Another interesting announcement at CTIA was Motorola’s announcement of their Cellular Residential Gateway. Even though the sign next to it in the Wireless Home exhibit announced “Shipping Now”, details on it are murky with no sign of it on Motorola’s website. It appears to be similar to a cable modem/wireless router, but replacing the cable modem with a CDMA2000 1x EV-DO connection.
I see this as another nail in the coffin for telecom as we knew it. DSL has never seemed to have the popularity that cable modems have had for residential access. And with more consumers abandoning landlines for cell phones or VoIP connections, I predict we’ll see more combined cable/voice and cell/data devices in the near future. I wonder if Vonage will find it as easy to partner with Motorola and Verizon as they have with the likes of Linksys and the cable companies as they will be competing for the voice market.