We have been using Skype for some time now. The biggest problem with Skype is lack of choices on stand alone phones. Most of the so call Skype phones really are no more than USB mic plus speaker with a keypad. While there are a hand full of Wi-Fi phones and may be two or three cordless phones that are stand alone Skype phones, most of them have rather poor user reviews. It seem for some unknown reasons, there is no Skype stand alone phone adapters like some other VOIP services offers that allow user to plug a standard PSTN phone to the box.

 Having to have the PC on for Skype is a major annoyance. Besides, if PC is running other programs while using Skype, the call quality can be low and gets cut off often. For this reason in addition to Skype, we also have another VOIP service call iTalkBB. iTalkBB gives you a gizmo like the above mention adapter that let’s you connect a PSTN phone and the network without the need of PC. The Box will convert PSTN to digital and to internet packet. The advantage is you can hook up any corded or cordless phone you like and change phone any time you like. For people like us who do not needs a phone number for people to call in, they only charge $1 per month and pay as we go on each call we made. Since the beginning of this however, iTalkBB begin to charge additional $2.99 per month for the so called “applicable regulatory recovery fees, charges and taxes”. While the government may demand them to collect some fees, I find their policy charge every one regardless the plan from the same amount of money outrages as we don’t even have a phone number assigned, we want to terminate their service but need to find some thing convenient than the USB type of Skype devices.

Besides of the basic type of USB Skype devices, we also used some thing like the D-Link DPH-50U. This type of device will allow you to connect a regular PSTN phone on one end, and the USB to PC on the other. While this type of device allow you the free dome to use a regular PSTN cordless phone, the driver reliability is not that good the say the least. We tried two variations of this type of devices and each has its own issue. The biggest one is they still need a PC to work.

The next solutions are the stand alone Skype cordless phone or Wi-Fi phones. The problem is they are all rather expensive and the battery lifespan is limited. We are not just talking the talk time of the batter but the battery itself typically only last about two years. There is no assurance when the battery went dead, a replacement can be brought. It is more likely to replace the whole expensive phone. Not a real solution to say the least.

Then by chance we found Fry’s has a sale on this Belkin Skype phone. The MSRP is $99.99 and normally Fry’s is selling it for $79.99. But when it was on sale for $59.99 plus a $20 rebate, we decided to give it a try; even it is a corded phone.

Setup the phone is easy. Snap the stand to the bottom of the phone body; connect the cord to the handset and body; connect the phone to the network and plug in the power. The phone has a LCD screen that will light up when the power is plug in. After booting up the phone start to search for a network. If your router is set for auto DHCP, the phone by default will get the IP address from the router and connect to Skype. After it found the Skype server, the screen will ask you to sign on. The user interface is very similar to normal cell phone in term of entering data. After signed on to the Skype, the contact list will be automatically downloaded to the phone.

Dialing from the contact list is easy and similar to cell phone. But if you need to manually dial out, you need to dial the full country code and area code and for reason unknown, you also have to dial 00 in front of the country code. For all the intelligence already built in to the phone, I feel Belkin could have easily had a menu item to set default country code and only require dialing 00 when dialing outside of default country.

Anyway, once setup, the call quality is pretty good. Far better than the USB/PSTN adapter type like the D-Link DPH-50U or even the USB Skype devices. Call quality when calling regular land line is very good and stable. Calling Skype to Skype is depends some what on the other calling party’s quality.  The speaker phone’s quality is also quite good.

 Since this phone is a network device, one feature I would like to have is to be able to do management from PC on the same network. While I don’t want to use PC to run the Skype program as it put quite a demand on PC resources, be able to do cut and paste phone dialing is some thing I missed with this phone.

I also wish they have a PSTN port that allows me to connect a cordless phone to it. But as a standalone Skype cost $40 after rebate is a good value.