Matthew... what you're describing is sometimes called "Fixed Mobile
Convergence." Or rather, the "FMC" term has grown to encompass the
scenario you describe.
I use Skype on a HTC Apache (or is it the Wizard?) with EVDO and
voice from Verizon. Honestly, I'm surprised Verizon lets me get away
with this. This is the type of thing I would think they would want to
shut down. I've tried Skype on a Mac over Blooteuth over EDGE, too,
and it's not completely bad. There's a delay that ranges from 350
msec to well over 2 seconds, but the median seems to be somewhere
around 500 msec. Not completely bad, but it leaves you wanting
something better. What I've noticed about EVDO is that throughput
falls through the floor when you're on the move. EDGE seems to suffer
this effect much less, but on both technologies, it's definitely
noticeable.
So... from a network perspective, there may be some issues with
latency and maintaining throughput as you're driving.
From an application perspective, I have a contact at eBay labs who's
been pressuring the Skype team to release an ARM/Linux binary.
They've shipped an intel/Linux binary, but I would be surprised if
the current and next generation Neos have the horsepower to emulate
the full skype library... I think they include their own codecs,
which tends to eat up a lot of processor time.
The good news is that given Skype's ability to have multiple sessions
open on the same account, it shouldn't be that difficult to create a
client that transfers a Skype call from your handset to your desktop
client without the person on the other end of the phone even being
aware.
I have a similar problem in that I live in the sticks and coverage is
a bit spotty, especially the last 30 seconds of my drive. I would
love to "park" a call from my mobile and pick it up on my home phone.
The "holy grail" of home-based FMC would be a system that, like you
describe, allows an incoming call to your home line to be forwarded
to your mobile when you're away, and then transfer back to your home
after you arrive. It's trivial to set things up to transfer from your
land-line to a mobile line. You don't even need Asterisk to do that.
But transferring back to the land line is a bit problematic.
In order to do this, you would need the complicity of your carrier or
something like Asterisk listening in to the conversation. The former
is unlikely to happen in this decade and the latter might require
that you have two lines at your office; one to terminate the land-
line call and the other to make the outgoing call to your mobile
(with the PBX in the middle forwarding the sounds from one line to
another and listening for signaling tones you produce to tell it to
go into "call park mode.")
If you have an office in a business district, it's a lot easier to
get a PBX interface where your phone system talks QSIG or DPNSS. In
short, your equipment has a better mechanism for staying "in the
loop" than with traditional analog residential signaling.
In the early days of ISDN and then later DSL and "Fiber to the Curb"
there was a lot of talk about pushing intelligence to the leaves of
the network specifically to support the types of things you're
talking about. But such talk is heresy in the telco world, so we wind
up with the status quo. The telcos seem to have built a pricing model
based on differentiated "residential" and "business" services.
Residential services tend to be cheaper, but offer fewer services.
Business services cost a bit more (sometimes a lot more) but offer
more flexibility and more services.
I've been making my own cell phones for over a year now, and I'm
trying very hard to get the major carriers interested in service-
differentiated MVNO's. Which is to say... a "Mobile Virtual Network
Operator" that offers services different than the parent network. To
date, it seems that most MVNO's are interested only in
differentiating based on branding and marketing. I would think that a
service that provided some of the services you're talking about would
be great for small businesses. I'm thinking about a service that
terminates a PSTN call (i.e. - a regular phone call) at our switch
and then does VoIP to your desk (if you're at your desk) or forwards
to your mobile, but stays "in the loop" with respect to signaling.
When you want to transfer between land-line and mobile.
In other words, you would buy a SIP phone for your desk at home, and
point it towards our proxy. We then provide a web interface that
allows you to configure your service... voicemail, "follow-me" and
the like... You would then get a normal mobile phone and configure
the system to forward incoming calls to your mobile device and your
desk phone. Then add the ability to use a SIP/RTP client over EVDO or
EDGE if you want to try that. But the most important part of this
system would likely be the ability to move calls between land-line,
VoIP and mobile networks.
In a sense, this would be a lot like what I'm building at my day job
at Divitas Networks. Our solution is targeted at businesses with (I
think) something like 20 or more employees, so it's probably more
than you want to pay. But... if someone else came in, bought one of
our servers and then bundled our service with a mobile plan it would
be a lot like what I'm taking about.
Anyway... you're not insane. I think the only reason what you're
talking about can't be done already is that no one's done it yet.
Whenever I bump into the Skype / eBay people online or at
conferences, it's clear they're spooling up to compete head-to-head
with the major telcos of the world, so it wouldn't be outside the
realm of possibility for Skype to come up with a service very close
to what you're after. Or... at least... if you could explain your
requirements to the Skype guys, and their business guys did the
analysis and found out it would be profitable for them, I can imagine
them implementing such a thing in a couple of months. Assuming you
could convince the telco guys to do such a thing, I'm sure they could
do it within two or three decades.
-Cheers!
-Matt H.
On Mar 28, 2007, at 12:59 PM, mathew davis wrote:
I have an itch that I would like to explain to you and give an idea
of how to overcome that itch and see if that is possible or not,
and if so a good idea or not. So first here is my itch. I have a
VoIP phone at home which uses my WiFi connection to make calls
using skype. I like that it helps lower my cell phone bills a lot
since I started a new business and it takes a lot of calls to make
it sucessful. But I am not always at home sometimes I am just 5
minutes out from home and recieve a phone call I talk on the way
home and then to cut my minutes short I tell them I will call them
right back and then hang up switch to my VoIP phone. That gets old
sometimes. Granted it is not a very big itch but it is annoying.
So I have come up with several solutions. First, with the neo I
could get a plan that includes data with my minutes and I could use
skype or some other VoIP solution like astrisk. Which in turn
would be great. Oh also another question can you get a data only
plan? Just curious I know some people may or may not have
mentioned it but the thread that it was mentioned in has over 80 e-
mails and couldn't find it right off. But let's pretend that for
somereason you didn't want to add a data plan to your mobile device
because it was too expensive or what ever. Would it be possible
for the neo to know when you step into range of a WiFi network that
you have acess to? And after it notices the WiFi connection it
pops up a button on the screen that say's transfer to VoIP? You
say hold on a sec and press the button. The neo then puts the user
on hold and transfers the call to your VoIP line on your neo where
you pick it up, or the neo picks it up. The voice line then hangs
up the call and puts the person back on the line with you. Does
that make since? Also when making a call and I am in range of a
WiFi network a check box or a seperate call with VoIP button
appears that allows you to place the same call over the VoIP? Does
that make since? Just wanting to get everyones opinions on this.
This is a feature that I would like very much. I have internet at
home which has a 15Mbps transfer rate with a 1000GB cap so I should
be free and clear with this. I would love to have this feature. I
would like to learn how to do this on the neo but would definatly
need more time to research it out. Plus I would need more time to
work on it, maybe when I graduate school. I would also need
someone to help me. Any ways I am starting to ramble so please let
me know what you think about this?
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