Manufacturers of routers and gateways like D-Link have for over two years ago talked about integrating VoIP capability with their Ethernet routers, with the goal of keeping people more connected and providing one less interface in the chain.
Last week at CES I saw the Motorola box that Vonage is now peddling, replacing the Cisco ATA-186. Now Zoom has brought forward a device to do the same thing designed primarily to work with DSL lines.
The reasoning is quite simple. More carriers will be out there who want to go after the early adopters. While the big USA telcos go after the customers they already have and work to get them to switch, the new upstarts will go after the bigger, more lucrative offshore market. For companies like D-Link, Zoom and Motorola the deep well is not here in the USA, it’s outside the country. Like the days of the gold rush and oil boom, sometimes there’s money to be made selling picks and shovels, or in this case routers and cables.
Stay connected,
Andy Abramson