I found out more details on the specs for the NETGEAR Skype phone I blogged yesterday and I have some thoughts on the "Skype economy". First, the NETGEAR phone supports both 802.11b and 802.11g supporting wireless connectivity of 1, 2, 5.5, 6, 11, 12, 24, 36, 48, 54 Mbps. Though I doubt you'll ever need 54 Mbps throughput on this NETGEAR Skype phone. In fact, I doubt the processor on the NETGEAR phone can even handle 2Mbps of actual packet data - nor does it need to since Skype packet data uses much less than that.

In any event, here are the other specs followed by my thoughts on all these Skype products being announced at CES:

Security:
Hardware-based Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) 40/64-bit & 128-bit
encryption

Physical Specifications:
Dimensions (HxWxD): 108 x 42 x 19 mm (4 1/4 x 1 5/8 x 3/4 in)
Weight: 0.09kg (3.2 oz.)

Battery Life:
Talk Time up to 3 hours
Standby Time up to 50 hours

Although, this NETGEAR phone and the similar Creative 'Skype' phone and Philips 'Skype' phone also launched at CES are interesting, but I'm still frustrated by the lack of standardization and interoperability, as I'm sure other early adopters of these VoIP products are. We'd all like to buy something today and be sure it will work tomorrow and the next day with any other future VoIP products.

Heck, you can even still use rotary phones in many areas of the U.S. (side note: my in-laws had a rotary phone until about 4 months ago and paid an extra $4/month for the privilege!) Why can't the VoIP industry do the same? As much as I love Skype, why did they have to go and build a proprietary solution not based on SIP that took the VoIP industry by storm? Let us hope for a standards-based (SIP?) Skype killer. Then again, that would make the Linksys CIT200 'Skype' phone, Creative 'Skype' phone, Philips 'Skype' phone, and a gazillion other third-party Skype products obsolete. Maybe that's a good thing?