Pirelli Discus DP-M30: SIP VOIP & GSM Phone

Expected soon
2nd April 2007

The Pirelli Discus DP-M30 is a dual-mode VOIP / GSM phone designed to be used either with a SIM card or on a home or business WiFi network. Following on from last year's DP-L10 which was also launched in the UK as the Tovo t450g, the Pirelli Discuss DP-M30 is an enormous improvement.

Probably the biggest drawback with the DP-L10 was its looks and basic feature set when used as a GSM phone. The Pirelli Discus DP-M30 is utterly different - it's a very contemporary and stylish clamshell with an attractive clamshell design and a feature set that is competitive with other GSM phones on the market.

There's a 2.2" 240x320 pixel main display in 262,000 colours plus a secondary 1.1" 96x96 pixel panel on the outside along with a 2 megapixel camera and external media control keys. There's a built-in multimedia player capable of handling MP3, AAC, MPEG4 and 3GP formats with playback via a stereo wired headset. The Pirelli Discuss DP-M30 accepts microSD cards with a maximum capacity of 1GB, and it also comes with Bluetooth. The DP-M30 also has a web browser, email client, Java support and everything else that you'd expect to find in a modern cellular handset.

Talktime on GSM is four hours, and on WiFi it's an impressive 3 hours which is better than many rival devices. Standby time is 9 days in GSM mode, 7 days in WiFi mode and 5 days in dual mode. Of course, using Bluetooth reduces the battery life, but overall the DP-M30 comes up with some impressive figures. It's not too bulky either, at around the same size as a typical 3G clamshell.

SIP VOIP

It's a tri-band GSM 900/1800/1900 MHz phone with GPRS but of course the really clever thing with the Pirelli DP-M30 is the inclusion of WiFi - in this case 802.11b and g. This works with SIP VOIP gateways, either sources from Pirelli Broadband Solutions or from another manufacturer. This allows for low-cost calls to be carried over the IP network, although that will usually require some sort of subscription.

VOIP is still in its infancy, and SIP isn't as well known as rival the Skype system, but there are plenty of vendors with SIP solutions. For this reason you are quite likely to see the Pirelli Discus DP-M30 bundled with a complete VOIP solution from a reseller, or in corporate environments utilising their in-house expertise and possibly using Pirelli's other WiFi and handset management products.

The Pirelli Discus DP-M30 certainly looks impressive, and it's the sort of device which might well bring internet telephony into the mainstream. Price and availability were not known at the time of going to press. Further information and accessories can be found at the Pirelli Broadband site.

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