Motorola Plans Wi-Fi Cell Phones

Otto writes "This AP article over at CNN talks about Motorola's plans to create a cell phone that can seemlessly switch calls between cell networks and VoIP over WiFi, when it sees WiFi available to it. Thus reducing on call costs. Personally, I think it'd be cool just to have a cell phone that could use my own WiFi at home and be cellular when I'm out in the rest of the world."

Wonderful!

[Phidoux]

Now cell phones will be wireless too!

what would be awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a cell phone that you could just plug into the wall when you're at home, and it would get both power and connection from there. In fact, I'd imagine someday people having one cell phone in their pocket, and maybe a "wired cell phone" in their homes, which would run off wall power and be more reliable since it wouldn't need a radio signal.

I wonder what kind of protocol it could use.. maybe firewire protocol over wi-fi, converted to frames that could be sent over a wire like ethernet. There could be some kind of power-over-ethernet to supply it with DC. Then it could run out to the street, where it would go into a tower and be converted into real wi-fi signals, except encapsulated in GSM data so it could use the existing cellular infrastructure. No that's no good, coverage is spotty. Maybe satellites could be involved. Could be expensive. Maybe it could run over DSL? Hey there's an idea!

Modern technology allows so many simple and elegant solutions to today's problems!

Gotta run, I'm working on my latest invention: a way to take ebooks and permanently output them onto sheets of paper. I think this will revolutionize the ebook industry!

excellent...

[updog]

ring tone downloads at 54Mbps!

I can see the headlines now

[scdeimos]

[completely fictitious]Customer Jailed by Telco

In Bell vs. John P. Citizen today, a federal court judge sentenced the defendant to 16 years jail for failing to pay the plaintiff US$5,000,000.00 in telecommunications charges. The defendant alleged that his Wi-Fi personal exchange was used by unauthorized parties to place multitudes of local, long-distance and overseas calls. By showing that the defendant had failed to secure his Wi-Fi exchange according to the fine print warnings and instructions on the last page of the 10,000 page manual accompanying the product, the prosecution proved the defendant liable for the full amount.