I am definitely not a gadget freak – the mobile phone I use is the corporate Nokia 6120 classic and I am happy with it (!!!), but I am a workaholic – so, at home, my laptop is always open, the VPN is always connected, and I check my corporate email account frequently.
Why am I telling you that about myself? Because some people think WiFi VoIP is going to replace 3G calling.
Michael Graves, for instance, thinks DECT is better than WiFi, when it comes to VoIP:
In everything experiment that I’ve ever tried DECT/CATiq products soundly beat any dedicated SIP Wifi handset.
While Michael Graces probably takes the comparison to the realm of latency and packet loss (e.g. call quality), I’d like to take it to another place, which poses a lot more of an issue, especially when people think WiFi VoIP is mobile VoIP. Well, it’s not.
I have my share of business travel, and I need to come up with ways to connect to the office to read my precious emails. It usually requires finding a WiFi hotspot and praying that it has the iPass roaming service (or at least that nice web page, popular in hotel chains, where I can pay $20-25 for a single day use). It’s not always easy, and a lot of the time requires working my way over stupid web forms.
Sign-in procedure for a coffee shop in Israel (via HolesInTheNet)
For mobile e-mail, for me – as I do not own a smartphone – there is no real alternative. But if I’d have to go through that arduous effort of trying to connect to WiFi every time I had to make a mobile phone call, I’d simply give up on the whole thing.
So please don’t pitch WiFi VoIP to me, just because you are looking for a few more reasons why Mobile VoIP isn’t here yet.
3G networks might be expensive, but they sure work – and seamlessly. Whenever I am abroad, my mobile phone connects automatically and simply does what it has to – it’s magic, especially compared to WiFi.
Wake me up when WiFi gets to that level of robustness and seamlessness. Then, and only then, will it (maybe) be a candidate for mobile VoIP.
Tags: 3G, access, comparison, DECT, handsets, latency, Michael Graves, Mobile, mobile VoIP, Nokia, packet loss, quality, roaming, SIP, Smartphone, wifi
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