Internet and VOIP phones

Semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom introduced on Friday the Broadcom BCM4325 WiFi (News - Alert)/Bluetooth/FM transceiver, a single-chip connectivity product which bundles WiFi, Bluetooth and FM receiver technologies onto a single silicon die.

Broadcom’s new product features radio capabilities in a new ultra-low power 65 nanometer CMOS system-on-a-chip (SoC). This makes it possible to address the growing demand for a single product that powers devices with multiple applications such as Web-browsing, instant messaging (IM), e-mail, VoIP phone calls and photo sharing, by eliminating the need to use multiple chips, since these were needed to prevent “same band” interference.

Source and more info: tmcnet

It’s a safe bet that as technological miniaturization continues, cellphone makers will stuff anything they can into their handsets.

Pairing some features, such as music, with cellphone calling is understandable. Others, however, are mystifying. (What’s the appeal of micro-TV when Hollywood is making films for high-definition screens?)

One cellphone that represents considerable advances in “cool” technology is the Belkin WiFi phone for the Skype Internet phone service. Retailing at $269.95, the phone makes calls using the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service without a computer.

It’s about the size of a “candy bar” style phone, with a glossy front, and works without the need for installation — well, after three hours of charging time — as long as the user has access to a WiFi network and a Skype identification.

Source and more info: theglobeandmai

I see that one of my analyst peers has released a report on WiFi phone shipments. Always tricky to interpret actual data from a press release, as it never has the full set of definitions / assumptions, but I’m scratching my head about a couple of things.

“Samsung leads in dual-mode WiFi/cellular handset revenue market share, followed by Nokia (NOK)”

This seems unlikely, unless it specifically excludes smartphones from the definition of “handset.” Nokia announced in its results last week that “The Eseries sold almost two million units since its introduction in the second quarter 2006.” - presumably accounting for a fairly large chunk of the total €1bn sales of its Enterprise business unit.

Source and more info: seekingalpha

Nokia released a few new phones at the 3GSM World Congress, but the one that really caught my eye was the Nokia E90 Communicator. At first glance, it almost looks like an oversized version of the budget Nokia phones available from most service providers–full number pad, QVGA screen, and 3MP camera on the outer shell–but that’s just where the fun begins.

The E90 opens up lengthwise to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard beneath a wide 800×352 pixel screen in 24-bit color. I think the coolest part about this feature is that I could talk on the phone without looking like a complete dork yelling into a “mini-laptop” device, but then if I decide to browse the web I could simply pop up the top and surf away. The phone runs on the S60 platform and has an integrated GPS reciever which can be used with the included Nokia Maps (with service subscription). In terms of connectivity, the E90 is 3G/EDGE/GPRS compatible and supports Quad-band, HSDPA, WiFi, mini USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0, and IrDA. The E90 is also touted as having multimedia capabilities, which leaves me wondering what sort of video and audio formats the device supports.

Source and more info: arstechnica

Mobile VoIP is really starting to take off, as evidenced by mobile VoIP provider Truphone’s announcement today at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, that its mobile VoIP service is supported on three new, WiFi-enabled Nokia (News - Alert) handsets: the Nokia E61i, Nokia E65 and Nokia E90.

Subscribers to Truphone’s mobile VoIP service can now use these dual mode, GSM/WiFi phones to make VoIP calls - for either free or dirt cheap - over WiFi (News - Alert) connections.

“The new Nokia E61i, Nokia E65 and Nokia E90 phones will be very popular and Truphone works on them from day one,” said James Tagg, CEO of Truphone, ina press release. “With other manufacturers also starting to put WiFi on handsets, 2007 is the year that mobile meets the Internet - and that means Truphone VoIP.”

The Truphone client software has reportedly completed the Symbian “signing process” and is available for all new and existing Nokia WiFi VoIP handsets.

Source and more info: tmcnet

Boingo Wireless announced on Monday that it was launching a new service, called Boingo Mobile, which will offer mobile phone users unlimited WiFi access across its network for $7.95 per month, including both voice and data usage. The service requires a special Boingo Mobile client to be installed on the mobile device, which is how the company will prevent the service being used by laptops and other more data-oriented devices. Boingo claims to have 60,000 hotspots around the world.

