What’s 2G VoIP?

While mobile phone technology is already edging into the fourth generation, VoIP is barely out of its first. VoIP is actually about ten years old now, though it has a relatively small market penetration compared to traditional telephony or even cell phones. Nevertheless, there’s already talking of the second generation (2G) of VoIP services and platforms. But the term has different meanings to different people.

Intel and Siemens are two companies that are teaming up to work on 2G VoIP, with the intent of creating an open unified communications solution [NE Asia]. Atmel Corp is offering what they are calling their second generation VoIP chip, which runs on the SIP open standard, using the uCLinux OS. It also has 802.11 a/g Wi-Fi, voice compression and decompression, call control, authentication and signalling and many more features. A development kit for the chip is available to qualified customers. It is a volume-buy type of item, priced at $18 per unit for 25,000+ units (presumably US dollars).