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Buffalo Skype Wi-Fi Phone |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Wednesday, 08 November 2006 |
Consumer Wi-Fi maker, Buffalo
(available in Australia
under the Uniden brand) has leveraged a new Skype capable chipset from Broadcom
to deliver a new wireless handset.
Broadcom says its Wi-Fi phone platform supports Skype calls
without a personal computer. The solution should help lower the cost of Skype
capable WLAN phones as it reduces the amount of engineering work required by
big brands to deliver a solution.
The IEEE 802.11b/g wireless LAN phone handles regular as well
as SkypeIn/SkypeOut calls. So long as the hotspot doesn't require browser authentication
the phone will work at any public Wi-Fi access point, otherwise you will be
limited to your home network. The phone is also capable of making standard PSTN
calls.
The speakerphone, which has a high-res 262k colour LCD display
will be Skype Certified and available for the Japanese market this month.
"Broadcom is the ideal chip vendor to unite Wi-Fi and
VoIP on a single platform, given the company's leadership and continued
innovation in both technologies," said Hajime Nakai, General Manager,
Broadband Solutions Business Unit, Buffalo.
"The Wi-Fi phone platform delivers best-in-class battery
life, voice quality and range and is a logical choice for Buffalo, as several of our existing wireless
networking products are supported by Broadcom Wi-Fi solutions."
Buffalo
based the phone on Broadcom's Wi-Fi phone reference design which consists of
the BCM1161 mobile VoIP processor and BCM4318E AirForce One 54g chip. The BCM1161
integrates an ARM9 CPU, an analogue voice codec with a direct microphone and high-output
speaker interface as well as 2 megapixel camera interface, which does not
appear to have been used in the Buffalo
phone.
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