Danes Getting Hybrid IP Mobiles 97
praps writes "UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology is here — well, in Denmark — meaning users can access mobile and Internet (IP) telephony on the same phone. The same phone that works outside the home as a normal mobile phone that automatically seeks out a mobile network can also be used as an IP phone, which uses wireless technology to make very low-cost calls."
Good thing! (Score:5, Insightful)
Although maybe the cell companies will see this and sabotage the IPv6 process.
The only problem I see with this is taking off from the house while in a call. Cell phone latencies for connect are in the multi-second range. May not be an issue as we already have call hand-offs between towers. Also, sometimes my WiFi gets iffy for no good reason. I'd like a smooth handoff to cell in this situation as well. But anything to cut into rediculous cell bills is a good thing!
Re: (Score:2)
Why would they need to? Its doing poorly enough as is.
Re:Good thing! (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would they need to? Its doing poorly enough as is.
I work for a national telecom in an European country. You can have a guess which one, there aren't too many. Anyway, last autumn (2005) we got our first customer requests from businesses (corporations) for native IPv6 support and throughout 2006 there has been dozens of others who are wanting it - both from small to medium sector and from large multinationals. Granted, 9 out of 10 are only asking about it because all the consultants are now selling it as the latest buzzword because MPLS has already been sold to everybody, but others actually need it.
Either they are software developers and need to test their IPv6 support OR (and this is a growing number) they are companies doing business in China (or in Asia in general), where IPv4 addresses are a prenium.
So yes, we've got several customers who would be willing to pay for IPv6 support - and we're starting to offer it soon, due to DEMAND. Consumers don't care about IPv6 all that much yet, but consumer access is a loss leader anyway
Anyway, China's economic growth is a major driver for IPv6.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
That's kind of the problem though.
If you only have one outside-facing IP address, it makes it pretty damn hard to have multiple phones behind the same gateway and receive incoming calls. That's the real benefit of IPv6, you can have an address which is tied to your phone and moves around when it does, rather than having complicated NAT traversal and routing schemes, which are what you'd need with v
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Although maybe the cell companies will see this and sabotage the IPv6 process."
Huh? There are at least Nokia and SonyEricsson phones with IPv6 support. TeliaSonera and Ericsson demonstrated IPv6 over GPRS three years ago [ericsson.com].
"The only problem I see with this is taking off from the house while in a call. Cell phone latencies for connect are in the multi-second range."
GPRS has latency about 800-900ms, 3G has latency about 200-300ms. That'
Good info. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Nokia and Ericsson sell networks! (Score:1)
Not sabotage (Score:3, Interesting)
Many/most premium phones are subsidised by the cell companies to customers on plans. Give 'm an email phone and they'll send emails, give 'em a camera and they'll send photos.
There is no incentive to include Wifi to bypass the carrier.
Gads. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just goes to show what you can do without corporations owning your lawmakers.
I suppose any day now some vested external interest will claim this is denying them hard earned income and try to sway the Danish parliament to ban this or at the very least put it under the supervision of an oligarchy.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You want to talk about regulatory capture? Imagine just how much the lawmakers are in bed with the corporations when they OWN them.
Nope. (Score:2, Informative)
The two biggest examples are the railways and the telephone company, but there are many more.
The Danish Radio (think: BBC), the hospitals and educational system are still run by the state, but to great benefit for all so that's not likely to change.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Interesting Part (Score:1)
I would like that hotspot capability more than at home.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. That was the part of the article that leaped out at me, too. Without it the phone is completely freaking crippled. The ability to use the cheap wi-fi calls part of the phone at y
I'll ask the oblivious question..... (Score:2)
Re:I'll ask the oblivious question..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'll ask the oblivious question..... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is half true. There is a lot to be gained for them in city areas where there is a lot of GPRS/GSM congestion as instead of needing to put up more towers in expensive areas with expensive fees, they can give vastly increased bandwidth through wifi points in key locations. This opens up a more stable connection for all, and allows more data services through, allowing more features and functionality on the phone with which they can then rip you off in some new, exciting way.
Re: (Score:2)
But at the same time, the lose some of the revenue. Sure, putting up more towers is expensive -- but it's proportional to call volume, as is their revenue. As soon as you can use wifi for your cell phone, they lose a HUGE amount of money in call charges
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
It is in the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't reply here (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
It is in the USA... (Score:5, Informative)
Business Week:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/au
Wi-Fi Planet
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/36287
Daily Wireless:
http://www.dailywireless.org/modules.php?name=New
From the Daily Wireless page:
"Indeed, T-Mobile is not the only telco pushing into at-home wireless services. Already, AT&T (T) expects to introduce two new at-home offerings in the coming months."
This page:
http://www.blackberrytoday.com/articles/2006/7/20
Says there's reportadly 20 UMA trials going on right now.
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.t-one.de/ [t-one.de] (German only, sorry)
Connects to Telecom WLAN hotspots when available, though the site states "chooses most inexpensive WLAN found, or choose yourself". A cell phone when no WLAN is nearby. Use at home with your own DSL/WLAN.
Also available as cell phone on the road / analogue phone at home variant.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Other answer : the mother company (Deutsche Telekom), France Telecom, TeliaSonera, and many others are preparing the launch of similar products.
IMHO, that was a pretty poor editing job.
Denmark? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
America's capitalism is a hindrance to progress (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We have a choice of standards hare in the US, and people are choosing CDMA over GSM.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because some of us actually care if we can make and receive calls or not.
