November 25, 2007

A Bellhead’s Dream

Andy Abramson points out a review of Netgear’s DECT cordless phone that can interface to both PSTN and Skype. It is an old news really, but Australia seems to be getting review units only now. But the device is a disappointment in more ways than one.

  1. The price has a big premium built into it. The suggested retail price is $180, so one could expect that retailers will be marketing it around $120. As a comparison, a multi-handset DECT cordless phones can be had for $20 per unit. In other words, the Netgear set must be around $40. Assuming that adding the “ATA” function will add about $20, the unit has $60 Skype premium.
  2. The screen is not big enough to provide an enhanced user experience. Let us say that you are on a Skype call and you get a call on the landline. Now how do you place the Skype call on hold and attend to the landline call? Do you have to resort to the “flash” button or is the screen used to simplify the procedure? It is not clear from the available material. But I would expect them to trumpet that fact if it were available.
  3. We know that Skype uses wideband codec. So one would expect that the handset samples the voice over wider frequency. But here also, it is not clear whether they do that.

And one can add a few more items to this list. But I am not interested in this device. I want to build a PSTN phone that adds features at the end (yes, contrary to the widely held view, PSTN is dumb and we can add features at the end). How will I go about doing this?

  1. I will take a multi-handset DECT cordless phone, enhance the handsets with a bigger screen (inspired by Apple’s iPhone).
  2. Add an Ethernet/WiFi interface to the base station. This way a user can get Availability status and specific Contact detail of the other user before dialing that user. (By the way, we do not have to dial numbers anymore, an often heard refrain at the recent VON; and you don't need GrandCentral to issue a number for life).

And I can keep adding to this list as well. But why bear it all in the open here; need something to pay the bills. So if you are a cordless phone vendor, want to move away from commodity phones and add jazz to your product lines, you know where to go.

Posted by aswath at November 25, 2007 01:34 PM
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