Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype with Boingo Hot Spot Manager
If you’re a Skype subscriber, you’re probably very happy with the cheap calls you can make to overseas land lines and mobile phones, and you’re probably ecstatic over the free calls you can make 24/7 to your fellow Skype subscribers around the world. But you’re probably not overjoyed having to be tethered to your computer in order to make those calls.
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Thankfully, Belkin has come to your rescue. With the Belkin Wi-Fi Phone for Skype, not only are you free to roam away from your computer as you talk turkey with Istanbul, you don’t even need a computer to make calls. As long as you have access to a Wi-Fi network — any hot spot will do — you can use your Belkin Wi-Fi phone to connect to your Skype account and talk to your heart’s content.
We recently put a beta model of the Belkin Wi-Fi phone to the test, and we walked away impressed with its potential. While there are a few wrinkles still to iron out, the Belkin Wi-Fi has a promising future with Skype subscribers.
Although you initially need a computer to sign up for a Skype account, the Belkin only needs an open 802.11 b/g-compatible wireless access point to get you connected.
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Once you power up, you can easily configure your Belkin Wi-Fi phone to auto-connect so that within seconds you’ll be ready to talk. But if you’re on the road, you’ll want the option of connecting manually to the strongest available network. Using the center toggle, it’s easy enough to navigate to the network settings where you’ll see the full list of available networks and their relative signal strengths. You simply choose the one you want to connect to. If the Wi-Fi network offers open access, the Belkin will connect to it automatically; if it requires a password, you’ll be prompted to submit it via the phone’s keypad.
Once you’re connected, the phone will sign you into your Skype account, and you’ll be ready to talk. Your “contacts” folder will give you direct access to all of your Skype contacts. Simply navigate to the person you want to call, and if they’re signed in, you can be talking to them within seconds. If you want to call a land line, you use the key pad to dial the number the old fashioned way. And while you lose some of the Skype features with the Belkin that you otherwise have with your computer, such as the ability to initiate conference calls, you gain the freedom of being able to roam within the range of any accessible wireless network as you talk.
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