Wireless VoIP attracts attention

By Tim Greene, NetworkWorld.com, 07/21/06

Wireless VoIP is getting a push this week from Skype, which is introducing a handset that can link callers to the Skype service via Wi-Fi connections.

So users log the phone in to a local access point, gain Internet access and place calls. They are handled by Skype just as the would be if the caller were dialing from a Skype client on a computer attached to a wired network.
The convenience here is obvious. Customers don't have to fire up their laptop at a hotspot and the interface - a phone-like handset - is much more user-friendly. Four other Skype Wi-Fi phones are due out for Christmas.
But Skype isn't the only one making a push for wireless VoIP. Also this week, a company called xG Technology is launching a service for ISPs that will provision VoIP services easily and inexpensively for the ISPs so they can offer their customers wireless VoIP services.
These customers would buy a phone that supports xG Technology's technology, called xMax, and be able to place IP calls. The phones would communicate with a local xMax antenna and the call would be backhauled to a VoIP service provider. That provider would be responsible for delivering calls to other IP phone users or to phones on the traditional public phone network.
Users would have to stay in range of the xMax antenna and pay a monthly fee of up to $50 for unlimited use, but they would be able to use the phones anywhere within the service area, which with an 18-mile range, is quite a lot larger than the range for a Wi-Fi access point.
And researchers at Purdue have started a company that will let Wi-Fi hit a moving target. These professors who have started their own company, Broadband Antenna Tracking Systems, make devices linked to an access point antenna and to the remote receiver. They lock in on each other and maintain contact by adjusting the aim of the directional antenna to seek the strongest signal. So a land-based antenna could keep a lock on a wireless device sailing by on a boat offshore, for example.

Back to Convergence / VoIP Notes

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