However, despite glowing reviews, contrary positions regarding the usefulness and benefits of using cordless phones with integrated VoIP—or particularly, VoIP DECT phones—abound. Some technology experts have, thus, asked after and discussed the system in terms of its bandwidth, latency, security and, most particularly, reliability, among a number of things.

Cisco and Avaya are among the top two names in the field opening its arms to VoIP as well as to the notion of enterprise IP telephony. Before running headlong into embracing the system, there are hence more than a considerable number of concerns that need to be brought out into the open and examined from every possible angle.

One of these involves questions of system security. How can businesses feel secure enough in their choice of communication platforms—whether this includes cordless phones with VoIP or corded units—if the IP telephony environment hardly inspires confidence in such matters in the first place? Ensuring that one’s VoIP system is ready for any and all possible integration set-ups that future technologies bring along will make it easy for any system user to scale said communication tool with changing market dynamics. This is readily possible if system owners pay a great deal of attention to integrated management as well as testing solutions. These will not only serve to point out the commendable utility of IP telephony devices on a one-off basis. In addition, the system will also make it possible for users to keep a firm finger on the pulse on how the system is doing on a large scale so as to maximize performance as well as ongoing operations.

Integrated management as well as testing is able to provide end-user operation, integrity and functionality in a distributed environment that’s infinitely smoother across all phases of a VoIP IP telephone system—right from conception to deployment and straight to optimization. One factor essential to ensure that a successful IP telephony deployment takes is identifying the pickles out of the said system. This entails a decidedly thorough diagnosing of the problems as well as weaknesses—possible and inherent—of VoIP.

Troubles and woes springing from the choice of cordless phones, PBX systems as well as set-ups combining cordless phones and PBX systems—all those have to be anticipated after all. When it comes to one’s communication system, it’s never a matter of merrily traipsing along, trusting in the system and hoping for the best. One always has to keep an eye on each and every single possibility, particularly on those that potentially forecast disastrous outcomes. It always pays to be ready for circumstances that are less than ideal. So when they do happen, one will be in a position to counter any number of misfortunes and deal with the situation effectively.

Hence, one can expect a complex and exceedingly thorough process. Management solution, in this case, must automatically set out to identify all components in the network related to IP telephony. This bears great similarity with the Google model of crawling the Web. However, in this particular case, the model is applied to maintaining server and application health.

Hence, the development and subsequent release of a number of digital telephones designed over the years to cater to people with varying communication needs. Cordless phones with sturdy builds such as the Siemens Gigaset E455 for instance are ideal as home phones. The cordless phone from Siemens, for one, sports rubberized edges that reduce the amount of amount of impact so no worries if users accidentally lose their hold on the handset. Users are assured that the unit remains operational even after a few tumbles. And because there are rubberized edges, chances of dings and dents appearing as a result of sudden encounters with the floor are next to nil.

The cordless phone adds another little something to this list of goodies with its water-resistant feature. So for households with curious little tykes, families won’t have to worry their heads over the idea of little fingers splashing water all over the house, including over the family’s cordless phone handset and causing said cordless phone to go on the fizz.

Then there are cordless phones like the Philips VoIP841. A cordless Skype phone, this DECT phone from Philips is one of the most notable consumer electronics on the market—if not precisely the one—if it’s a matter of finding the ideal Skype phone. Packing along features such as SkypeIn as well as SkypeOut, users are able to get in touch with contacts, whether they live in the neighboring state or over in the next continent at a cost that’s considerably lower than what traditional telecoms charge. Of course, whenever Skype is mentioned, there’s no getting around the fact that the main draw of any consumer gadget equipped with Skype features is the promise of free calls. Skype-to-Skype makes this possible since it allows fellow Skypers to call each other up in a jiff—free of any cost. Tremendous improvement indeed over telephones that work via PSTN well known for long-distance calls that cost as much as a healthy human leg and lung.

To be continued

“You need standardisation for roaming to happen, and that won’t come from the 3GPP [cellular standards group] until the end of this year. So, yes, it will probably not be implemented for another two or three years,” explained Christian Kermarrec, vice-president of the RF and wireless group at Analog Devices Inc.

Separately, panelists from ADI as well as Philips made their collective opinions known when they voiced out a difference in opinion, contesting a particular belief of Mathias when he broached the idea of Bluetooth being dead. “Philips is shipping millions of Bluetooth components a month. The headset is a primary application. It is also being used for synching PDAs and as a link for computer peripherals,” stated Marino of Philips.

“Thirty to 40 percent of all mobile cordless phones or cellphones in the next few years will have Bluetooth,” ADI’s Kermarrec said even further.

