USB IP Phones are phones, designed for home and office use, which connect to the PC USB port instead of the traditional PSTN wall socket.
USB IP Phones substantially improve the audio quality and user interface of PC based telephony. Stereo quality audio processing is handled by a dedicated ASIC, (Applicaton Specific Integrated Circuit), in the phone. Full button integration with softphone clients running on the PC. The USB phone looks, sounds and feels like a conventional phone.
Operation of the USB IP phone does not require for the user to learn a new interface. However if the user is ready for it optional new and powerful capabilities become available thru the integration with PC applications.
Eutectics phones come in a variety of ergonomic form factors. We offer headsets, handsets, desk/speaker phones, and 2.4 GHz multi-station cordless phones.

USB
(Universal Serial Bus) is the connectivity standard for PC peripheral devices since Windows 98. USB offers full Plug and Play support, no complicated device installation. USB provides power for smaller peripheral devices, so no cords or wall plugs. USB technology is used for a wide range of devices from cordless mice to keyboards, to digital camera's and printers.
Today USB comes in two versions: Version 1.1 supports device speeds up to 12 Megabits. Version 2.0 (released December 2001) supports device speeds up to 400 Megabits.
Eutectics USB IP phones work with both versions. 1394 or Firewire is another new pc interface with is mostly used for video applications. To date 1394 is not as widely proliferated as USB.

IP Telephones
IP Telephones offer a stand alone solution that connects to an Ethernet. IP phones are really quite sophisticated computing devices offering color, touch screens, limited web browsing capabilities and other features. IP phones are not directly integrated with the PC. The Ethernet interface is a limitation in the consumer market because not many homes are equipped with a LAN.

IP Phones cost $300-$500 because in order to connect to the Ethernet additional (expensive) components are needed as compared to Eutectics USB based products. Eutectics believes that IP Phones and USB Phones will coexist, especially in the Enterprise market. We see a larger overall market for USB products because of price, performance and advantages of integration with the PC.

IP phones are generally responsible for 30%-40% of the cost per station of corporate IP telephony implementations. With typical per station costs reaching $800 this price point has not helped IP Phones gain broad based Enterprise acceptance.

According to Lindsay Huges at Sage Research the enthusiasm for IP Phones is more muted than for USB IPT. Sage's survey of 141 enterprises evaluating or deploying IPT found that 31 percent of the respondents expect 50% or more of their employees to be using IP Soft Phones by the end of 2002. There seems to be no killer application which makes IP phones stand out over regular phones and which compels users to pay $300-$500 just for an IP handset.

IP Phones present a dilemma for new application development. Should the application run on the phone or on the PC or on both? Why update phone books and settings two devices? Your IP phone is clearly an inferior device for web browsing and other rich media tasks. The PC is logical single converged device for business, mobile workers, distributed Contact Centers and office "hoteling" solutions once you add a quality USB IPT capability to the already richly equipped device.

Eutectics believes that IP Phones and USB Phones will coexist, especially in the Enterprise market. We see a larger overall market for USB products because of price, performance and advantages of integration with the PC.

Sound Cards
Sound card devices are great for audio playback but fail to offer good duplex audio capabilities. Sound cards generally sample the audio in real-time but buffer the digital audio prior to bulk bus transfer to a storage media or process stream. Buffering results in jitter and delay. Jitter and Delay in turn cause or worsen echo, latency and unacceptable pauses in conversation.

Sound card devices also do not offer "command and control" capabilities needed for telephony.

IPPVideo USB Hi-Def Camera