--- 
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 <a href="http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20030923S0010">Texas Instruments' new VoIP gateway chip, the TNETV1060</a>. So "how long?" is the first question that springs to mind. (yes, I'm a bit jaded from my time at <a href="http://www.nortelnetworks.com">NT</a> -- caught in the dot-bomb bubble, I had visions of some this cool/useful stuff actually coming to fruition <em>soon</em>).
<!--break-->
The price is given as <em>"$15[US] each in lots of 10,000 for a chip supporting four channels of voice"</em>. 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 <a href="http://www.skype.com" title="Peer to Peer VoIP from the creators of KaZaa">Skype</a> or <a href="http://www.pulver.com/fwd/" title="Free World Dialup">FWD</a>. They did this with <a href="http://www.dyndns.org">dynamic DNS services from DynDNS</a>.