NETGEAR, Skype to Connect on Family of Innovative Products Including World's First Skype WiFi Mobile Phone

I held off on any personal predictions for 2006, but this WiFi phone with Skype software on it seems like it will do some disruption to big telcos and will change many calling patterns, possibly for the worst. I see this tool as one that could end up creating a big constituency for free, fast, municipal broadband in lots of cities that either didn't have municipal WiFi or weren't thinking about it. Look for the telcos to work hard against free WiFi especially in the face of this Skype phone. NETGEAR, Skype to Connect on Family of Innovative Products Including World's First Skype WiFi Mobile Phone : "The NETGEAR WiFi phone will make mobile Internet telephony a reality for Skype users. Unlike other devices that must connect with a PC, NETGEAR's Skype WiFi phone will work wherever a consumer is connected to a wireless Internet access point -- be that in a home, office, cafe, open public hotspot, or any open municipal wireless access point being deployed worldwide. The Skype experience remains the same, in that users can make free domestic and international calls, as well as host conference calls and chat, with other Skype users anywhere in the world, and to non-Skype users for a small fee. With this device, headphones or USB phones plugged into a laptop or PC are not required."