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Technology Stocks : Voice-on-the-net (VON), VoIP, Internet (IP) Telephony -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Blazejay who wrote (2777)	6/21/1999 8:41:00 PM
From: Crash	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3178

Scott and Blaze, This comment caught my eye: "Merge a palm-pilot with a cell-phone and give it an IP address. Take the phones on your desk and in your kids' rooms and give them IP addresses, too. Your vPBX server somehow senses which ones are active" and rings you up when somebody calls." Wouldn't IP addressing imply a fixed location? Or is there some standard for mobility that I am not aware of today? If a capability exists, why would I need an IP address? Is there some need for backward compatibility with fixed location applications? Just Curious. Regards, Crash

To: Blazejay who wrote (2777)	6/22/1999 9:51:00 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 3178

Hello Blazejay, Interesting conversation, and great insights ... > Neat. And makes sense, too. I think we're going to have to have a > new model of phone, though...Instead of making my computer "ring", > I guess the real solution would be make my phone more like my > computer. The one issue that I look at in this area is cost. I agree that in the long run, this is the direction that things will go ... but due to rewiring, etc. I think that the PC being the gateway will be around for a while in the home ... > Merge a palm-pilot with a cell-phone and give it an IP address. > Take the phones on your desk and in your kids' rooms and give them > IP addresses, too. Yep ... as embedded IP-capable devices start to pop up, this is going to become possible ... > Your vPBX server somehow senses which ones are "active" and rings > you up when somebody calls. Of course I'll need to place calls via > my new mini-PC/phone to non-IP-enabled phones, too. Somehow. I like the thought of "active" ... some friends and I have looked at ways to integrate this information, including presence of a person, so that the vPBX could forward calls to the appropriate phone. For example, in an office setting if you "log on" to the network from a specific workstation, your calls are routed to the phone set next to you ... some of the new "gateways" that I saw at NetWorld+Interop already allow you to run a configuration application and redirect your calls ... and these gateways are what can provide the connection between the IP world and the POTS world ... > These revelations are just dawning on me but I'm sure it's old news > to the cognoscenti. ;) ;-) Actually the general concepts start to fall into place ... but in today's world it's sometimes tough to determine exactly which companies are going to succeed at bringing this to market ... > So Scott, how close are we to getting something like this? ;-) I believe that we are getting extremely close ... not for everyone to be using this type of capability, but for some people to have it ... probably a couple of years. If you are a real "bleeding-edge" techy, you could do much of this today, but not affordably and as easy as you would want ... For example, at NetWorld+Interop I saw several companies that are making the IP-phones ... they are wireless, and have an IP address ... they use a standard called H.323 to communicate with PCs or other phones ... or gateways to the standard phone system ... It's coming quickly ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon