What happened to "phone on a stick"?

Filed in archive Internet telephony on May 6, 2007

Back in June 2006 Vonage fresh off an IPO offered the V-Phone which is a USB drive with a Vonage softphone preinstalled. The idea of the V-phone was that anywhere a Vonage customer might like to go, the V-Phone could be plugged into any computer connected to the Internet to make a call.

This was not a new idea, although Vonage were touting that it was going to have a profound way in which people do business. A Skype softphone is amongst the 100 or so software packages that can be installed on a PortableApps USB drive, so the idea is not exclusive to Vonage. Even in Australia, Freshtel offer a Freshtel 4030 Stick Phone for AUD69.95.

The facts are "phone on a stick" was never going to be breathtaking in comparison to most any other method of making a call. A cellphone is far more reliable and far more sophisticated than a stickphone. The problem with a stickphone is that you cannot assign to it a DID (Direct In-Dial) number therefore there is no number you can give a person with a landline or cell phone a number to call you.

So if you are a business person like me, moving about the place, with perhaps your nearest coffee house as office for an hour between appointments if you are running a computer via wi-fi you might like to use a Stickphone; on the other hand you have your cellphone which is a much more reliable method of other people contacting you. And Stickphones dedicated to a USB Drive like the Vonage V-Phone are not cheap at USD40.

Stick to your cell phone, unless of course you want to show off to your friends that you know a little about technology and have a little more money to burn. Then maybe run a stick phone for fun -- because it can be done.