When cell phone marries landline

Iria · Aug 6, 2005, 04:15 PM

What's the best-selling piece of personal electronics on earth? What's more popular than computers, camcorders, digital cameras or even iPods?

It's the cell phone. Cell phone sales dwarf everything else. According to the Gartner research firm, 40 percent of the earth's population will be carrying cell phones by 2009. Developing countries are skipping the landline phase altogether, going from no phones to wireless ones.

In this country, we're stuck in transition. Most people have both kinds of phones: wired and wireless. They maintain two phone numbers, have two voice-mail setups and pay two bills, without ever fully appreciating how redundant and silly that is. And here's the kicker: Most people use their home phone lines, running up the home phone bills, during precisely the hours when using the cell phone instead would be free (nights and weekends).

A few people have the courage and the signal strength to cancel their home phone lines altogether. But last month, RCA unveiled a less radical solution: the RCA Cell Docking System (under $130 at, for example, Best Buy and Circuit City).

Once set up, this intriguing device looks like a standard household cordless phone. It has a nice heft and shape, the handset doubles as a speaker phone and room monitor, and it operates on the 2.4GHz frequency (yes, that's the one that sometimes crackles if you have a wireless network).

But its two biggest buttons, right up at the top, are nothing you've ever seen before on a phone: Home and Cell.

Dial a number and press Home, and you're making a phone call on your home line. Dial and press Cell, and you're routing the call through your cell phone, which sits elsewhere in the house (more on this in a moment). Similarly, you can answer all incoming calls--home or cell--with this one handset.
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Read More / Source: News.com

Aug 6, 2005, 04:15 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 87	When cell phone marries landline What's the best-selling piece of personal electronics on earth? What's more popular than computers, camcorders, digital cameras or even iPods? It's the cell phone. Cell phone sales dwarf everything else. According to the Gartner research firm, 40 percent of the earth's population will be carrying cell phones by 2009. Developing countries are skipping the landline phase altogether, going from no phones to wireless ones. In this country, we're stuck in transition. Most people have both kinds of phones: wired and wireless. They maintain two phone numbers, have two voice-mail setups and pay two bills, without ever fully appreciating how redundant and silly that is. And here's the kicker: Most people use their home phone lines, running up the home phone bills, during precisely the hours when using the cell phone instead would be free (nights and weekends). A few people have the courage and the signal strength to cancel their home phone lines altogether. But last month, RCA unveiled a less radical solution: the RCA Cell Docking System (under $130 at, for example, Best Buy and Circuit City). Once set up, this intriguing device looks like a standard household cordless phone. It has a nice heft and shape, the handset doubles as a speaker phone and room monitor, and it operates on the 2.4GHz frequency (yes, that's the one that sometimes crackles if you have a wireless network). But its two biggest buttons, right up at the top, are nothing you've ever seen before on a phone: Home and Cell. Dial a number and press Home, and you're making a phone call on your home line. Dial and press Cell, and you're routing the call through your cell phone, which sits elsewhere in the house (more on this in a moment). Similarly, you can answer all incoming calls--home or cell--with this one handset. __________ Read More / Source: News.com