Mathias along with a number of others contended that Bluetooth seems far too slow in its operations, making it laborious for anyone to attempt sharing files or synching systems using this platform. Thus, while Bluetooth may be added in a number of digital telephones systems—from cordless phones, wired units, Wi Fi phones, cordless Skype phones and a great deal more—may be as intermittent as those of infrared ports that a number of notebook computers being released these days have, Barrett stated. Frequent use is, in other words, out of the question.

These of course are reactions to the current state and condition of Bluetooth technology in the industry and will continue unless dramatic changes involving Bluetooth gadgets happen. Thus, judging from the way things never stand still in the communications industry, and saying that such changes may be closer in the coming than most people think may be true. But it won’t be enough to motivate an entire market—along with industry experts, pundits and analysts—to take it seriously. Unless the change is here and now, anything and everything Bluetooth will still keep to the current keel.

On perspectives regarding the future of ultrawideband technology, the panel was optimistic and hopeful on the whole, especially on the subject of ultrawideband technology being able to offer UWB sticks to applications for which it is particularly ideal.

“UWB is a personal area network, not a competitor with 802.11, and it’s not a substitute for Bluetooth though it may be what Bluetooth evolves to on the road map. UWB will serve fundamentally as a wire replacement on computer and consumer systems,” concluded Marino.

Providing a very expansive platform through which all things wireless could be discussed with as much attention—as much careful scrutiny—that experts in the field are rarely able to indulge in, the panel was not only able to explore issues as well as concerns that surround wireless technologies but also future possibilities involving wireless initiatives as well. From the emergence of a considerable of cordless phones sporting better and more refined if not precisely advanced features on the market, the growing dependence on wearable electronics such as wireless headsets in a number of industry sectors to the invention and development of other consumer gadgets that take wireless operations to entirely new levels of performance and expediency.

During the panel, Craig Barratt, current chief executive of Wi-Fi chip maker Atheros Communications, informed the public of how phased-array antenna technology is set to make an appearance in client 802.11 chips soon. “That will be a way to substantially increase frequency efficiency,” Barratt mused.

In an interview done after the panel, Barratt expressed the belief that the technology will soon appear in silicon before the end of next year arrives. The technology will be for access points supporting multiple antennas connecting to single-antenna PC chipsets in order to offer users with better range as well as greater capacity. This set-up may be further improved by installing support for multiple antennas on both client and access-point chipsets.

“This is one way Wi-Fi chip makers will be able to differentiate their products. The big challenge is it will add costs. You will have to sell the products on the added value in terms of greater range or data rate,” Barratt expounded on the matter.

During one of the sessions, Carl Panasik, a distinguished member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments Inc. at present took a contrary stance. He pointed out in particular that in tests running six Wi Fi nets in a single room, smart antenna technology demonstrated little to nil impact on the performance of the system.

However, when asked for private comments concerning the subject after the panel session had taken a break, Panasik stated that TI was “very deep into” smart antenna technology. “We have a lot of the basic patents in this area, but it has to become part of a standard before we will allocate resources to [building] something,” he observed.

A general agreement prevailed among a considerable portion of the panelists on the notion that while merely large carriers were in possession of a reasonable business model for building public Wi-Fi networks, 802.11 will appear in phones in any case—likely for cordless phones, in particular—beginning next year. As a matter of fact, earlier this year, Broadcom, Philips and TI released low-power Wi-Fi chipsets designed to cater to work compatibly well with smart cordless phones as well as wireless PDAs.

“One year ago everyone thought Wi-Fi was a power hog. But we have shown with good engineering how we can expand this technology in the mobile space,” stated Paul Marino. Marino is the general manager of the business communications group at Philips Semiconductors at present.

“So we will see the logical convergence of cellular and Wi-Fi networks next year,” mused Craig Mathias, principal with the Farpoint Group. Mathias moderated the panel, acting as session director throughout the activity. Mathias stated he anticipated the emergence of mobile cordless phones packing along integrated Wi Fi features and capabilities at the forthcoming Consumer Electronics Show in January. He estimates that by the time June comes, production of the said units will already be underway.

With VoWi-Fi integrated into a considerable of hospital environments with ease, equipment providers are in a wonderful position to continue to find new and innovative means to set their offerings apart from the rest, thus effectively leaving the competition for dead. Take the Vocera Communications for one and how the company announced of late its new B2000 Communications Badge, with 802.11g, advanced encryption, anti-microbial technology, an OLED display, increased durability–and a Linux operating system. The combination of features is enough to make any tech adept squirm with excited, frustrated glee.

