Wi-Fi phone handsets for Vonage have been in the works for awhile now. Well, it looks like the day of the first 802.11g VoWLAN phone has finally come. Enter the UTStarcom F1000G…

It appears the UTStarcom, which will next month begin supplying its 802.11b F-1000 Wi-Fi handset to Vonage [reviewed here], has an 802.11g version in the works. This phone breaks ranks with the current crop of VoWLAN or WiSIP phones, which all use the older 802.11b WLAN standard.

While 11b has plenty of speed to support the 100kbps or so bandwidth requirements of a VoIP phone, the use of an 11b device on a an 11g WLAN causes general throughput degradation for all clients on the AP that the device associates with. This isn’t a problem with the phone itself, but due to the way that 11g has to accommodate slower 11b devices. [Read the rest]