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ZyXel P-2000W VoIP WLAN Phone Reviewed
prostoalex writes "MSNBC reviews ZyXel's P-2000W, a VoIP-over-WLAN phone that supports 802.11b and 802.11g. Gary Krakow tests the $200 phone with a VoIP account from T-Glo (his phone came pre-programmed with that). Looks like a pretty decent solution for anyone who's on the go, but has consistent access to Wi-Fi networks: 'I took the phone with me to a number of friends' homes and tried it there. All I had to do is ask the phone to find nearby networks and join them. It was even able to find others' WiFi networks as I walked though Manhattan (no, I didn't try connecting).'"
It's pronounced "Zy-Sell". They're the worlds largest maker of VDSL CPE and DSL routers. Also have a new consumer line you can buy at CompUSA. A version of the phone featured in the article is currently available through Office Depot stores.
I work for a large company...I think I just need to say our products are green and Yellow and you can figure out who we are...but never the less, a lot of our dealers are actually using these phones between their locations in order to cut down on their long distance costs. The range on these phones is pretty good and are a breeze to setup. Zyxel isn't very big in the US yet but they are huge in Taiwan. IF you want to find out what they are all about, check out their Zywall Firewalls. These things are absolutely fantastic firewalls and blow sonic walls out of the water. Hopefully Zyxel starts making it big and can bring more great products to the market.
and funnily enough it failed, why ? lack of connection points (it was relativly cheap too)
BBC story about it , would be wise to read it before praising Wifi phones just yet
I have one of these and while it is pretty neat, it still is pretty clearly a first generation product, despite being version 2 of the model.
The largest problem is that you can't use these phones in places where you have to log onto a service provider in order to use the wifi connection - for example at a Starbucks. You can only use it on wifi access points that are wide open or for which you have the WEP key. Both 64 & 128 bit WEP are supported though.
The firmware is still a little flaky. Once in a while, it randomly reboot itself. Also, it sometimes has trouble connecting with access points that use MAC address filtering, even if the phone's MAC address is correctly entered on the allowed list.
The phone is easy enough to configure via its web interface. There appear to be a few features that are only configurable via web interface and a few that are only configurable via the phone's menus.
The phone can hold only one set of SIP settings (i.e only one VOIP provider account) at a time.
Battery life sucks. The manual suggests something like 20 hours standby and 3-4 hours talk. I'm guessing that the real numbers are around half of that.
I bought mine at an Office Depot office supplies store (US$199), and it came with a sticker on the box promoting tglo and promising a $50 rebate if you signed up for tglo service. The phone is NOT locked to tglo and I have tried mine on Freeworld Dialup and SipPhone among others.
The Zyxel website provides firmware downloads and a fairly comprehensive manual.
Other than that, it pretty much works as advertised.
Maybe things have changed a lot with the new firmware version, but Nugget of distributed.net fame really doesn't like his:
http://slacker.com/~nugget/asterisk3.php
Keep reading past that page, and he says he doesn't use it at all anymore due to it being so terrible.