Still, while aware of the need to make its competitors bite the dust, Vocera executive vice president Brent Lang firmly expresses that his company’s value proposition remains the same: the point is to develop the level of efficiency in communication that users experience. That remains the first order of business.

“A user anywhere in the hospital can instantly get a hold of the person they need, just by saying their name or, more importantly, by saying their functional role–‘Call the on-call oncologist,’ ‘Call a transport tech,’ or ‘Broadcast to the emergency team,’” he states.

And it’s not all about voice either: the newest version of Vocera’s software, Lang observes, packs along APIs that are ideal for interfacing with key equipment in the same way as blood pressure monitors.

“If your blood pressure gets above a certain level, it can automatically generate a text message that’s delivered to the caregiver who’s responsible for you as a patient, and that message is displayed on the Vocera badge,” he explains.

Keeping Posted on People and Equipment

It’s when you combine the set-up allows for the fusion of VoWi-Fi with RTLS that the juice really gets going. RTLS equipment provider Ekahau announced lately of its partnership with Polycom. The arrangement will make it possible for location tracking on Polycom’s SpectraLink 8000 Series Wi-Fi handsets–letting a nurse not only to get to a doctor by phone—whether a cordless phone or corded unit— with less delay. This will also make it easier for the nurse to locate the exact of the doctor in question within the hospital so if emergency medical procedures need to be performed, contacting the doctor won’t cause any unnecessary problems.

Tuomo Rutanen, Ekahau’s vice president of business development, shares that cost is also another important selling point for RTLS.

“Now that you have Wi-Fi that can be used for multiple things, voice, data, video and so forth, RTLS is just a natural application that rides over that 802.11, and the cost to put in a location tracking system is a fraction of what it was ten years ago,” he explains.

And Rutanen adds that hospitals are getting the picture–Ekahau, he states, is currently rolling out two to three hospitals a week. That’s already a tremendous surge from a year ago. Rutanen expresses the major shift occurred this past summer, due to the endorsement of RTLS by larger providers in the healthcare space such as McKesson and Siemens Medical.

Thus, it won’t be long now before other hospitals follow suit. And while opting for a VoIP service or Wi Fi connection—including picking out which digital telephones or cordless phones to settle on—that perfectly suits the hospital will certainly be a difficult bit of business to handle, the IT departments of modern hospitals these days are already well-armed and well-prepared for the challenge, so much in fact that some are already raring to go.

A global healthcare marketing lead for Aruba Networks, Peter Mongroo expresses that the ability to consolidate a hospital’s various networks also adds a great deal to make Wi-Fi a particularly inviting choice to entertain.

“Wireless cardiac monitoring solutions have been on proprietary networks in the past–and some of them still are–but we’re seeing some vendors deploying them on 802.11,” he states. “And that’s what I think most customers are looking for: one common infrastructure for all their applications.”

It is of course interesting to see how the increased use of Wi-Fi has directly led to quite a number of hospitals opting to go and integrate their information technology as well as biomedical engineering departments, Mongroo muses. From switching to any number of digital telephones—cordless phones, Wi-Fi phones, VoIP DECT phones—to choosing the ideal system that will ideally address the specific needs and concerns of a particular health care set-up, these hospitals are not only catching on, they are developing the technology even further as they discover new and relevant knowledge in how they could improve the way they work with the system. Adjustments are made and in line with this new information, a more informed action is readily deployed. That’s the new paradigm hospitals are working towards right now. And judging from the results from a number of institutions, the results are more than glowing.

“As we see these applications being deployed–clinical applications that were once the bailiwick of the biomedical engineers but are now being enabled by the IT infrastructure–you’re starting to see the necessary convergence of those two historical islands of information,” he adds.

There’s never a second to waste or a moment to lose. Every single employee is working against the clock. Everything is in constant flux. Motion is the word that hospital workers such as doctors, nurses and other staff members live by. The need for speedy transactions, for effective communications, is of course obvious in such conditions. This is why hospitals also make for such an ideal place to install Wi Fi networks at. The ABI Research analyst Stan Schatt supports this observation, citing 6,161 hospitals out of the 7,526 in the U.S. that already have Wi-Fi networks deployed at present.

The most well-known and well-used applications, Schatt states, includes voice over Wi-Fi (VoWi-Fi) as well as wireless access to any number of patient records. Latest additions on-board are the wireless hotspots provided for patients as well as visitors, wireless transmission of prescriptions that comes directly from the examining room to the pharmacy. In addition, real time location systems (RTLS) well and able to track everything from doctors to equipment are also part of the package.

