[MLB-WIRELESS] Free P2P phones will pressure telcos

[Abe Orchard]

There are heaps of products out there that do exactly what you want. It
seems that the emergence of SIP has lead to quite a range of hardware
becoming available everything from the traditional desk phone to boxes that
allow your traditional phones (corded and non-corded) to be used. The
problem is that it hasn't been in the retail environment. - that's changing.

Generally these things seem to be based on Linux and require that you
provide  power and ethernet. Some allow you to configure the phone/dongle
via a web interface meaning you can easily set the phone to connect to a
directory server of your choice.

The reason that there has been this recent jump in interest in IP Phones is
because of Skype and also SIP Phone who are selling two SIP phones for $129
US which is much cheaper than has been seen around for a while and are
targetting the retail market. SIP phones (the brand that is ) come
configured to go using SIP phones own directory server with a valid (though
not interconnected US phone number) and are being sold on a plug in, turn
on, talk basis. There's no reason why you can't just change the phones
settings to use some other directory say if you were operating the phones on
a private network like Melbourne Wireless.


The great thing about these products is that you can move them anywhere you
can get ethernet (With one I saw that included a wifi card so you just
plugged it into power that really is anywhere) and you don't need to have
your computer running, boot up software or all that crap.

To find said hardware do a google search on SIP Phone there are a couple of
harware lists in there somwhere which I found. Its a pity but at this stage
most people selling IP phones still have not price listed and a "contact our
sales department approach" - if anyone finds a cheap asian manufacturer
please let me know. I'd buy 10 if they were $60 each as opposed to the
$US500+ per phone that somepeople want.

NOT A PLUG but : http://www.sipphone.com/ have two phones for $US129 or two
adaptors for US$20 more. I'm really supprised that they have been allowed to
use that name though .. come on guys surely its too generic.


PS Fenn if you read this I still have your antenna!

Abe



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au
[mailto:owner-melbwireless at wireless.org.au]On Behalf Of Jason Hecker
Sent: Wednesday, 12 November 2003 2:57 p.m.
To: v64
Cc: melbwireless at wireless.org.au
Subject: Re: [MLB-WIRELESS] Free P2P phones will pressure telcos


> I would much prefer a 802.11a/b/g device as my house is covered with
> that but I don't know if there are any cordless headsets on the market
> that would be suitable?

I was thinking recently how nice it'd be to use a normal phone for VoIP.
  I have an old FM analogue cordless phone at home which I'll see if I
can hotwire the soundcard to the internals, bypassing the transhybrid
circuit and gyrator and hook the lineout and mic directly to the audio
lines on the radio section.  You could possibly hotwire a pin from the
parallel port to activate the ring logic too....  Hrmmmmm.....

Anyone done this, BTW?


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