 [fcc.gov]

  • This has been done by other vendors already. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Magnus Pym ( 237274 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @07:52AM (#5086920)

    Seamless handoff between 802.11 and CDMA was demonstrated [airvananet.com] at the recently concluded CDMA Americas congress.

    Motorola is in trouble because they are missing the 3G-boat in a big way. Their infrastructure implementations of both 1xRTT and WCDMA suck, and they are getting no orders. They have chosen not to implement 1xEV-DO. So right now, they have no data solution to offer their customers. They are coasting based on their handset sales, and their proprietary lock on Nextel. This announcement is just another tactic to muddy the waters and to buy them time from relentless competition from Nortel, Lucent and Samsung.

    Magnus.
    • The problem is that the telecom manufacturers like Lucent don't want to support WiFi. It is the Cisco's of the world who are leading the charge.
    • Symbol [allnetdevices.com] has made WLAN phones over a year ago. I don't see the point, though. WLAN technology is great for bursty data connections such as web surfing, but providing QoS over WLAN connections is a challenge. Many access point support PCF (Point Coordination Function) but providing end-to-end QoS is a different story over public IP networks. In an enterprise LAN network this may work in small scale but if you have thousands of phones such as in a busy downtown center and try to maintain decent sound quality I bet you are in trouble.

      Check this test [extremetech.com] by ExtremeTech. They had difficulties getting 4 uncompressed audiostreams over 802.11b segment. With compression this could improve by factor of 10x but without PCF bandwidth would not be evenly distributed.
  • I was asking our phone system vendor about the availability of 900/2400Mhz DSS phones for our Meridian switch. They said they had a 900Mhz analog version for a while but that it got killed off. They said the next thing was likely to be VoIP over WiFi.

    Isn't this really ineffecient and overly complicated? I can see where maybe it might be desirable in a home setting or other uncongested environment, but it strikes me as kind of inefficient both from a power consumption and component basis as well as a bandwidth basis to encode voice to data and then encode data as IP for transmission when it would be cheaper and more efficient to directly transmit the encoded voice the way your run of the mill digital phones now do.

    I also wonder what it would do in any situation where a PC may suddenly decide to move 100M over the same Wifi base; is there enough congestion control and prioritization on Wifi to keep calls from dropping out or otherwise sounding like a bad cell call? Or is that merely the standard we're expected to accept?
    • Not really. I mean the voice quality isn't the same as a wireline connection, but data is still just data. Moreover, there is a whole industry founded on VoIP for international long distance. WiFi is able to handle the VoIP protocols fine. Concern might be raised if all voice traffic shifts over to WiFi. That's why developers are looking at WiFi primarily as a complementary data conduit for cell phones.
      • The reason why initial VoIP business was founded for international long distance was due to the monopolistic pricing of international voice calls. Do you remember what international phone calls used to cost 5 years ago? Data connections were not subject to same regulations as voice traffic thus there was a rapid explosion of companies selling international VoIP calls. The sound quality was awful, lot of echo and latency. Eventually sound quality got better but by that time competition and deregulation dropped the prices and many VoIP companies went bankrupt.

        While voice is data not all data is equal. Voice is sensitive to latency, jitter and dropped packets. FTP traffic, however, is not.

  • question (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the new question:

    can you ping me now?!

  • or add them to the list:

    VoWiFi or Vo802.11 VoBluetooth
    - -
    VoIP
    Voice over Internet Protocol
    VoATM
    Voice over ATM
    VoFR
    Voice over Frame Relay
    VoDSL
    Voice over DSL
    VoCable
    Voice over Cable
    VoDAS
    Voice over Data Access Station
    VoD
    Voice on Demand

  • Cell Phone companies trying to screw us over? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jeremiah Blatz ( 173527 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @08:31AM (#5087041) Homepage
    Cell phone companies trying to screw over customers, freenets. News at 11.

