using a mobile phone with wifi

new year - new ideas - new concepts - new challenges. Let's get down to it. My girlfriend just moved rented accommodation and there is no landline there. There is however, a BT broadband connection. She's got a new mobile phone to deal with her lack of communication with family. I tend to spend more than half the week with her and was using her landline to call my parents (and paying for her international calling cards as a thankyou). I thought that getting a Belkin wifi phone to utilise Skype via the broadband connection was the easiest solution but my attention has been drawn to the new crop of Nokias which have wifi connection capabilities. Given the choice, i'd rather have the latter but something tells me i can't expect to buy a phone, put a payg sim it and be able to use the wifi connect for nothing - or can I ? Has anyone any answers to this ? I looked at the 3 skypephone but the free skype depends on a regular �10pm topup and i don't make that many calls on a mobile.

a BT broadband connection uses a landline and you "was using her landline to call my parents" so I'm confused.

You can get the Belkin Skype wifi phone for �50 - check reviews for its battery life etc. The battery life on wifi Nokias is poor. Do the Nokias have a Skype client ?

like i say, it's rented accommodation and the wireless broadband connction is provided by the landlord from downstairs. Using a phone directly in the bt wall socket is not possible.

I lnow about the belkin/netgear type wifi, it's using a normal mobile phone with wifi i need help with.

apparenty "handsets such as Nokia's E-Series � the E60, E61 and E70 � offer the ability to make either Wi-Fi/VoIP or GSM calls. " so if you have one of them and a compatible VoIP service you would only pay for the VoIP service charges rather than mobile calls.

I just got this working today with a Nokia E65. I was connecting to an Asterisk, but it should work to any VoIP provider using SIP (sipgate, voipcheap, voip.co.uk) etc. I configured it to use "Internet" calling (VoIP) in preference to the GSM network.

The main problem is that if the phone is a contract one, at least with Vodafone, they nobble the SIP client so it only works when connecting via a Vodafone access point. Use your own wifi router and you're stuffed. (Solution is to install generic firmware on the phone overwriting the Vodafone specific one.)

Using an HP iPaq Voice Messenger for this here - works great. GSM & VOIP handset in one (and a PDA). I know there are heaps of other similar offerings out there though.

If you are phoning from home why not just use a basic VoIP/SIP
connection with a household DECT phone?

Meldrew