Vonage, the U.S. pioneer of low-cost phone service over Internet broadband connections, on Tuesday said it was working with a phone maker to offer a "Wi-Fi" handset for subscribers to use at home or around town.
The Edison, New Jersey-based company said it had partnered with UTStarcom, a diversified maker of telecommunications equipment based in Alameda, California, to introduce a portable Wi-Fi handset in the spring or summer.
In a series of announcements timed ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show conference here this week, Vonage unveiled plans for the wireless phone, a separate cordless model, and to make these phones available broadly through retailers.
The new Wi-Fi handset, to be known as the F-1000, would be designed to work with Vonage phone service out of the box for U.S. subscribers. The phones would take advantage of local radio airwaves on the most mainstream of Wi-Fi standards -- the so-called "B" standard.
The Wi-Fi handset can act as a replacement to traditional fixed-line phones that a subscriber might have around the house. It can also work when it is within range of any nearby Wi-Fi hotspot out of the house, according to UTStarcom.
Separately, Vonage said it had agreed to a partnership with phone maker VTech, one of North America's largest suppliers of conventional phones, to create a cordless phone system that runs on Vonage's broadband service.
The product is based on Texas Instruments Inc.'s VoIP chipset, and will be available at more than 8,000 U.S. retail locations during the spring/summer of 2005. The phone plugs directly into a customer's broadband Internet connection.