    They want to use 802.11 networks to "relieve congestion on cell-phone towers." In other words, "we don't like building new towers. I know, let's use the WiFi network that our customers are paying for to cheap out!" This will, of course, dramatically increase the load on the the WiFi networks, increasing the cost of commercial ones and making FreeNets more expensive to run. Your cell-phone service stays at the same price, though. This is remarkably dishonest.

    Hopefully it'll backfire and people will just start using dedicated VoIP services once they realize that they're paying for the network anyway. It'll still hurt FreeNets, but at least it'll smack down the telco monopolies.
  • I think it's clear that someday phones will someday just be networked devices, and that the "cell phones" will be just be wireless devices that do VoIP (and probably data), and my laptop will be a wireless device that does data (and maybe VoIP too). I just feel like the abundance of standards is gonna make it happen later rather than sooner. Although even if the standards made it happen tomorrow, it will take some time for the convergence folks to bring the phones and PDAs together.
  • I'm ok with my voice being xmitted over the carrier's network but this is a little disconcerting. What degree of privacy is afforded by a random public access point operated by some random individual? Isn't WiFi really a shared medium? think:WarEavesdropping. I sincerely hope this concern is being addressed.
    -Jeff
  • Nortel Networks already announced this type of program back in December 2002:

    http://www.nortelnetworks.com/corporate/news/new sr eleases/2002d/12_03_02_wireless_lan.html

    (Safe Harbor: I work for Nortel; this is a public news release at the corporate web site).

  • Please correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @10:11AM (#5087585) Journal
    ...but does that mean that the phone companies are going to use /our/ wifi points when they get congested?

    I mean, in a couple of years it's concievable that we use palmpilots or ppc's with VoIP in combination with wifi to get in touch with each other (in the same kind of way that ICQ has worked....when enough people use it, it crosses a critical threshhold and becomes useable for the masses), using, I dunno: URL's or something as phonenumbers.

    All it takes is one in five geeks in a city to buy a good wifi point and someone to write good switching software, and you have a free urban VoIP telephone service. Then maybe use some good geek's T1 line to connect the wifi network in that city to the internet, and you can patch multiple wifi networks together, creating a secondary, free, VoIP telephone network.

    It just seems to me we need more wifi points, more PDA's and a switching protocol to get free telephony to other geeks like us....or am I making a huge mistake in my thinking?

  • The real utility, in regards to voice, of a scheme for handing off cell calls from a traditional cell network to a WLAN is that it will ameliorate the problem of signal loss and diminish the of multipath diveristy. With a couple of 802.11b nodes in place at the office, university, mall, grocery store, library, convention center, etc. calls won't drop anymore when walking into one of those places. In addition, since WLAN doesn't interfere with sensitive medical equipment, cell phone usage will be allowed in previously restricted areas such as hospitals.

    Also, I have to agree with the previous poster who brought up the issue of power consumption by cell phones. 802.11b is no Bluetooth when it comes to power control and being lightweight. I would be really interested in seeing how they are able to get low power devices to form ad hoc (perhaps even mesh/scatter) networks.... I'm willing to bet that by the time this consortium is ready to deploy we'll be seeing some sort of next generation Bluetooth technology being used as transport instead of 802.11 seeing as how Bluetooth is now pretty much dead.

  • Many posters missing the point... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by djrogers ( 153854 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2003 @11:20AM (#5088236)
    This isn't about getting high-speed data on to your cell phone, it's about using your cell phone with your office telephony servers.

    Imagine being on a conference call at your office. You tap a button on your fancy Avaya 4620 IP hard phone, and your cell phone rings. you pick up and it's your conference call, coming through IP over the 802.11 network. You continue to listen on your cell using NO 'plan' minutes at all since this is your campany's private network, until you decide to go to Taco Bell. When you drop out of range of your office WLAN, voila - automatic handoff to the cell network. You return and you're back on the 802.11 network.

    The point folks, is that if we do this right, you won't even _need_ a desk phone... Unless you want one.

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