[Asterisk-Users] Cordless SIP phones

[John Todd]

The phone link below shows a device which plugs into the USB port of 
a machine, which makes me highly suspect that it will be a 
"Windoze-only" phone, and consequently pretty worthless.

For 802.11 phones, there are at least two H.323 phones out there - 
Google will show you the way.

I held in my hands this spring at VON an 802.11 SIP phone by an east 
Asian shop, and I even made calls on it.  However, it was the 
"convention floor" model, and my questions on pricing, resellers, 
software packages, and the basic questions of "How do I buy this?" 
were met with astonishingly rapid linguistic difficulty, moments 
after the very same people were talking with me fluently when they 
thought I worked for Cisco.  In other words: vaporware.

The 802.11 phones are coming... eventually.  It's everyone's "brass 
ring" right now, but the power requirements for 802.11 beat the hell 
out of whatever kind of batteries you can put into a handset that 
people feel comfortable with.  I'll bet that cell phones use an order 
of magnitude less power than 802.11 systems do, so there are 
different problems with attaching to a "realtime" network all the 
time with a handheld device.  Batteries, batteries, batteries.

Cisco has an 802.11 phone called the 7920, which is apparently 
shipping now.  It is very expensive (>$550 USD) and only runs SCCP at 
the moment, which is Cisco's proprietary VoIP protocol.  However, if 
it falls in line with some of Cisco's other high-end VoIP equipment, 
that means it should have a trailing-edge SIP image running by 
December.  Despite Cisco's frequent stupidity when it comes to 
marketing decisions, they make some pretty nice gear and so I'm 
holding out for the 7920.

JT



At 9:44 AM +0300 8/18/03, Dan wrote:
>Hi,
>
>A cordless phone with support for both PSTN and IP will be available at the
>beginning of 2004.
>See the link:
>http://www.eutecticsinc.com/products/consumer.html#IPP700
>
>BR,
>Dan
>P.S. In this moment I have an ATA186 with two DECT cordless phones which
>works like a charm with Asterisk.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Nathan" <renegade at techhaven.net>
>To: <asterisk-users at lists.digium.com>
>Sent: Monday, August 18, 2003 2:55 AM
>Subject: [Asterisk-Users] Cordless SIP phones
>
>
>>  Does anyone have any recommendations for a cordless phone that uses SIP
>  > (or IAX)? It doesn't have to use 802.11b, but that would be appreciated.
>  >
>  > Thanks,
>  > Nathan