EMBARQ 's Casabi-flavored Home Phone--Hot!

Traditional VoIP phones have been nothing but glorified dumb handsets, with about as much functionality and sexuality. EMBARQ [1] has introduced some spice to the marketplace by announced the eGo phone, a spiffy SIP-phone with a built-in light web browser. EMBARQ is laying claim to being the first telco to deliver a cordless home phone with visual voicemail, news and information, personal phone books and phone directories.

The special seasoning that makes eGo hot is Casabi [2], a technology that brings IP client/server capabilities to the humble cordless handset, in this case provided to EMBARQ by VTECH [3].  A simple web client talks to servers to pull up a variety of services, ranging from (now almost necessary) visual voicemail, to the latest sports scores and weather reports. On-line local business listings allow keyword lookups, so you can do a search on your phone rather than pull out the yellow pages and let your fingers do the walking. Users also get an online address book where they can centrally store numbers.

Casabi technology also offers excitement to incumbent phone carriers trying to increase their stickiness with their established customer base by offering additional features above and beyond vanilla voice service. Cable companies have sweeping up business by offering lower prices; Casabi enables operators to offer value-added services over DSL and generic VoIP offerings. AT&T demonstrated (i.e. at least toyed with) Casabi in their booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, so it is plausible other carriers may turn up similar services in the future.

Finally, it should be noted implementing eGo was most likely put into motion during Dan Hesse's watch at EMBARQ. Is this a clue for general technology innovation we might see from Sprint in the future?

For more:
- EMBARQ's eGo [4] release
- Behind-the-scenes Casabi service [2]

Related articles:
EMBARQ loses Hesse [5] to Sprint top job
Engadget's piece on VTech Internet-connected cordless phones [6]