Noticed
this a couple of days ago over at tuaw..
"iPhone hacker eok writes to let me know that he and Samuel have gotten SIP registration and signalization working. They took a few mobile terminal shots, but the real work is being done via ssh. Samuel is working on connecting the audio in/out to the pjSIP. If you have iPhone or iPod touch coding skills and want to get involved in the project, connect to #touchmods on irc.undernet.org. It looks like most of the work will be done on European time."
Most of the words about this are being written specifically about the iPod Touch and this voip client being the killer app for the pre-amp mic interface someone designed for it.. But it certainly won't be long before the app is available for the iPhone too so it can use the inbuilt earpiece/mic, maybe bluetooth too? :-)
What does this mean for you? Well, in brief, you can sign up with a VSP (VOIP service provider) like Pennytel or SIPME and get really cheap call rates. I'm using those two providers on my Asterisk box at home and getting rates like 9.9c/untimed national, 2c/minute timed national, 19c/min mobile, and really cheap rates to international destinations too.
Having a SIP client on your iPhone will require an internet connection obviously.. Being in a wifi hotspot would be beneficial but I could see a sip client working - maybe - only just, over GPRS or EDGE. It comes down to the codecs used - g711 uses 64kbps without TCP overheads but provides the best sound quality, whereas a low-bandwidth, low-cpu intensive codec like GSM would use something like 9.6kbps without overheads and from memory g729 and other high-CPU intensive codecs like ISAC use even less..
So we'll have to wait til new years day to find out more about this new client and see what codecs it will support. But ultimately it will definitly mean cheap phone calls from any wifi hotspot and possibly over EDGE and maybe GPRS too. I can't wait to try it out!
