Motorola VT2442 & Vonage

Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
CTO
| VoIP & Gadgets blog - Latest news in VoIP & gadgets, wireless, mobile phones, reviews, & opinions

Motorola VT2442 & Vonage

I was reading TMCNet.com which reported the Motorola VT2442 & Vonage deal. The Motorola VT2442 is an all-in-one device that powers up to two lines of telephone service and supports call waiting, call forwarding and caller ID. It also supports a fully-featured home network router, four Ethernet ports, and a firewall for Internet security. It also features the Texas Instruments' TNETV1060 VoIP gateway chipset for voice quality enhancement.

What is notably absent from the news release is any mention of wireless capability. What? No WiFi? You mean to tell me if I buy a VT2442 I have to still go buy a WiFi access point and then lose one of my precious 4 Ethernet ports? No thanks, I'll stick with my Linksys WRT54, which features wired and wireless access plus router/firewall functionality, thank you very much.(though no voice ports on this unit - the Linksys WRT54GP2 does though)

A reader emailed me to express concerns that this deal could spell 'doom' for smaller players like Lingo, Packet8, Broadvoice, etc. Personally, I don't think any hardware deals with Vonage will spell doom for the smaller broadband VoIP players. There are plenty of hardware manufacturers out there offering unlocked networking devices that work with any VoIP provider. For instance, Peoplecall.com claims to sell the Linksys PAP2 device unlocked.

So while I do believe the single play VoIP providers may have trouble competing with the double or triple play providers, I don't think hardware deals will spell the death knell for single-play VoIP providers.

Update: 7/27/05
A blog reader pointed out that Motorola does sell a wireless, 2-port VoIP, firewall, 4 port switch called the Motorola VT2500 which is comparable to the Linksys WRT54GP2. I wonder why Vonage and Motorola didn't promote this unit in their press release? My living room has enough networking equipment as it is, with tons of cables, AC adaptors, cable modem, etc. - so the more I can consolidate the better. Save on electricity too!



Related Articles to 'Motorola VT2442 & Vonage'
sipgate-one-1.jpg
keynote-systems-logo.gif

Featured Events