Net2Phone has announced the release of a Wi-Fi handset, reports E-Week. The XJ100 handset will sell for $160, chiefly through its reseller channel of cable operators, ISPs, interconnects and telcos.
The SIP phone complies with both the 802.11b and 802.11g standards for Wi-Fi LANs, and advances the growing trend in VOIP (voice over IP) mobility. A Wi-Fi phone, connecting to the Internet through wireless LANs and public hot spots, frees users from the VOIP leash to adapter-router-modem.
The handset resembles a cell phone and features simplified voice mail, call forwarding, call blocking and call return. It will be loaded with Net2Phone’s own software, enabling it with Net2Phone’s service features. This limits the phone to Net2Phone’s VoiceLine service, but simplifies access to features that are typically activated only with a Web GUI or hard-to-remember dialed codes.
Net2Phone offers toll-free plans as well as calling plan, typically billed at 4.9 cents per minute; or on a pay-as-you-go plan, at 7 cents per minute.
A Nov. 11 announcement made with the National Cable Television Cooperative named Net2Phone its first “Platinum Provider” of IP telephony services. A purchasing cooperative, NCTC represents more than 1,000 U.S. cable system operators serving more than 14 million subscribers.
Pulver.com has a WiSIP phone for use with its Free World Dialup VOIP service while BroadVoice, a more typical VOIP-with-PSTN gateway service, also offers the WiSIP phone to its own subscribers.
Skype may be the sum of all fears — it’s free. Wireless PDAs can also use Voice Over Pocket PC. Download the software and go.
Don Sorcinelli of Boston PocketPC reviews Voice over IP software for WiFi-enabled Pocket PCs. We’ve excerpted some of his remarks below.
- Microsoft Portrait has been around for awhile and provides some nice VoIP as well as video over Wi-Fi. What s nice about Portrait is that it works with msn messenger so if you use messenger then this is an easy way to get things going. Portrait also works well over low bandwidth so it s an good option if you are using gprs or 1xRTT. Note that you can t make calls to pots (plain old telephone system) lines with Microsoft Portrait. The other downside to Portrait for most pocket pc s is the audio is half duplex.
- Pocket Gphone has been around for some time. This is another program that works great with pc-pc or pc-ppc connections. Gphone has a pay service which allows you to call other Gphone friends without knowing their IP, but for $9.99 a month I d rather be able to make calls to regular phone lines. Like Portrait Gphone can be used to send/receive files and text chats. It took a good while for me to actually download the client, more work than I think was necessary.
- Sjphone from Sj Labs is a great program. Along with Pocket Gphone I ve been using SjPhone since my 3650 days and this is one program that I ve always had great results with. Sjphone is a SIP and H.323 based client which covers both the new and old VoIP technologies. Having just SjPhone installed on your device and desktop will allow you to call between devices as long as you have the IP address of the other person and as long as the programs have access to the correct ports. You can also use a registration service which can list all those who are logged on to the server and allow you to just click their name to call them. Because SjPhone is a sip client you can use it with many of the sip based VoIP providers out there.
- X-Phone. What s nice about this software is that the pro version of X-Phone can connect to multiple proxies at once. Using X-Phone I m able to log into my Vonage, Stanaphone and Free World Dialup at the same time making it very easy to take calls from any of the services. The only problem with X-Phone is that it tends to be a resource hog.
- Ecuity has a service called V-Tone which provides you with PSTN VoIP service. They have many different plans to choose from and they also feature a free trial which gives you 100 minutes to evaluate the service.
- Vonage is a VoIP provider that allows you to be able to make POTS calls. Vonage uses SIP which SjPhone, Telesym and X-Phone support. Vonage s softphone service is an add-on, meaning you have to already have regular service with them before you can add a softphone to your account. Still it s a great deal, I have the unlimted plan for $29 and when you add the $10 for the softphone service my bill is still way cheaper than when I had only 1 line with Verizon. Calls to other Vonage numbers is free both incoming and outgoing.
- Stanaphone is another SIP based VoIP provider and like Vonage you can use just about any SIP based program with the service (SjPhone is listed o n their site). Service setup is free and you can receive unlimited incoming calls free as well as network calls (stanaphone-stanaphone).
- Free World Dialup, like the other VoIP service providers offers voicemail, caller ID and other features for free. Jeff Pulver, the creator of Free World Dialup is actually one of the founding members of Vonage. Free World Dialup is a SIP based service and it allows you to call other Free World Dialup members anywhere in the world. When you signup you are assigned a number much like a phone number and this number is what s used when someone wants to contact you. You can make calls to many toll free numbers here in the and other places but the only way to get incoming calls fro POTS lines is to use another service called Libretel. This service will give you PBX like system by allowing others to call into a local number and entering your Free World Dialup number as the extension, you can also make calls to and from other VoIP providers(Vonage, Packet 8,etc) from Free World Dialup free of charge. It s really a nice system and unless you need to make calls to POTS lines then it s a very good choice.
- Telesym. Although Telesym is a proprietary solution it works great. Also the latest version of Telesym has sip functionality built in as well. Like Gphone and SjPhone you can make calls between clients if you know the IP address of the other person and if the applicable ports are open between the clients. If you don t have a PBX and all you want to do is make/receive POTS calls then you can check out some of Telesym s service providers.
- Pocket Skype is another proprietary VoIP application but it does work well. With most of the VoIP services I have written about, all require the use of a proxy server to establish communication. When you re at a Wi-Fi hot spot this may be fine but some firewalls and companies don t allow that type of data to travel across the network which means you can t make any calls. Pocket Skype uses the port 80 to handle this task, port 80 is needed to surf the net so this is good as it means you shouldn t run into many situations where this port is blocked. My biggest gripe about Pocket Skype is how it manages contacts. Other than that the program works great and they even offer a pay service (Skype Out) which allows you to make calls to/from regular phone lines.
All these programs give you a way to have your voice heard, all you have to do in most cases is load the program set a few parameters and that s it. Most of the clients listed also have desktop versions. Plus most clients can be used interchangeably as long as they support the SIP functionality.
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