Using your PDA as a VoWiFi phone

VoWiFi phones are a dime a dozen lately, and you can probably purchase one for as cheap as an ordinary cordless phone. But if you already have a personal digital assistant (PDA) that supports WiFi, then you can probably use your existing gadgetry to place and receive Voice-over-Internet Protocol calls through a Wireless network. For instance, most mid-range and high-end HP iPaq Pocket PCs have built-in WiFi support...

Orange going landline!

UK mobile phone provider Orange is going the other way—it plans to offer fixed-line services soon. The company will be merging with internet provider Wanadoo to offer bundled services (both companies are owned by France Telecom). By April, Orange would have rolled out the first of its landlines. The service, dubbed Orange Landline for Business, will run over the existing infrastructure of Cable & Wireless, and...

The future of VoWiFi – convergence

Is VoWiFi the future of wireless telephony? Well, in a way, yes, but not exactly the sole technology that will bring about the next-generation mobile technology. Existing telecom companies are still likely to have a strong position in the market, being the incumbent, and having the broadband infrastructure already in place. As we pondered on before, WiFi, indeed, has an edge over other technologies in the...

The future of VoWiFi – WiFi vs Cellular Technologies

Earlier at the turn of the century, the cellular networks looked to the third-generation (3G) standards as the future of mobile telephony, with its support for high-bandwidth applications such as video-conferencing and multimedia transfers. The then—and now still—prevalent digital cellular network was GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) can only support sub-broadband speeds of 56 kilobits per second,...

The future of VoWiFi – the advantage of telecom companies

Is WiFi really set to be the cellular-killer, as it’s touted to be? After all, VoIP is clear, secure, and feature-laden. And WiFi is cheap and is most likely to be soon ubiquitous, with plans for municipal- and city-wide WiFi networks. However, the existing cellular providers might still have the last laugh. Take for instance UMA—Unlicensed Mobile Access—which is being pushed by some North American cellular...

The future of VoWiFi

We live in an exciting age, as we see a lot of new technologies that make our lives easier spring about almost every day. Not only does technology make life easier, it helps us do things faster and for a lower cost that was unimaginable in the decades past. A hundred years ago, it was the telephone that changed the landscape of communications technology. It was an entirely new experience for people to actually talk...

Nokia to release VoWiFi phone

It’s quite surprising how one of the world’s top cellular phone maker is opening up to Voice-over-Internet Protocol. Nokia has recently announced that it will soon release the 6136 model that supports VoIP over WiFi networks. This move is seen as bringing the Internet closer to the mass market through the ubiquitous mobile phone. Currently, there are only a few Nokia models that support WiFi, and these are on...

Skype partners with FON – wide-area VoWiFi network expected

Leading VoIP provider Skype, along with search engine leader Google and other venture capital firms have recently partnered with FON in the hope of establishing a wide-area WiFi network in Spain, through the FON initiative. FON, a community-driven group aims to connect private WiFi access points into a city- or even country-wide network, starting in Spain and eventually moving on to other areas such as the USA. The...

The VoWiFi question

I just got myself a used smartphone. It’s not exactly brand new, but it serves my need to have a phone with a built-in PDA (or a PDA with a built-in phone?). Before I decided on acquiring this particular phone, I was considering newer WiFi-enabled models by the major manufacturers—such as the Nokia 9500 and 9300i, among others. I was also checking out the mid-range HP iPaq model with wireless Internet. I wanted...

Wiretapping the Wireless?

VoIP has no wires. It isn’t connected to the Public Safety Answering Point System (911) and a local operator using switchboard technology can’t trace it. It is a completely different infrastructure than PSTN- the Public Switched Telephone Network. Yet, the FCC and the FBI would like to apply the same rules to VoIP as it does to every other telephone service. What would Alexander Graham Bell say? The monopoly is...