Travel Technology - Good IP phone for travel

Anyone have suggestions for a good IP phone (SIP) when travelling?

I have a nice Snom 360 at home, but it's a big, bulky business phone.

I've played around with some softphones, but it would be nice to find something small that works on 802.11 WiFi or something small I could plug into my travel router. Preferably easily programmable to setup (and change) SIP proxy's to an Asterisk server.

Any suggestions?

P.S. I went into CompUSA yesterday (knowing the chances at finding something was very low) -- no one knew what an Asterisk server was and tried to sell me some Skype phone and service. :eek:

Something like this, probably:

http://www.utstar.com/Solutions/Handsets/WiFi/

I have no experience, but the query interested me to see what one might travel with and connect to Asterisk. There may be other options as well. In my search there was a forum post that indicated a positive test of the above-linked F1000 phone with an Asterisk server.

I can't believe you wasted your time going into CrapUSA :eek: :D

There are 2 tricky partsabout traveling with VoIP phones and connecting back to Asterisk.
First, clearing captive portals. Even if the wifi is free and open, a lot of places make you agree to terms of service before you'll get a routable IP. That means you have to have a web browser on your phone. There are very few VoIP phones with browsers and of that subset fewer still that are worth the money.

The second problem has to do with NAT routers - SIP simply doesnt always play nicely with NAT. There are ways to do synchronis SIP where the sending and receiving ports are the same....BroadVoice does that... and there is a protocol called STUN that uses a 3rd party to negotiate the ports for you. The problem here is that there are very wifi phones that support STUN.


There are three options that come to mind.
1) Linksys WIP330 - I have had one for a while and have only had poor things to say about it. It really sucks...but it does have a browser so it gets you part of the way there...

2) Nokia e61i - this is a cell phone with WiFi and SIP built in and its an amazing device. You could order an unlocked unit from Buy.com or Ebay and never put a SIM card in..IE just us it for WiFi and VoIP. The setup for the VoIP is buried, but it works very very well once configured. It has a built in browser so clearing captive portals is a breeze and it supports VPN (although it takes some work to get it working without a Nokia / Cisco VPN endpoint) so you can be 100% sure to clear NAT routers. That said, it does a very nice job in its own. I can connect to my asterisk box from about 75% of open wifi networks that I join.

3) some other smartphone or PDA with a SIP client. You can find WiFi enabled PDAs for under $200 now, and with the right softphone running on them they would smoke the WIP300.

Finally, and not listed as a real option since it doesnt have a browser, I LOVE the Hitachi Cable IP3000 and IP5000 as WiFi phones. They, like 90% of the phones, don't support the "G" spec nor do they support WPA encryption, but as phones they just work so nicely...a joy to use.

SpaceBass -

Thanks for the response; the Nokia e61i sounds like an interesting choice; I am going to have to look into that one.

As you said, the big problem with SIP is it doesn't always play nicely with NAT. This makes VPN support a really a big bonus.

I'll look around further and see what else I can find - but I'm certainly going to look into the e61i further.

Cheers,

SDF_Traveler

I have a UTS F1000, use it at home but do not travel with it. It was 'locked' to Vonage but I had the firmware upgraded after I dumped Vonage and now use it with my Trixbox server. It's a decent little phone, but doesn't play well with wifi hotspots that require a browser to 'login'.

I've been through a couple of WiFi VoIP phones since my last post and wanted to share my experience. For use around the house, office, and hotel rooms where I have my travel router, I decided to go with a regular WiFi VoIP phone for the time being.

I initially purchased the UTS F3000. It looked like a nice phone, but don't let the neat packaging and slick colour LCD screen fool you; it was nice in appearance, but thats about it. The sound quality was terrible and the phone not very configurable. I then encountered some technical problems with it - the neat little LCD screen started to give me program (firmware ?) errors and locking up the unit. Needless to say, I was not impressed and returned the UTS F3000.

I requested the Hitachi IP5000A-E as a replacement. I ordered from VoipSupply.com - This was the first time I used this company, so I wasn't sure what to expect with respect to the return process. Fortunately I had no problem getting a RMA for the UTS F3000, I sent it back to them, and they sent out the Hitachi IP5000A-E as a replacement (and just billed me the price difference). I couldn't have asked for better customer service.

The Hitachi IP5000A-E is a superb VoIP phone. The sound quality and range is absolutely fantastic. The phone has a nice web interface, setup was easy, and the firmware was easy to upgrade. The phone has a wide array of options and allows you to adjust everything from the codecs to the network and SIP settings.

SDF_Traveler

2) Nokia e61i - this is a cell phone with WiFi and SIP built in and its an amazing device. You could order an unlocked unit from Buy.com or Ebay and never put a SIM card in..IE just us it for WiFi and VoIP. The setup for the VoIP is buried, but it works very very well once configured. It has a built in browser so clearing captive portals is a breeze and it supports VPN (although it takes some work to get it working without a Nokia / Cisco VPN endpoint) so you can be 100% sure to clear NAT routers. That said, it does a very nice job in its own. I can connect to my asterisk box from about 75% of open wifi networks that I join.

Excuse my OT-question, but are there any good VoIP providers you would recommend for the Nokia E61i?

Excuse my OT-question, but are there any good VoIP providers you would recommend for the Nokia E61i?

What is it you want from a provider; Do you want a local telephone number for incoming calls or do you just want to make outgoing calls? I use internetcalls.com (http://www.internetcalls.com) via a wifi phone for outgoing calls. The call quality is acceptable (issues are more with the phone than the provider). I am in the USA so I have a freedigits.com (http://www.freedigits.com) inbound phone number that I route to my Trixbox server which then get routed to whatever phone I am using at the time. I also make a lot of toll free calls in the USA and use free services from pulver.com and and tollfreegateway.com.

Look at Truphone.

With respect to a VoIP provider, it depends what you're looking for.

I use a combo between Vitelity (www.vitelity.net) and Teliax (www.teliax.com). I am on the pay as you go plan with each one. I have incoming DIDs with vitelity and use Teliax primarily for international calls (I have no DIDs with them).

Call quality is excellent and you can't tell the difference between VoIP and a landline.

There are a lot of different service providers out there and different providers cater to different needs.