January 8th, 2007
CES: No PC middleman is required with GE's DECT 6.0 Skype phone
Among the bumper crop of VoIP phones here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is GE's $170 DECT 6.0 phone. DECT, otherwise known as Digitally Enhanced Cordless Telephony, is the same wireless technology that the Skype phone I looked at yesterday (3J's SkyPartner) uses to enable wireless communication between the cordless handset and its wireless reciever. The DECT spec works over a 1.9 Ghz radio frequency that is't susceptible to interference from other wireless technologies like WiFi or your microwave oven.
Like the SkyPartner, GE's DECT 6.0 phone can be used with both a landline and a Skype account which is especially good for making 911 emergency calls since Skype doesn't support E911. But what makes the GE phone different from 3J's offering is that instead of putting the reciever on a USB dongle that plugs into a computer running Skype, the GE DECT 6.0 phone comes with a receiver that doesn't require a computer to be the middleman. You just plug it into your local area network and it takes care of routing the call from the wireless handset (over the DECT-based wireless link) and to your Skype account. Here's my take on the product in a video that was shot here at CES in Las Vegas:
