housephone - time to dump DECT network for wifi?

[fry]

Summary Questions:

- can you make internal house calls from wifi/voip phone to wifi/voip phone?
- is wifi an alternative for DECT?

The story:

I need to upgrade a home cordless phone network. Extra challenge is that the "home" is an ancient building (6 centuries), largely stone with walls of varying thickness (up to 4 ft), etc: wireless nightmare. Building is about 150x150ft. And then there's the outdoors, but inside coverage is key for now. Analog phones used currently are long range phones (several km coverage, can hear my brain sizzle when on the phone). Desire to replace is the much better sound quality of digital.

If I choose DECT I have excellent sound, can call internally between handsets and do all sorts of wonderful home phone things. However, the coverage is limited with all the thick walls and I would need to get several pricey repeaters to put in a DECT network with decent coverage.

If wifi/voip phones such as the new Linksys ones mentioned on voxilla can perform the functions of a DECT home system (the ones I use anyway, like calling one handset from another internally, or passing an external call through from one handset to another) I could opt for using the cash instead for beefing up my current wifi network instead of installing a second wireless network (DECT).

Any views on this?

Can you replace the functionality of two DECT handsets and base station with two wifi/voip handsets and an Access point, or through some other setup?

Are we ready to dump DECT for wifi/voip?

Many thanks,

Bob

[hfrisch]

Overall, DECT still has better voice quality that WiFi, but WiFi ocntinues to improve. Two WiFi phones off any number of access points, COULD work like two DECT phones off a base if they connect to a VoIP service somewhere that lets them do that. Two WiFi phones are logically 2 SIP clients - same as terminal adapters or PC soft phones. If the VoIP service that you use offers simultaneous ringing or multiple device registrations, then all will work as desired. If you want to use a standard phone line as your connection to the world, then you would need your own small SIP server to feed the WiFi phones.