Headsets

Handsets

There are now lots of USB attached VoIP handsets and WLAN Handsets

  • starting with Symbol Technologies’s NetVision® Data Phone
  • Vocera Communications Badge http://www.vocera.com/
    • runs speech recognition software in a network attached server
    • unfortunately it uses a proprietary protocol between the handset and their server, but I expect others will make similar devices which will not have this misfeature.

VoIP cellular handsets combining IEEE 802.11 (WLAN) with wide area cellular connectivity.

IP DECT phone handsets are available from many vendors - combine DECT’s physical and media layers with VoIP.

 

For more types of “SIP handsets” into your favorite search engine!

Transcript

[slide26] Handsets. Well, one of the interesting things that's occurred is there's a company called Vocera, and all of you have of course seen the movie Star Trek, right? Computer, blah blah blah, right? They touch their little badge and talk to the computer. Vocera built a system that does that. It's a VoIP system based on one button. And their market is to go into places like hospitals and other places where the people want to be able to just activate it, and then use their voice to control the system. So based on their voice, they can place the call to a particular other party. And what do they do? They run speech recognition software in them. The bad problem is, unfortunately, from my point of view, it uses a proprietary protocol. But there are loads of VoIP cellular handsets, including ones that talk IEEE over IEEE 802.11, i.e. wireless LAN. So some of you might have seen Google's service, which is a voice over IP over wireless LAN-based service. They also can provide your voice service over a cellular network. But they basically rely on, for your $20 a month or whatever that you pay, where you have unlimited minutes of talk time, if you go over the Wi-Fi network. How do they offer it? Well, as Ali said, it's because, gee, did they have to provide the Wi-Fi network? No, somebody else has already put that in. And the cost per volume is trivial for them. And although they have to support, they have to support the infrastructure that authenticates users and does the billing, etc. This is a very, very enormous change. And there are even people who have introduced IP over DECT handsets.