January 04, 2005
Vonage to Launch F-1000 Wi-Fi Phone
According to USA Today, Vonage will announce a Wi-fi phone that can make calls on any Wi-Fi wireless network. Pricing will be around $100 per handset and it will come out between April and June. UTStarcom will manufacture them. Vonage now has 400,000 subscribers that pay $24.99 a month for unlimited local and long distance phone calls. With this phone, people can use their account anywhere there is a wireless network. Theoretically a family can give their son or daughter one of these phones for free calls in a college dorm.
The phone is called the F-1000. It will have 80 hours of standby time and 4 hours of talk time. It will only work with Vonage initially, but UTStarcom plans to offer it to other providers.
As soon as I move or get local number portability, I'm switching to Vonage. All my friends who have tried it, love it especially for its added features like voice mail emails.
