It looks like a typical, red English public phone and it actually is one, but with a small important difference. This callbox is placed in Bavaria and not in England and even more important – it is free to call from it. This red box is one of the first public VoIP-telephone possibilities. The telecommunication-distributer “Partner in Europe” (www.pie-ag.de) opened it, as it “is a marketing-method with which we can demonstrate sceptical customers that the technique for VoIP is sophisticated and the quality of talks is very well”, says Klaus Berand, Marketingdirector of Partners in Europe. The callbox can be found in Wörthsee and is open for everybody who is interested. It can be used for calls around the clock to all German landlines.
VoIP stands for “Voice over Internet Protocol” and its history goes back to the 90ies where technical wattles made it difficult to talk over the internet, especially due to narrow-band connections. However, 2004 and 2005 VoIP had its breakthrough in Germany and today is on an open freeway to success. The calling-over-internet-solution also gets more popular as people recognize its benefits. For a few cents one can call all over the world, to partners of the own VoIP-provider even for free. It is also the more and more elaborated hardware for VoIP which make it so successful and Siemens is at the front forming the way ahead.
Siemens offers many different and interesting VoIP-possibilities which transparently make VoIP phoning cheaper, more convenient and as easy to use as a traditional telephone. With the Siemens Gigaset C450 IP, for example, you can phone over the internet from anywhere in your home – without sitting in front of your computer and use your headset. And even if you don’t have a PC, a broadband gateway like the Siemens Gigaset SX763 WLAN dsl will link your existing Gigaset phone to the internet. With each call you make from now on, you can choose to call via IP or fixed-line. The quality, however, will in both cases be the same.
If you want to know more about VoIP: Siemens Gigaset VoIP Special
What is the idea of those stupid ad blogs? Incredible Siemens is even paying for that kind of marketing activities ...
At the same time my Gigaset SE361 is not working the way you'd expect: DNS queries are not handled properly and VoIP is not working at all. And best of all: their support is crap.
They should rather invest their money in developing better firmware instead of burning money in blogs.
Hi FLX,
first of all: This is NOT an ad blog. There has been not a single advertisement on this blog and there will NEVER be any advertisement on this blog!
I am sorry that you think that Siemens support is crap, but this is not my fault or the fault of this weblog.
Moreover this blog does not claim to give answer to every question about problems with Gigaset products, but there are already a lot of ambitious comments on this blog which do help users of Gigaset products solving concrete problems. See e.g.:
http://www.gigaset-blog.com/archive/2007/09/siemens_gigaset_s675_ip.html
http://www.gigaset-blog.com/archive/2007/01/siemens_gigaset_s450_ip_hybrid.html
To conclude:
Finally I want to thank you for your comment. Sounds ridiculous, but with this kind of negative statement about the gigaset-blog, you prove that this is not a "fake" blog with faked comments but a platform where everyone can express its own opinion.
No opinion on this weblog will be censored!
SE361: I am not a Siemens Customer Care employee, nevertheless I will try to help you: What is your concrete problem?
Best,
Moritz
Hi Moritz,
As slippery as an eel, but I assume that's what you're supposed to be like.
FLX
severe conviction... but I will bear it with one mind :-)