Vodafone has launched a femtocell. A femtocell is essentially a tiny version of a mobile base station which enable the connectivity from your phone to the landline network.
This is interesting technology, and if like me you live in a marginal signal area, now means you can wander around the house with full network coverage. As well as voice it is fully compatible with 3G data services, so mobile internet access will also use the femtocell when connected.
The device looks a bit like an ADSL modem and works by replicating a normal mobile basestation, albeit with quite a bit less power. The device connects to your broadband connection and all mobile calls and date are routed to/from the mobile network via the femtocell.
Apparently it can handle up to 4 calls, and I am assuming there is some form of security to stop other people piggybacking on your broadband bandwidth.
The price has been set at £160 or can be bought with a Vodafone contract and is available from the 1st July. See vodafone.co.uk/gateway for further details.
I recently purchased a Yealink T28 to evaluate as a suitable IP phone for use with Asterisk. Before I integrated it with Asterisk I had a play around with the standard SIP features and found a serious issue with the SIP registration.
The problem being that if you wanted to allocate an extension to the phone, it wouldn’t play ball. For instance for “register name” or “display name” settings the account 12345678 would work but 12345678*200 would not. Trying to configure it either via the browser interface or via the phone directly kept giving the message -
“If you are attempting to enter a string, this could contain an invalid character like $*%&#:!”
Yealinks website is pretty dire, with no technical information available. I eventually managed to get through to someone at Yealink and resolved the issue with firmware version 2.3.0.30. As the file isn’t generally available online, I have listed it here – Yealink T28 2.3.0.30 Firmware.
The Yealink T28 is a good phone, but is let down by their support. As an aside, if anyone has any info on using the XML features on this phone, please let me know.
I’m currently in the process of implementing an Asterisk IP PBX (www.asterisk.org) in my home.
At present I am using the Voipfone service (www.voipfone.co.uk) and a Yealink T28 IP Phone. See my other post if you have one of these and have had problems getting it to register properly as a SIP phone extension. I purchased the T28 specifically to try out IP telephony as i’m non too keen on IP softphones and also wanted to see if I could get a decent IP Telephone service over my non too speedy ADSL line (BT, hurry up and rollout your 21CN).
It was when trying this out, and my Nokia N95 sitting beside me on my desk that I remembered that this ubergadget has a SIP client installed on it (I understand some mobile phone providers remove this – spoilsports). Anyway, I’m with Three and after a bit of investigation I got it to work perfectly. It is just a pity that the wifi function on the N95 eats battery life, otherwise I would use this as my primary IP phone. The call quality is great, definately on a par with my Yealink IP telephone.
N95 VOIPFONE SIP CONFIGURATION
On your phone go to menu > settings > connection > SIP settings. From here edit the default profile, or create one and ensure you settings are as listed below:
Profile name: Voipfone (or whatever you want to call it)
Service Profile: IETF
Default Access point: your wifi access point (this can be defined in menu > settings > connection > access points > new access point)
Public user name: sip:voipfone account no@voipfone.co.uk
Use compression: No
Registration: When needed
Use security: No
Proxy server (submenu)
Proxy server address: sip:sip.voipfone.co.uk
Realm: asterisk
User name: your voipfone account number
Password: your voipfone password
Allow loose routing: Yes
Transport Type: UDP
Port:5060
Registrar Server (submenu)
Registrat server addr.: sip:sip.voipfone.co.uk
Realm: asterisk
User name: your voipfone account number
Password: your voipfone password
Transport Type: UDP
Port:5060
Now, go back to the connection menu and select Internet tel. (it should be just below the SIP settings options). Create a profile in here if you don’t have one and point it to the SIP profile you just created (i.e. SIP profiles should display Voipfone [or whatever you called it] ).
Now from the menu go to tools > connectivity > Internet Tel. It should display Discovering Services and show your wifi access point that you have defined. Select your access point and this should connect you to your Voipfone service via your SIP profile.
Not exactly the most intuitive process, but it should work!
If you have problems try web browsing from your N95, if this works then your wifi connection is okay. If you still cant access and you are sure you’ve entered the correct login information it is probably a router issue. I upgraded my phone to firmware V 30.0.018 recently. To check your firmware revision use *#0000# from your N95 keypad.
