Most of us won’t be seeing bailout money anytime soon, so it makes sense that we at least make an attempt to stretch the home budget. If you phone is on the fritz, a dead cordless phone battery is the most likely cause. Depending on how long you’ve had your cordless phone, locating a cordless phone battery may be a daunting task. In the last couple of years, some of the manufacturers have been kind enough to use AA or AAA rechargeables, which makes life a whole lot easier…and cheaper.

If the phone you use has an antenna that you pull out of the handset (you know the classics I’m talking about), your battery search may just be too daunting or expensive. If it’s relatively new (in the last 4-5 years), you may have an expandable model. In that case, you may find more value in replacing the cordless handset. When all else fails, the prices on cheap cordless phones (inexpensive DECT 6.0 models, not cheap junk) have dropped dramatically.

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Though 2.4ghz and cordless 5.8 ghz phones have been around for a while, we’re baffled that these phones continue to be requested. With the competitive pricing of DECT 6.0 (1.9ghz) in this down economy and the widely number of available models, there really is no reason to consider a 2.4 ghz cordless phone or 5.8 model. DECT 6.0 solves voice quality deficit and ranges issues that either of the 2.4ghz or 5.8ghz frequency phones have had challenges with. Ultimately, our DECT 6.0 cordless phone customers have a much lower return rate, which leads us to believe that customer satisfaction is higher with DECT.

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It’s another sign of the times. Announced last week, Thomson SA (the company behind the GE and RCA branded corded and cordless phones) will be shutting down it’s U.S. retail telephone unit. Though GE Phones are typically thought of as the “discount phone”, they have produced some genuine innovations in 2008 and it’ll be sorry to see them leave the market. Despite a drop in overall sales, the RCA 2-Line DECT 6.0 25250RE1 continues to be a popular 2-line cordless phone. Look for Uniden, Panasonic and others to scramble to grab whatever market share they can with this departure.

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PARIS, Nov 5 (Reuters) – French media technology group Thomson SA said on Wednesday that it would close its loss-making retail telephone business in North America in a bid to bolster profitability.

The business, which is part of Thomson Grass Valley unit, and sells mainly DECT telephones to retailers in North America, will be shut down.

“We have started a process under which this business in North America will be halted,” a company spokeswoman said.

The North American retail telephony business had around 135 million euros in revenue in 2008, down 18 percent from 2007 and is expected to show an operating loss of over 20 million euros in the current year, the statement said.

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Wow – this is a popular topic these days. Cordless Workz gets multiple calls per day from consumers asking when a 2-line DECT cordless phone will be available. Manufacturers are bent on using market research data to determine that the 2-line market is dead. It may have shrunk a bit, but it’s not dead. In fact, the available 2-line phones on the market have shrunk faster than demand. From a cordless phone manufacturing experience, demand research should require more than reviewing the current market size. 
 

So, is anyone working on a 2-line DECT cordless phone? Yes. Based on what little birdies have told us, we believe that there will be a 2-line model on the market by Q2 2008 (early summer)…or at least we’ll have more details on a launch date by then. 
 
What about a 4-line DECT phone? Yeah, right. We can dream. This is probably at least a year away. 
 

Hopefully we’ll all learn a bit more at the annual CES show in Las Vegas in January…

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