Just before I saw Laura Stotler's story on the RTX PORTALphone today, I was wondering when some provider is going to come up with a VoIP experience compelling enough to make me cross the line and switch over from POTS at home. The possibility of cheaper phone service has somehow never been enough to tip me over. I know that IP communications can offer so much more.
Pretty soon somebody is going to come up with a consumer IP communications offering that's going to grab people as soon as they see it. All over America (and maybe the world) you're going to hear people shout, "I get it! I'm buying!"
Whether the PORTALphone (called the LAN Cordless DUALphone in Europe) is really that magic offering I'm not sure, but this is heading in the right direction. This is a VoIP phone that integrates calling with multimodal communications and push-technology Web content in an exciting way. Laura's article gives enough information about the product, but I was able to get ahold of some visuals that give a good idea how the phone works and what the user experience is like. The photo to the right shows you some detail. Below you can see what the base station is like.
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PORTALphone is meant to be marketed through service providers. This diagram gives an idea how it's set up:
PORTALphone's content offering comes from Casabi ("We don't make the home phone, we make it smarter."), which provides a customizable set of web-based content and services. Here are some images that show some of the services that are possible:
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AB -- 3/21/06
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