In one of the latest reports filed for ABI—one that went by the title Wi-Fi Real-Time Location Systems—Schatt estimated that Wi-Fi RTLS will grow to an $800 million market by the time 2012 comes rolling in. This, in turn, will make it possible for revenue that is generated from healthcare purchases of Wi-Fi RTLS equipment to exceed by a wonderful $264 million. In a similar vein, Research firm Frost & Sullivan also forecasts a similar, though slightly more optimistic, scenario, with the latter expressing confidence in the belief that the global RTLS market will eventually surge to $1.26 billion by the time 2011 arrives.

Exciting Times for the Market Ahead

While VoWi-Fi and access to medical records via wireless applications are relatively new and inchoate as a way of communication,  set-ups of this sort—of Wi Fi cordless phones and Wi Fi networks—are already being deployed in quite a number of hospitals at this time. On the subject, Schatt expresses that while RTLS is still a new technology, it is already on its way to becoming one of the major communication technologies in the healthcare industry. In addition, he takes particular note of how deploying RTLS for equipment tracking is remarkably simple and painless to cost-justify.

One example is how 15percent of healthcare equipment that is declared missing and re-ordered from time to time is, in all actuality, simply languishing in another place of the hospital. 15 percent or not, it would be much, much better if such misplacement miseries were kept from happening at all. Schatt muses that upgrading the hospital’s communications to 802.11n will also be important in the years to come. The move will, after all, be able to allow the hospital’s communication network to avoid interference woes with 2.4 GHz equipment. Also, there is the added advantage of easy and faster file transfers. Because the system is engineered to handle such transactions, transmitting behemoth files won’t have to cause problems on a major scale as well.

“A lot of doctors’ offices have been set up on the peripherals of major hospitals, so x-rays are being transmitted across the parking lot to the doctors’ offices–and these files are pretty large,” he says.

And to guarantee secure transmissions per HIPAA regulations, Schatt observes that intrusion prevention systems are a crucial part of the package. This, of course, is a welcome bit of good news for companies who set out to offer tech users with just such systems.

“HIPAA is the best friend for intrusion detection systems from AirMagnet, AirDefense, and AirTight Networks, [which] have developed extensive reporting mechanisms that provide exactly the kinds of audit reports that HIPAA requires,” he states.

“In our commitment to serve our customers with the highest level of efficiency and quality, deltathree has upgraded its PC Phone with SPIRIT’s Voice Engine PC,” expressed Effi Baruch, deltathree’s Senior Vice President of Operations and Technology. “Our dedication to innovation has led us to use SPIRIT’s best-in-class voice engine so that clients of our Reseller Program as well as joip can experience the most crystal-clear quality of sound the industry has to offer when communicating via our PC Phone. We have thoroughly tested SPIRIT’s solution against strict requirements and growing needs of our customers, as well as against pre-existing voice engines. We found SPIRIT to be the best solution in terms of quality, maturity and engineering support.”

“SPIRIT is the only vendor whose solution guarantees the highest quality voice for any VoIP soft-phone service,” confirmed Alex Kravchenko, VP Sales & Marketing of SPIRIT. “In fact, many VoIP players, including Skype, have recently upgraded their voice technology to meet the latest market requirements in voice quality.”

TeamSpirit Voice Engine PC is part and parcel of SPIRIT’s range of pre-integrated IMS-ready solutions that also include the TeamSpirit 3.0 Voice&Video Engine PC. The latter encompasses wideband voice as well as video processing to provide users with exceptional video and voice integration for NGN services and applications. And because of extraordinary SPIRIT proprietary technology, the engine is also well and able to take care of issues and concerns that VoIP communications bring along. This includes voice and video lips sync.

About deltathree

Founded in 1996, deltathree, Inc. is a leading provider of integrated Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony services, products such as VoIP DECT phones, hosted solutions and infrastructure. deltathree offers high quality Internet telephony solutions that are viable and cost-effective alternatives to traditional telephone services. Supporting hundreds of thousands of active cordded and cordless phone users around the world, deltathree serves customers through its two primary distribution channels: the Service Provider / Reseller channel and the direct-to-consumer channel. deltathree’s advanced solutions offer service providers and resellers a full spectrum of private label VoIP products and services, as well as a back-office suite of services. Utilizing advanced Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology, deltathree provides all the components to support a complete VoIP service deployment. deltathree’s Consumer Group consists of the award-winning iConnectHere direct-to-consumer offering and joip, the newly formed consumer brand that powers the VoIP service of Panasonic’s GLOBARANGE hybrid cordless phones.

