Telecom Will Eat Itself
Techdirt has often discussed ways mobile phones are replacing landlines, and a new product from Telular offers a new way cellular can displace copper, all the while blurring the lines between the two. The Telular SX4P is a dual band (800-1900)CDMA 1X terminal that connects to the 2.5G (144Kbps) cellular network, but it isn’t a phone – it’s a adapter. It sports regular analog phone jacks into which customers can plug telephones, fax machines, PC modems, etc. In effect, it’s a lot like a Vonage box, except it is backhauled by 1x, not broadband. Using such a solution, wireless carriers could compete for fixed business, could serve previously un-reachable markets, could rapidly deploy in developing nations, and…hey…could provide mobility to “fixed” phones in motor-homes, trucks, construction sites, etc.
