Make Free Phone Calls with Your Handheld

There are several Pocket PC models with built-in Wi-Fi capabilities and plenty more that can use a Wi-Fi CompactFlash card. While surfing the Web and checking email are obvious uses for this wireless networking technology, it can also be used to make free telephone calls with Voice Over IP, or VoIP. This allows users to make phone calls that travel over the Internet, rather than traditional phone lines.

Xten Networks, Inc. has released X-PRO, an application that turns a Pocket PC into VoIP phone. This is the company's flagship product and has all the features of a small business phone system. X-PRO costs $50. The company also makes a free version called X-Lite, which does not include some of X-PRO's premium features such as conferencing and multi-proxy, but still provides the same level of call quality.

These apps can be used in two ways. One is to make free IP-to-IP calls to other users of VoIP phones using a service such as pulver.com's Free World Dialup. Both X-PRO and X-Lite are fully compatible with other SIP User Agents including Cisco 7900 Series IP Phones and ATA 186 Analog Telephone Adapters.

The other option is make IP-to-Phone calls using a service such as deltathree's iConnectHere. This allows users to call anyone with a telephone. Rates on this service are as low as 1 cent a minute.

Obviously, these are not the first VoIP Pocket PC apps. Similar products are offered by Pocket Presence, Polypix, and others.

However, Xten Networks believes it has a better product that those.. "Our intent is to be the leader, in terms of quality, features, reliability, support and price. To this end we have launched the most feature-rich SIP softphone on the market at a fraction of the price of our competition," stated Mark Bruk, CEO of Xten Networks, Inc.