Peter Wilson
Sun
Raymond Chow, director of business development for Richmond company Ascalade, displays the firm’s portable Skype phone. Photograph by : Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun
Skype users now have nothing to lose, except their computer.
The popular and constantly growing free Internet phone service will soon be built right into home phones designed and manufactured by Richmond-based technology innovator, Ascalade Communications.
Thirty thousand of the new phones — which connect directly through their wireless base station to high-speed cable or telephone company modems or to your home network router — will soon be flowing from Ascalade’s factory in China.
Bearing the Philips and Netgear brand names, with a third brand to be added later, the phones, which can be carried throughout the home, will be headed in the latter part of 2006 to the United States and European markets, said Raymond Chow, Ascalade’s director of business development.
Canadians may have to wait a while, or they can order them on the Internet, said Chow.
A third brand will soon be announced. Each of the phone brands will have a different external appearance, but will have the same Ascalade technology internally.
Users will also be able to set up a Skype account themselves, or use an old one, with the phones without the need for a computer.
Skype, which is owned by Google, is said by Forbes.com to have an amazing 113 million users worldwide, but these can come and go and use is often sporadic, with the less technically astute often turning to cable firms and various telcos, such as Vonage and Primus, for VoIP.
“For Skype to be used on a truly wide level, I think it really has to be detached from the PC,” said Chow. “Most people, if they’re talking on the phone, if they had a choice, wouldn’t be doing it from their computer room.”
Chow said he first began talking with Skype back in early 2004, when it had some 20 employees, and finally signed a deal in January this year for the phones, designed in Richmond.
The new Skype phones, with the software built in, have a personal resonance for Chow, who likes to keep in touch with his parents while he’s on the road.
“My father is pretty good with computers, but it would be a laborious job for him to set up a Skype account,” said Chow, whose company already makes a USB Skype phone that uses a computer connection.
“But to use that he has to go down and turn on the computer and it’s a bit of a hassle, so he says, aw, you can just call me at home and I’ll pay your long-distance bills.”
Now, with the advent of the new phones, all that a tech-savvy relative has to do is buy one, program it and send it off.
“You can ship it to your grandmother,” said Chow. “Sure, you still have to teach her how to hook it up, but that’s a lot easier than telling her how to set it up on her computer.”
Chow said this is another step in Ascalade’s moving towards phone devices that are a little more powerful and smarter than the average phone.
Chow wouldn’t predict where Ascalade would move next in phone technology, but it’s likely the most logical area would be into home phones that download music and videos.
“You’ll actually be able to start receiving some extended content,” said Chow.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
