Phones

Plenty of VoIP phones were on display, from the high-end office models at Polycom and Cisco's booths, to more consumer-focused (and priced) models displayed by Grandstream and Clipcomm.

Grandstream announced its GXP-2000, which joins its BudgetTone 100 series. Aimed at budget-minded small-office buyers (suggested list is $120), it features a 130x64 graphic LCD display, 7 speed dial keys, 11 line indicators and supports 802.3af Power-over-Ethernet (via an optional cable kit). The phone is due out in "Beta" form in late November.

Clipcomm's CP-100 series include six models, with three basic platforms. The base CP-100 has a single 10/100 port for network connection, while the CP100D/100E versions include a second switched Ethernet port for convenient PC attachment. The CP-100P/101/101B models include both dual 10/100 Ethernet ports and RJ11 PSTN connector for backup connection to your local telco. One last neat feature is that the CP-100E has a compact flash slot that can be filled by an 11b WLAN card for wireless network connection.

VoIP Wi-Fi phones seem to get a lot of interest, but their benefit remains to be seen - at least for consumer use - since any cordless phone can access VoIP services through an ATA. Nevertheless, multiple vendors had these wares on display including the previously-mentioned ZyXEL Prestige 2000W, and pulverinnovation's WiSIP.

In the look, but not buy category, wireless OEM/ODM Senao was showing its current SI-7800H Wireless VoIP phone and a new SI-7801H model with color screen. Motorola had a small booth where they had a display of their broadband networking products and were featuring a concept model video phone that had an interesting portrait-orientation screen and VP1000 WiFi phone. Moto was clearly testing the VoIP waters and quickly told me that the WiFi phone was OEM'd.

Canadian DECT wireless OEM/ ODM Arkon Networks (they've done products for VTech) was showing its first entries into the VoIP market, which included the Nostrand 200 11b VoIP handset. It's targeted at "high-end enterprise grade" applications, and primarily SIP-based, but Arkon is willing to do customer versions for proprietary PBX systems. Their Nostrand 100 desk phone isn't itself wireless, but has built-in Bluetooth for supporting Bluetooth-enabled headsets and PDAs.

Lest consumer VoIP be ignored, Arkon had its Vesta 100 hybrid PSTN / VoIP cordless phone, which seemed to spark a lot of interest. It's basically a 5.8GHz cordless phone that works through a base station that supports both VoIP and PSTN calling and up to 4 handsets. Unlike many other "5.8 GHz" cordless phones, it really uses only 5.8GHz, which means no interference with 11b/g WLANs. Arkon said the Vesta 100 is "anticipated to retail" for under $250.

By the way, all WiFi VoIP phones that I saw were 802.11b based. But from asking around, my impression is that 11g models should be available sometime next year. (11g's speed isn't needed for voice, of course, but to keep 11g data networks from slowing to accommodate 11b clients.)