turers for products that combine several functions. The carrier’s Vonage Marketing division and Panasonic Consumer Electronics Co. have jointly developed a cordless phone system with a broadband router included in the base station. That unit can be plugged directly into the user’s broadband connection through a DSL (digital subscriber line) router or cable modem, said Vonage spokesman Mitchell Slepian. This eliminates the need for an ATA and can help to simplify setup, he said. The phone, configured with Vonage service, will be available in retail stores in the U.S. and Canada later this year, Slepian said.

Also Tuesday, Vonage announced the commercial availability of a two-line cordless phone from Uniden America Corp., the fruit of a partnership Vonage and the Fort Worth, Texas, company announced earlier this year. The phone comes with a base station with an integrated router and a fixed-line phone, as well as one cordless handset. The UIP1869V is available at retail now in the U.S., with a list price of US$189.99 and a $50 mail-in rebate available after six months of service. In the future, the phone will also be sold in Canada.

Both the Panasonic and Uniden systems use 5.8GHz unlicensed radio spectrum, but they are not Wi-Fi wireless LAN devices, Slepian said.

Also Tuesday, Vonage and D-Link Corp. announced that they will develop an ATA that can support two phone lines. The companies’ D-Link VTA will be small and portable and will ship later this year, Slepian said. Pricing was not yet available. There are also Vonage devices available today from VTech Holdings Ltd., Motorola Inc., UTStarcom Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.’s Linksys unit.

As younger people who grew up with PC-based voice calls start to dominate the consumer and business markets, there may eventually be no need for handsets, according to Stofega. However, today they are a key to broad adoption of VOIP, he said.

"That familiar feeling you have with a handset is something that will take a while to go away," Stofega said.

By Stephen Lawson - IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)