Has anybody here had some experience in using VOIP (Skype or SIP based) on a
Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone via free Wi-Fi Hotspots abroad to make free calls
back to UK or anywhere else?
divoch

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In article <BzV8h.59064$r4.27570@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>,
divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote:
>Has anybody here had some experience in using VOIP (Skype or SIP based) on 
a
>Wi-Fi enabled mobile phone via free Wi-Fi Hotspots abroad to make free call
s
>back to UK or anywhere else?

I've been using the UT Starcom F1000G WiFi phone for a while now. It's
a bit fiddly to setup, and voice quality might be better, but it does
the job for what I want it for. Not sure it would be good for "serious"
or "corp-rat" business use, but ...

http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/

And of-course your VoIP experience will only be as good as the Internet
connection you have - so out in the middle of no-where where they only
have an ADSL line then it could be problematic, but I'll find out soon
enough when I travel to Egypt where I know a place I'll be in where I
can get free WiFi access (to a 512Kbps ADSL connection)

A friend of mine has the 3000 model, which is pretty and has a colour
screen, but he seems to have great problems programming it...

Gordon

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"Gordon Henderson" <gordon@lion.drogon.net> wrote in message
news:ek1d62$ohh$1@lion.drogon.net...
> In article <BzV8h.59064$r4.27570@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>,
> divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote: 
>
> I've been using the UT Starcom F1000G WiFi phone for a while now. It's
> a bit fiddly to setup, and voice quality might be better, but it does
> the job for what I want it for. Not sure it would be good for "serious"
> or "corp-rat" business use, but ...
>
> http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/
>
> And of-course your VoIP experience will only be as good as the Internet
> connection you have - so out in the middle of no-where where they only
> have an ADSL line then it could be problematic, but I'll find out soon
> enough when I travel to Egypt where I know a place I'll be in where I
> can get free WiFi access (to a 512Kbps ADSL connection)
>
> A friend of mine has the 3000 model, which is pretty and has a colour
> screen, but he seems to have great problems programming it...

Which SIP service have you used with the phone? I presume it should work
with any SIP based service?  I would certainly be interested to hear about
your travel experiences with the phone.
divoch

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In article <jaY8h.59096$r4.8733@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>,
divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote:
>
>"Gordon Henderson" <gordon@lion.drogon.net> wrote in message
>news:ek1d62$ohh$1@lion.drogon.net... 
>
>Which SIP service have you used with the phone? I presume it should work
>with any SIP based service?  I would certainly be interested to hear about
>your travel experiences with the phone.
>divoch

I run my own Asterisk servers, but I've no reason to think it wouldn't
work with with any of the standard offerings.

It can remember 4 different WiFi Access Points, so I have it set with
the WEP keys of a few places I visit and it generally works out OK. It's
a bit of a fiddle inputting a wep-key via the keypad though, but I have
done it successfully, and you can see the MAC address without powering
it down (it's behind the battery) if you need to for places who also
use MAC address authentication.

Battery life is amazingly long - 3-4 days standby, and talk time is
several hours.

Gordon

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"Gordon Henderson" <gordon@lion.drogon.net> wrote in message
news:ek1msm$43c$1@lion.drogon.net...
> In article <jaY8h.59096$r4.8733@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>,
> divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote: 
>
> I run my own Asterisk servers, but I've no reason to think it wouldn't
> work with with any of the standard offerings.
>
> It can remember 4 different WiFi Access Points, so I have it set with
> the WEP keys of a few places I visit and it generally works out OK. It's
> a bit of a fiddle inputting a wep-key via the keypad though, but I have
> done it successfully, and you can see the MAC address without powering
> it down (it's behind the battery) if you need to for places who also
> use MAC address authentication.
>
> Battery life is amazingly long - 3-4 days standby, and talk time is
> several hours.

Sounds promising. Have you tried any of the free Hotspots? I know there
were some advertised  in Krakow and in Prague. I believe they
are low speed, i.e. 64kb/sec. I assume rightly or wrongly, these are open
and do not require WEP keys.
divoch

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In article <Tr%8h.51049$163.11849@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net>,
divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote:

>Sounds promising. Have you tried any of the free Hotspots? I know there
>were some advertised  in Krakow and in Prague. I believe they
>are low speed, i.e. 64kb/sec. I assume rightly or wrongly, these are open
>and do not require WEP keys.
>divoch

Not yet. The ones that require a login & password might be awkward to
get through though, although there is a sort of login scripting feature,
but I have not looked into it.

It'll use the GSM codec if you ask it to, so that might work on a slow
site which has open access, however WiFi is notoriously bad as passing
a relatively low data rate/high & small packet size  sort of load.

If the access point is overloaded I'd expect it to not work very
well at all.

Gordon

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"Gordon Henderson" <gordon@lion.drogon.net> wrote in message
news:ek22h7$ibc$1@lion.drogon.net...
> In article <Tr%8h.51049$163.11849@newsfe6-gui.ntli.net>,
> divoch <divoch@REMOVETHIShotmail.com> wrote:
> 
[vbcol=seagreen]
> If the access point is overloaded I'd expect it to not work very
> well at all.

I think that may well be the main limitation. 64 kb/sec should be OK
if you have it all to yourself but not otherwise
divoch

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I use Skype or SJPphone on an Acer Windows Mobile PDA. SJphone suffers
unless there is loads of bandwidth but Skype is very clear and usable even
in hotels with mediocre public wi-fi. Occasionally it's crackly or
inconvenient but it beats hell out of getting a huge GSM roaming bill.

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