It pains me to say this because I am a big admirer of Linksys and Skype, but last night, i tested the Skype telephone by Linksys, the CIT200, and i was very disappointed. The problems? Well first, it costs a hefty €150. Second, it doesn’t use WIFI but DECT. And thirdly, it works with a cable. Basically, it’s technology of the 80s mixed with Skype. If you don’t have your computer on, you can’t use your phone!

Compared to the CIT200, the WiFifon, which works whether or not your computer is on and works on any FON or open access point, is so much better. Skype needs to start selling its own WiFifon. It’s giving Microsoft a huge opportunity to come out with a Wifi voice gadget and eventually completely dominate the market. Instant Messenger already has a voice and video capability. Put this in a small WiFi enable device that you can use on the FON network and sell it to those 90 million IM users in Europe, and you’re almost impossible to beat.

During the 10 first years of the web, two huge communities gradually formed: the GSM telephone community and the IM community (Skype, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo, AOL), which represent 20% and 10% of the world’s population, respectively. In the next 5 years, these two communities will fuse and the person who will lead this fusion will make lots of users happy with a system with voice, video, file transfer and chat; all over a WiFi network. This will be much more powerful than today’s 3G.

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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rajinder on November 8, 2005  · 

Yes. I like your idea of merging messaging with network connectivity wherever you may roam cheaply!

Just to know, what do you think about the wifi-3g handsets.. are they mobile handsets with wifi or are they home handsets with wifi? looks like you’re betting on the second.. I wonder why!

asta

3.0 rating

Dennis Shumaker on December 12, 2005  · 

I bought CIT200 from Skypemart online and had it sent to my friend in Texas, then I had it sent to me in india. I am here for an extended period of time.

Linksys CIT200 phone’s system menu has a very dangerous option!

System menu has the following:
register
base select
delete HS
change PIN
reset

selecting delete HS brings up another menu
handset 1
handset 2
handset 3
handset 4

If you delete handset 1, you will ruin your phone!

it will not communicate with the base station anymore

there is no way to reset the phone to the original settings..IT IS TOAST

The reason I did this was to try to work around a a different problem I had with the phone.

I will be living in India for an extended period of time

Linksys is not a global company that will support their products world wide. In other words they will not do a warranty exchange outside of the country you bought the product from. The money I spent on the phone and the money I spent getting it into India has been wasted since even though their are two Linksys affliates in Bangalore, they are unwilling to help me out.

3.0 rating

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