xyzcomputing.com— A dual-mode phone is able to use both cellular Wi-Fi radio signal for communication. This technology is not quite ready yet, but it has huge implications for the future of mobile communication.
Oct 25, 2006View in Crawl 4
I'm just configuring 14 HTC Hermes phones (from Vodafone in the UK - badged as their 1605). The phone is a WM5 PDA + Phone with slide out QWERTY keyboard and 802.11g WLAN support. The phones will run Skype (yuck) and also SJPhone's VoIP/SIP application and I have already successfully configured a few handsets as 'extensions' on our Asterisk telephone system.Using the phones as wifi-connected SIP phones is handy and, no doubt, the convergence of wifi and the mobile network services will be inevitable, but not necessarily vital - you see, with our Vodafone contract we can call between handsets free of charge and also call 10 designated landline numbers free and one of them happens to be an inbound trunk on our Asterisk server so we can call in free of charge and then get a dial tone and dial out again - in effect, for example, calling the USA (from the UK) from our mobiles for under 2p/minute.When wifi is all-pervasive then taking/making calls through it will be 'matter of fact', but at the moment you'd have to make a conscious decision to find a hotspot, verify the connection details etc. plus, using wifi sucks the life out of the batteries very quickly. No doubt, when convergence comes, so will the telephony tariffs to match.
To answer the questions above... Yes Skype and voice services work great on my PPC 6700, I make calls all day on Skype for free without using my cellular minutes. Just buy the basic plan and use Skype for the rest. Works great on my home wireless with WPA, but I had to get a 3rd party app to install my P12 certificate for the office wireless... P12imprt<a class="user" href="http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/p12imprt.html">http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/p12imprt.html</a>
Closed AccountOct 25, 2006
The PPC6700 supports Bluetooth, Wifi and cellular
woodcoxcbOct 25, 2006
"I'm sorry dear! It's not you, it's me!""What do you mean?""I dunno... I'm in the elevator, I was counting on the call dropping by now..."
jimmydushkuOct 25, 2006
If only you could use it for calls though.
jeanfredericOct 25, 2006
The technology is already available in France.Orange's Unik is one of the providers.
stuffhappensOct 25, 2006
I'm just configuring 14 HTC Hermes phones (from Vodafone in the UK - badged as their 1605). The phone is a WM5 PDA + Phone with slide out QWERTY keyboard and 802.11g WLAN support. The phones will run Skype (yuck) and also SJPhone's VoIP/SIP application and I have already successfully configured a few handsets as 'extensions' on our Asterisk telephone system.Using the phones as wifi-connected SIP phones is handy and, no doubt, the convergence of wifi and the mobile network services will be inevitable, but not necessarily vital - you see, with our Vodafone contract we can call between handsets free of charge and also call 10 designated landline numbers free and one of them happens to be an inbound trunk on our Asterisk server so we can call in free of charge and then get a dial tone and dial out again - in effect, for example, calling the USA (from the UK) from our mobiles for under 2p/minute.When wifi is all-pervasive then taking/making calls through it will be 'matter of fact', but at the moment you'd have to make a conscious decision to find a hotspot, verify the connection details etc. plus, using wifi sucks the life out of the batteries very quickly. No doubt, when convergence comes, so will the telephony tariffs to match.
dopeweaselOct 26, 2006
To answer the questions above... Yes Skype and voice services work great on my PPC 6700, I make calls all day on Skype for free without using my cellular minutes. Just buy the basic plan and use Skype for the rest. Works great on my home wireless with WPA, but I had to get a 3rd party app to install my P12 certificate for the office wireless... P12imprt<a class="user" href="http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/p12imprt.html">http://www.jacco2.dds.nl/networking/p12imprt.html</a>