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The first consumer Wi-Fi phones are a little like dancing bears.
You're so disarmed by the fact that they can do it at all that you're
prepared to overlook their occasional stumble.
Pulver Innovations is the product arm of Pulver.com, Jeff Pulver's
VoIP (Voice over IP) consulting and conference empire and it has one
such phone, the $250 WiSIP.
The good news is that the WiSIP phone works, quite well in fact. The
bad news: it doesn't yet work everywhere, and rarely where it would be
most useful -- at a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The Pulver phone is bigger than the smallest cell phones, but lighter
than most. In fact, it feels a little flimsy.
The Pulver Wi-Fi phone is built around Session Initiated Protocol
(SIP), a signaling protocol for Internet telephony and instant
messaging. The protocol initiates call setup, routing and
authentication on IP networks. SIP compliance is a good thing in a
Wi-Fi phone. It means the phone is compatible with most WLANs.
Unfortunately, it does not guarantee you can use it anywhere. To work,
the phone needs to associate with a local Wi-Fi network, then log on
to a VoIP server. |
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