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December 1, 2005

Buy a Handset, Make Free VoWLAN Calls in Taiwan

By Glenn Fleishman

Taiwan’s capital, Taipei, will soon have a ubiquitous Wi-Fi network, and voice will flow somewhat freely over it: Ennyah Technologies will rent a phone for $33 per month that will include unlimited international calls. The phone will handle both GSM and Wi-Fi; a Wi-Fi only phone will start at $16 per month. Both handsets include a Wi-Fi gateway to make sure they can be used wherever the subscribers lives or works, too.

This is one of the many applications that will evolve from ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks, but it will also be challenging to roll these out without annoying early adopters, much like the early days of cellular. When there’s an expectation of seamless access, the service needs to meet or nearly meet the quality of a cellular network: the handoff has to be without a hitch, service can’t abruptly drop while someone’s walking, it needs to work in moving vehicles, and voice quality needs to be generally good to very good.

Interestingly, the international calls will be free, but local calls to wired and wireless numbers will have a metered fee.

Posted by Glennf at December 1, 2005 1:06 PM

Categories: Service Launches

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