Nokia N80 rocks as a VoIP phone
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 10:37 PM PST In Uncategorized
The part that personally interests me in some of these newer Nokia (NYSE: NOK) phones is VoIP. Nokia has implemented the SIP standard and since the latest versions of the firmware it has STUN support which makes it more robust when used with free SIP services from around the globe (as opposed to an Asterisk server at the same side of your firewall). I tried the phone with Gizmo, VoIPBuster, FWD and Ekiga. Except Ekiga’s Linux client which seems to be having some trouble communicating correctly with Nokia’s client, all the other services worked perfectly. I am able to call my mom and little brother in Greece for just $0.02 per minute while AT&T (NYSE: T) charges me about 40c per minute plus a $0.50 connection fee. Sure there is more lag with these "cheaper" VoIP services than there is with Vonage or a real landline, but for these call prices they well worth the hassle.
My question is why aren’t carriers using this technology to pass the savings onto consumers?
Easy. They in some cases are using voip. However, they run it over private networks that guarantee lower latency. Thus, they still get to charge a premium for quality. Plus, 1) are n80s offered by any carrier in the US (does anywhere else matter?
) and 2) would the “average” person be savvy enough to set it up?
So, the net is… they don’t have to. Personally, I’d rather make 40c a minute than 2c a minute.
Geek.. “(does anywhere else matter?
”
lol.. its always funny how jokes reveal so much.