Observation #2 (a short one)
:: Isn't DECT free too ? ::
Seybold is right that WiFi phones will not dent the wide-area ("always on") voice services market and Marty Cooper ("inventor" of cellular) has already done the maths to show that a sufficiently dense network of WiFi to compete with cellular is impractical. OK, no one is saying that this is what hotspot vendors are intending, but then we quickly seem to forget that wide-area access to voice is an essential part of life now and so the operators have to be involved somewhere. This leads to all kinds of complications if a hotspot vendor, or anyone else, including the enterprise, is planning to offer network services themselves, like voicemail, call forwarding etc.
These problems are currently being overlooked in the visible discussions on this topic. Don't forget that right now we already have a free wireless telephony standard called DECT, but the attempts to interwork DECT with GSM never came off.
The problem is that we tend to think of wireless too literally, i.e. as doing something without wires, as if all we have is a replacement for a featureless piece of wire. Telephony needs a network that includes switching, routing, signalling and so on. Modern telephony needs intelligent networks that also include voicemail, call handling (e.g. diversion), call conferencing and so on. Deploying WiFi phones enables only a tiny part of the shebang to be done for free. Who's going to build and pay for the rest of the network? How is it going to interwork with the wide area one, as it must?
These are the thorny questions that are seldom discussed. The DECT pundits ran away from them and the cellular guys built cheaper base stations called picocells.
The devil (i.e. true costs) is in the detail.
3:16:33 AM 
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