You are very close to your wish! Calypso Wireless has a cell phone that can be used in wifi when available and cell when close to cell tower. It gives you the opportunity to use the convenience of cell + the cheapness of
telephony and can switch as they say seamlessly. Imagine good bye to the land line! For sure!
I can wait.

Wouldn't this require a HUGE WiFi mesh network? Am I missing something?

h.o.r.e.,

Sean isn't requiring the phone to work everywhere, just wherever wifi is available. And it's certainly available in more places than you realize (which is why the detection and notification part of the device is important).

p.s. Sean, congrats on joining the SmartMob.com team!

(What Dav said.)

Thanks, Dav...

/me wonders when mobile phone masts will be replaces by wi-fi masts

Why hasn't anyone mentioned Free World Dialup? Isn't this almost what you are looking for? www.pulverinnovations.com/wisip.html

Elf, that service looks intriguing, but according to the documentation it only works with other special SIP Internet phones; you can't use it to call standard telephone numbers.

Yup Sean, that is right.. you either have to use one of their 800 num gateways and use a 'calling card' through the 800 num gateway.. or set up your own SIP gateway that bridges to a analog phone line.

That is the going to be the biggest struggle with VOIP. That 'last mile' bridging to standard analog. That is why we'll probably have to 'pay' for VOIP service beyond our broadband charges

Elf:

But Net2Phone, Dialpad and others have already solved that problem of bridging to standard analog. Sure it's not free, and to be honest I suspect that they're working with pretty big profit margins, but still the costs are much cheaper than what you pay with standard cellular mobile phones, or even with land-line phones for long distance.

-Sean

Been calling Europe and Latin America for .10 per minute using Net2Phone. Look forward to using a cell phone. I hear net2phone is partnering with cable to offer voip.

Been calling Europe and Latin America for .10 per minute using Net2Phone. Look forward to using a cell phone. I hear net2phone is partnering with cable to offer voip.

QOS will be a big deal. What happens when you hop on a hotspot where the guy only has 512k DSL and 5 other people are talking?

I work as a Halifax Real Estate Agent in Nova Scotia, Canada and I was told that blogs were discussions on specific topics which made me interested in searching specifically for a real estate blog. So being new to the computer, I did a search in the search engines on a "professional real estate blog" and I found your professional web blog. It is a very interesting way to see what trends and technology are happening in the real estate market in other parts of the world besides Halifax. I am considering a blog for myself if I can understand the technology of operating a blog and from what I see I am somewhat hesitant right now even though it was interesting reading.

Respectfully yours
James B. ,
Halifax Real Estate Agent

Check out the Treo 600 and see http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/35660
and
http://www.computerweekly.com/Article111644.htm
and
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105-895033.html
and....

Nokia brought out a radio card for hybrid GPRS/802.11b connections in 2002.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Article110222.htm

The Calypso hybrid phone is GSM/GPRS/802.11b
and China Telecom recently decided to use them
http://www.stargeek.com/item/33693.html
Calypso first worked with the T-Mobil network
in the US
http://www.newswireless.net/articles/031129-tmobile.html

Motorola/NEC either have already or are near
announcing a hybrid phone
http://www.cellular.co.za/news_2003/082203-motorola_and_nec_america_are_co.htm

For something inbetween a phone and a PDA, check
out the Nokia Communicator 9500
http://www.i4u.com/article1185.html

Finally, I've been using VoIP on my Sony Vaio
laptop for three years. The Vaio is small enough
to pass for a book but large enough to type on.
I use the Callserve service
http://www.callserve.com/Homepage.asp

This lets me call anywhere to anywhere for USD.05/min. This is especially useful when,
for instance, I am sitting in the Deutsche Bahn
train station lounge in Germany and calling
Switzerland. If you use a US card, you have no
idea what you are being charged to call from
one European country to another. It can be
in the USD 7-8.00 range! Ask me how I know.
With the WiFi/CallServe solution, I use my
laptop, which I carry with me when I travel
to reliably make all of my calls at a known price.

Hi all,

Check out our web site, we help people with VoIP, SIP, etc.

Also check out http://www.xten.com/ they make a SIP based VoIP softphone for the iPaq handhelds. I use their products for my PCs, but I talk to several Americians on a regular basis via VoIP over the Internet, and they are using the iPaq version....they love it.

Also check http://www.zyxel.com/product/P2000W.html for a wireless SIP VoIP handset.

As for QoS on the Internet, that is not available today. It is technically available on the Internet routers, but service providers have yet to deploy QoS based services. Now, that said, I make VoIP calls on the Internet on a daily basis, and seldon have an issue. If I do have a audio quality issue, it is because the far end user has poor resources (ie, computer, ISP, etc.) SIP based VoIP will become very big in the next few years.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Cheers,
Vaughn