Comment: The announcement is significant because one of the biggest barriers (although there are still others) to the adoption of dual-mode, cellular/WiFi devices has been that public hotspot usage was prohibitively expensive even for voice usage. The same $10/day (or higher) rates that applied for laptops applied also for mobile phones, and this made it totally uneconomical for all but the heaviest power users to consider VoIP over WiFi as a means of saving money on calls.

Source and more info: ovum

The benefits of replacing your old PBX with an IP PBX
What is an IP PBX?

An IP PBX is a complete telephony system that provides telephone calls over IP data networks. All conversations are sent as data packets over the network. The technology includes advanced communication features but also provides a significant dose of worry-free scalability and robustness that all enterprises seek.

Enterprises don’t need to disrupt their current external communication infrastructure: An IP PBX is able to connect to traditional PSTN lines via a VOIP gateway - so an enterprise can keep its regular telephone numbers.

How it works

An IP PBX system consists of one or more SIP phones, an IP PBX server and optionally a VOIP Gateway to connect to existing PSTN lines. The IP PBX server functions in a similar manner to a proxy server: SIP clients, being either soft phones or hardware-based phones, register with the IP PBX server, and when they wish to make a call they ask the IP PBX to establish the connection. The IP PBX has a directory of all phones/users and their corresponding SIP address and thus is able to connect an internal call or route an external call via either a VOIP gateway or a VOIP service provider. More information and commonly asked questioned about IP PBXs can be found on IP PBX, SIP & VOIP FAQ - http://www.3cx.com/PBX/IP-PBX-faq.html

Source and more info: telephonyworld

Aipotek have managed to cram lots of functionality in a very slim package. The result is the VP-0002, a super-thin VoIP phone.

The dimensions are 7.5 x 36.5 x 123. That’s millimeters, of course.

With that kind of slimness you wouldn’t expect too much of a display. You wouldn’t be disappointed in that because there’s none at all, unless you count LEDs, which I wouldn’t. What do you want for US$39?

Source and more info: mobilemag

New Zealand company ZeroOne (NZ) Limited is currently running a trial of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 combined Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony, based on its hosted e-mail platform branded AnywhereExchange.

One of the new features being highlighted during the trial is the Outlook Voice Access, allowing users to access their Exchange mailbox over a phone call, through simple commands such as ” Today’s calendar”, “Reply” or “Call Meeting Organiser” and so on.

The service is scheduled to go live 1st April, when Number Portability starts in the country.

The platform is currently being tested with local ISP Compass, who will connect their VoIP services to AnywhereExchange’s softswitch, a SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) gateway. This way users will be able to answer phone calls to their numbers from anywhere in the world they are, but using a VoIP phone or a software client on any device, be it a computer or PDA.

If the phone call is not answered the call is diverteed to the AnywhereExchange platform, where Microsoft Exchange will answer the call and record a voicemail.

For the user this service a unified messaging experience, with all e-mails and voicemails stored in a single mailbox. These can be retrieved over the phone, from a client such as Microsoft Outlook or even from a PDA or smartphone synchronising to the mailbox. Any method currently supported by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 is available, including OWA, OMA, RPC-HTTP (MAPI), POP3, IMAP4 and the new method Outlook Voice Access (OVA).

Source and more info: geekzone

And here comes another new smartphone to start off the afternoon, this time from HP.

HP’s latest iPAQ, the 514 Voice Messenger, runs on Windows Mobile 6, features Wi-Fi connectivity, and works over GSM/EDGE networks.

To complement its Wi-Fi capabilities, the 514 can be used as a VoIP phone by integrating the phone in to office systems.

To satisfy the demanding business users, the 514 supports push email, and features an extra-long battery life of over 6 hours of talk time.

Microsoft Office Mobile suite is built-in to the phones, so that users can easily view and edit various documents.

Security is attended to with HP’s over the air device management that lets remote technicians, like IT managers, access the phone to erase data if its lost or stolen.

Source and more info: pocket-lint