Back in January at CES Netgear and Skype revealed a new WiFi phone that has Skype embedded. Now SMC has come up with the same thing.
But, that’s not the story. The real story is that according to inside Skype sources I have been in contact with, is that the new WiFi phones are not currently working with Skype Zones that are operated by Boingo and The Cloud, something I posed to Skype and Netgear officials back in January. The reason for this is what I call two stage authentication, the first being able to get on the service provider’s network, and the second to get on to Skype and function as an endpoint that can handle IM and Voice, including Skype In and Skype Out.
One would hope this occurs, otherwise Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Gizmo will all find ways to do the same thing, or better yet, the real giants, the mobile operators will realize they can make more money selling wireless handover based phones to not lose revenue in the hotspots. My money is on their figuring this rather soon as Fixed Mobile Convergence comes more into vogue this year and as more MVNO’s realize just what that will mean to their selling proposition.