layout: post title: "CommsDesign: VoIP chip targets home gateways" created: 1064406240 categories:

• Home Server
• VoIP

How many years will it be? I still believe in a "home gateway" that will serve as both a central hub for in-home communications and applications as well as the gatekeeper to external networks -- be they the current, data-only broadband connection, or tomorrow's voice/video/data streams.

Greg sent me an article about Texas Instruments' new VoIP gateway chip, the TNETV1060. So "how long?" is the first question that springs to mind. (yes, I'm a bit jaded from my time at NT -- caught in the dot-bomb bubble, I had visions of some this cool/useful stuff actually coming to fruition soon).

The price is given as "$15[US] each in lots of 10,000 for a chip supporting four channels of voice". I admit to not really knowing what that works out to in terms of what kind of prices (increases) we would see for gateways. Say a full-featured, non-wireless gateway costs $100CDN today. These would maybe start shipping at $200CDN, then?

But of course, then there's the ongoing subscription and potential mail-in/subsidy angle. I would think that these voice gateways would ship with activation or actual tie-ins to somebody like Vonage. Or maybe cheap-o vendors like LinkSys might actually piggy back on some free services, like Skype or FWD. They did this with dynamic DNS services from DynDNS.