About SPIRIT

SPIRIT DSP employs 140 professionals, and has been in the international software licensing business since 1992. A bootstrap company, SPIRIT has been profitable for 15 years. For the last 10 years SPIRIT’s focus has been voice and video communication software products. SPIRIT counts among its customers Adobe, Agere, Arima, ARM, Atmel, Cisco, Compal, Flextronics, Ericsson, HP, HTC, Korea Telecom, Kyocera, LG, MediaRing, Microsoft, NEC, Nortel Networks, NXP, Oracle, Paltalk, Polycom, Quanta, Radvision, Reigncom, Samsung, Siemens, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Veraz and Trinity Convergence, among 200+ other communication OEMs and software vendors. SPIRIT communication software is used in over 80 countries and powers more than 100 million embedded voice channels. SeeStorm is a SPIRIT affiliate for synthetic video conferencing.

The ruling also indicated that labeling the results of an experiment on the subject of electro-sensitivity as inconclusive were right on the mark. However, while these issues were put to rest, there were a considerable number of flaws that the BBC report was able to nimbly put out.

“The programme included only one contributor (Professor Repacholi) who disagreed with Sir William, compared with three scientists and a number of other speakers (one of whom was introduced by Panorama as a former cancer specialist) who seconded his concerns,” the ruling indicated.

“This gave a misleading impression of the state of scientific opinion on the issue.”

Stewart expressed in the programme that he was able to finally locate reliable evidence demonstrating how low-level radiation from consumer electronics such as mobile cordless phones as well as Wi-Fi are able to adversely affect human health. He thus summoned involved parties for a review.

As a result, the claims were able to prompt a council body in north London. This council body effectively acted to put a ban on Wi Fi use. This led to a suspension in schools, supposedly to be lifted only in the event of a thorough investigation on the matter yielding results that would prove satisfactorily in the end.

“I quite frankly think we are frying children’s brains,” Labour councillor Emma Jones of Bruce Grove claimed.

However, immediately on the heels of the broadcast, a considerable lot of industry experts emerged out of the woodwork to protest the truth of the matter, saying that there were no grounds for inciting such a negative attitude towards Wi Fi connectivity—from cordless phones with Wi Fi to other devices equipped with intergrated Wi Fi capabilities.

Ben Goldacre, a doctor who manages the Bad Science website, expressed that instead of providing users with an  informed documentary, the programme makers ended up producing one that was by equal parts, scientifically off-based and melodramatic. “In 28 minutes of TV you could have given a good summary of the research evidence so that people could make up their own minds. But that would not get you as many viewers,” he added.

Les Hatton, a columnist on IT Week, also conveyed similar thoughts: “Many readers may be feeling that they need to wear tin-foil hats following the Panorama ‘exposé’ and the supposedly harmful effects on children caused by wireless networks.

“All I can say in reassurance is that this sort of mathematically dysfunctional scare-mongering drivel really makes me cross.”

As the BBC ruling tips the scales back in balance—neither confirming or denying the possibility of Wi Fi negatively affecting human health outright—consumers don’t find themselves any worse for wear. To use a Wi Fi cordless phone or not, to opt for a Wi Fi connection or no, to operate via Wi Fi or not—users can go either way with questions of this nature since any sort of evidence to have come forward on the subject still remains largely inconclusive. Unless something revolutionary comes along to drastically affect these issues, effectively putting an end to the endless inferences as well as speculations on the extraordinary goodies and likely wrinkles of Wi Fi cordless phones, services, technologies, matters remain—more or less—at a touch-and-go.

And so the hoopla continues.

Meanwhile, consumers grow restless on the fence.

A number of curious industry folks may recall the recent Panorama programme that issued out a statement to the effect that Wi Fi effectively induced radiation levels three times higher than those generated by mobile cordless phones. In response to the complaint, a formal official BBC ruling has found reports of this nature misleading.

In addition, upon hearing of the complaints, two viewers were unable to help themselves from coming forward to share a few thoughts on the matter. They firmly believed that Panorama displayed a glaring error in judgment, exaggerating grounds for concern. The worst of it was that Panaorama had passed off erroneous assumptions as facts, deluding a number of viewers into entertaining notions that Wi Fi installations do indeed generate radiation levels higher than those of mobile cordless phones.

In a similar vein, another viewer complaint further castigated the programme, saying that Panorama had willfully mislead viewers, presenting an experiment in a confusing manner, designed to deceive viewers into acquiring a flawed understanding of how the test mechanics work in gauging how certain types of people are hypersensitive to radiation while some are not.

Also appearing in the programme, Professor Michael Repacholi expressed a similar opinion on the matter. Repacholi publicly shared his views on the issue, saying that the presentation of the scientific concerns in the programmer was clumsily done, obviously designed to tip the greater portion of the audience to favor one side over the other. He further added that his own contribution to the matter received the same unfair treatment.