There is an easier way. He can sign up with Vonage or Skype (or others) for a PC based phone.
Vonage calls theirs a "Softphone", and charges $9.99 a month for 500 minutes to calls to US or Canada, and about 3c a minute after that. No router is involved, you only need a broadband connection at the hotel. Buy a microphone / headset unless you want to endure the poor quality mike/speakers in your laptop. Skype is free for PC to PC, and about 2.3c a minute if you subscribe to "SkypeOut" to call anywhere in several preferred countries (including Taiwan, US, Canada, UK among others...). You can download the software for free. Having just returned from Japan, I can tell you that not all have broadband available in all rooms. You need to tell them that you need broadband when you reserve the room. Some charge about 1000 yen a day for broadband, others have it free. We had it free in Tokyo, only to discover our first room wasn't wired, and they couldn't move us until the next day. Other hotels used wireless 802.11b, but required a WEP key that was described only in Japanese instructions and not the English instructions. The advantage of the PC based phone would be: no router involved, and can call anywhere in US or Canada (not just the home office) for about 2 or 3 cents a minute. [Note: The router's ports may be blocked by the hotel. Our hotel in Kyoto would not activate our connection except through a web browser where we authorized the 1000 yen connection charge for 24hr. Since many hotels use 802.11b, the router would be useless unless it could connect to the wireless system, or you figure out the configuration to share the wireless connection via the laptop.] The other alternative for your customer is to get a Japanese cell phone. While the calls TO the US are expensive, incoming calls FROM US are free. Thus his home office could call him at decent rates...we paid 11c a minute with Vonage. Advantage here is they can contact him anywhere he might be. Disadvantage is that cell phones for short term contracts are pricey, just to establish the service. We used Planetfone. Japan has a unique mobile phone system, and phones from other countries, including GSM quad band, don't work there. Bottom line: Sign up with Skype or Vonage, and test it all out before he travels. While it would be cool to connect directly to the company PBX, this solution allows him to call his friends and family too, and has fewer hardware headaches. Cheers,,, The-end-user -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ross Lindahl Sent: Monday, October 03, 2005 2:41 PM To: KXT Mailing list Subject: KX-T: IP Phones Anybody use the panasonic nt136 phones yet. I have a scenario with a japanese company here in southern cal. The president travels a lot and wants a way to converse with his office in so cal. He would like a pc version phone that he can use from his lap top and what ever broad band connection he has at his hotel. Could the switch in so cal have an network extension card (0470) and the remote end (the boss) carry his router and lap top. My guess is he would have to carry a phone and router with him. Any thoughts with this scenario? Any other ideas? _________________________________________________________________ KX-T Mailing list --- http://kxthelp.com/ Subscription changes: http://kxthelp.com/mailman/listinfo/kxt _________________________________________________________________ KX-T Mailing list --- http://kxthelp.com/ Subscription changes: http://kxthelp.com/mailman/listinfo/kxt
