[H-GEN] 3G router with OpenWRT

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 12:22 +0100, gavin duley wrote:
> On 31 Mar 2009, at 07:28, Nick Kwiatkowski wrote:
> > Only thing I can recommend in this space, is to be careful with the
> > selection ATA / VoIP box that you use. I initially brought a  
> > SPA-3102, as it was cheap, but had the physical line failover as 
> > a back-up. The issue that I had, and I understand now that this is 
> > common. Most people connect a ATA device with a DECT phone, that 
> > caused be no end of trouble as to get the phone impedance correct 
> > is a nightmare. The result was either echo on our side of the call 
> > or the receiver.

My experience with them (I looked after a dozen or so of them at one
stage) is the setup is complex as there are pages of settings and you
have to get most of them right, but once you do that they are fine.

> > This is because of the artifacts that you get from going Analogue ->
> > Digitial for the DECT -> Analogue for the phone -> Digitial for VoIP  
> > Analogue for the receiving POTS. I have ended up replacing the  
> > SPA-3102 with a Siemens C470-IP, which is a DECT VoIP phone. This 
> > means that now I have Analogue -> Digitial for VoIP -> Analogue for 
> > the receiving  POTS; and much clearer voice calls.

Unquestionably, the less analogue <-> digital conversions you do the
better off you will be.  Avoid them where at all possible.

> I had been debating as to whether to go for an ATA + analogue phone or  
> a VoIP phone. It sounds like I would be best just getting a VoIP  
> phone. Out of interest, are there any cheap and reliable Australian- 
> based VoIP hardware resellers that you could recommend? Most of the  
> ones I have bookmarked seem to be either US or UK based, and I'm a  
> little reluctant to just trust whatever the first one I find on Google  
> is.

VoIP hardware is a commodity item.  Your problem isn't finding a
supplier - use a search engine like staticice (which only returns
Australian retailers) to do that.  Your real problem is finding a phone
you will like.  Nick says the Siemens C470-IP is good, so if you are
after a DECT phone go with that.  In the more traditional style of
phone, I think the Aastra 9133 provides the best price/quality tradeoff.

A more radial solution is a mobile phone that has 802.11 and SIP.  The
high end Nokia's do that.  Their quality is better than either of the
above.