The Need For Softphones

I've been in Europe less than a week, and have yet to use my Telephone adapters from either Vonage or AT&T CallVantage. Before I left I was in four hotels on the east coast and in none of them could I get the AT&T telephone adapter to work, even behind my Linksys router. Luckily in one case, the night before I left from Newark Airport at the Hilton, I was able to get the new Linksys/Vonage TA to work behind my Linksys 802.11g router so all was not lost.

Just before I left the USA, Webley's Alex Kurganov was kind enough to let me start playing with the new Webley SIP service, which has been in beta for over a year. Whenever Alex hits certain milestones I get a call and am offered the chance to try it out. But even Webley couldn't get around one of the hotel's all ports blocked approach. Using the X-Ten Softphone after some configuration matters Webley worked perfectly in all other situations, both in making and receiving calls via Webely's unified messaging service, something I've had in use since 1998.

Goodbye TA's, hello softphone. Between my ultralight 3 pound Portable One UX Laptop and the new Plantronics DSP-100 headset that Tom Keating suggested, Webley or the Vonage softphone I'm able to make and take calls effortlessly. Oh yeah, I've Skyped a few times too. No one has asked if I'm on a cell, headset or cordless. Softphone's work that well.

As a result of all this I now regret taking the two TA's, a cordless phone and my Linksys router along with me. Who needs the added weight. With a softphone they're just not needed.

But that's only part of the story, and its what the USA centric operators need to think about as VoIP goes business or get's used on the go by the travel minded executive, who needs to stay connected.

So far none of the hotels here in France have had "in room" WIRED broadband. It's all WIRELESS. In two hotels, one an Accor Mercure near Cannes and the other, a Hilton property in Lyon, it's been WiFi all the way. When I get to Paris and back to London, the rooms will be wired so I guess I can create my own wireless hot spot with the SMC Travel Router or do what I did last year, use the Linksys and the Cordless, hooked up to whichever TA gets past the firewalls.

The bottom line is Softphone is in my mind the way to go!

Comments

[A Singh]

I have been using adore softphone(http://www.adoreinfotech.com) with globaltelip service and it's working great.