I recently dropped T-Mobile. When I moved, I had crappy service at my house, if any at all, and going from my house to the next decent sized town, 10 minutes away was a complete dead spot. Going from Trenton to Manhattan on the train was a series of dropped GPRS connections when trying to get work done on my laptop connected to the phone for
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like a good technical solution, but since there are no providers in the US that use both CDMA and GSM, you'd have a 2-provider phone. And I just don't see them cooperating enough to make that happen, especially with only one phone number.
Technology that might not make it to North America (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look at the current situation, the cell phone companies have already considerably restricted consumer choice with respect to the physical cell phones. Everywhere else in the world, you buy a phone, then choose a provider. Here, the phone is locked to a provider, so you're forced to buy the phone with the provider.
For example, I'm with Virgin Mobile in Canada, which is on a CDMA network. However, there's only 4 phones available with Virgin Mobile, which really blows. I'd really like a samsung flip phone, but I'm stuck with a Nokia (the other choice was Audiovox).
Re:Technology that might not make it to North Amer (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
WIFI will make it cheaper for THEM (Score:1)
many people will tell you that they can't get cell reception in their homes and so still use a land line for most of their calling rather than going "mobiles only". this is aimed sqarely at those people.
Re: (Score:1)
Interesting.. (Score:3, Interesting)
UMA was controlled by carriers from the beginning (Score:2)
Nothing new... (Score:5, Informative)
The Nokia E60 [nokia.co.uk], E61 and E70 are capable of SIP calls over WiFi.
I'll hopefully be getting mine this week, in the UK.
RegardselFarto
Nokia E-series. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll hopefully be getting mine this week, in the UK.
Mostly they are cool phones. I have an E70, the VPN sucks because you can't configure it without a special software suite from Nokia and the display rotation is a bit slow the E70's the fold open QWERTY keyboard is brilliant though and it has backlit keys like a MacBook Pro. The Blackberry and Exchange clients mostly make up for the sucky VPN client. Some people also gripe about the lack of a fr
Yup! (Score:2)
Re:Nothing new... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I think the point is not that the phone can make VoIP calls, but that it automatically selects VoIP when its available. BT offer a similar service under the BT Fusion [bt.com] brand.
Nokia E61... (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
The future walky-talky (Score:2)
Would it make sense for a hardware company to manufacture a purely IP-based phone which does not connect to the POTs at all? It would be designed to be used in cities which have wireless clouds; kind of like a nextel direct-connect feature.
Call it, "Cityphone" or "Cloudphone".
Sure, you could only use it to communicate with other phones of the same type on IP networks - but I think it could catch on as a handy, low-cost device for intra-city communications.
Re: (Score:2)
http://tools.netgear.com/skype/ [netgear.com]
Re: (Score:1)
That is pretty close to what I was thinking about actually. Of course, it does require skype and as you say that is not 'exactly' what I am thinking, as I would like to have a phone which requires no service, aside from internet access, whatsoever.
But that phone is pretty sweet.
Nice find.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/ [utstar.com]
Wimax (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
And charge a ridiculous price for them too, just as they do now for cell phones. Some day they will be defeated however, just as the telcos have been by the likes of Vonage and Skype. And people will flock from them in droves after years of being fed up with being raped by their inflated prices.
Re: (Score:2)
I hope not. The mobile companies should all be locked out of it via some anti-monopoly laws. It seems to me that sticking a few mobile phone masts around a city is a lot cheaper than digging a whole city up so that cable can be laid. Why therefore do we have to pay so much for mobile phone services?
Only works at home??? (Score:2)
So from a functionality perspective, this is just a regular cellphone away from home. No wi-fi hotspot. At home it has the marginal added functionality of using wi-fi.
A massproduced cellphone that also uses wi-fi hotspots would be *big* news. Otherwise, not very interesting.
BTW: How d
Re: (Score:2)
How about a network appliance that talks to the phone over IP and forwards the digitized audio to and from the handset?
You know, an otherwise useless box to take up a port in your router that requires no administrative skills to set up.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I need my phone... (Score:2)
A Hybrid Danish IP Mobile? (Score:2)
Mmmh, sounds tasty. Suggested campaign slogan: "Chat'n'Snack" (though users are advised to watch out for crumbs which might fall into the wireless Internet tubes).
Web authentication (Score:2)
One problem with this concept is that many hotspot operators require you to authenticate through a browser. That won't work on Wi-Fi enabled phones. George Ou [zdnet.com] wrote about this. 802.1x may be a solution but there are currently few operators that support it.
Screw UMA - I got your ARPU right here, bitches! (Score:2)
I'm holding out for a wifi-enabled version of the trolltech phone [slashdot.org]. Give me that, and Asterisk, and the glorified bitpushers also known as wireless operators can kiss my ass.
SIP for the vast majority of the traffic, and a pay-as-you-go SIM for E911 and occasional in-the-middle-of-nowhere use. Oh, and push email done right, without getting RIMmed with patent troll taxes.
Did you even look at the article? (Score:2)
No WiFi - linuxdevices initially mistaken (Score:2)
Batteries?! (Score:1)
I worked on that project.. (Score:1)
Also in Finland, Nokia 6136 phones (Score:4, Informative)
Nokia's WiFi / GSM / CDMA handsets... (Score:2)
left 3 handsets showing (when I used it a week or so ago); one is
a "clam-shell" design that suggests you'd be more likely to use
its WiFi features to access files to ber massaged & returned to a
workgroup server.
The other two handsets seem to be better suited to the cool feature
of enabling cheap/free VoIP calls mentioned in this article.
(I seem to recall hearing mention of an auto-roaming WiFi-based
VoIP handset, eg, on Systm's Asterisk vide
Nokia e70 (Score:2)