Broadcom announced that the Broadcom Wi-Fi phone platform now supports Skype software and will be available to consumers in new Wi-Fi phone handsets from Buffalo.

Now, with the availability of wireless Internet phones, users can make calls at open Wi-Fi access points all over the world without being tied to a PC.

“A Wi-Fi phone is more flexible and useful than a traditional analog phone because it uses Internet Protocol as the underlying technology and can communicate with other devices on the network,” said Monika Gupta, Senior Product Marketing Manager of Broadcom’s Consumer VoIP products. “Consumers can now be part of the Skype community – scroll through their contacts, see who is online, make free Skype-to-Skype calls – all without sitting in front of the PC.”

“A Skype Wi-Fi phone gives people the freedom to connect to the 136 million family and friends already using Skype anywhere in the world,” said said Manrique Brenes, Director of Hardware for Skype.

The Buffalo Wi-Fi phone for Skype enables free Internet calling to other Skype users and supports traditional calling to and from the public switched telephone network (PSTN) through the SkypeIn and SkypeOut offerings, using IEEE 802.11b/g wireless LAN connectivity and a high-speed Internet connection. The handset features include a high-resolution color display, speakerphone and Buffalo’s AOSS easy configuration protocol. The Buffalo Wi-Fi phone will be available for the Japanese market in November 2006. The handset comes with everything built-in to connect to Skype via any personal, business or free public Wi-Fi access point that does not require browser authentication.

Broadcom’s Wi-Fi phone reference design consists of the BCM1161 mobile VoIP processor and BCM4318E AirForce One 54g chip. The BCM1161 integrates an ARM9 CPU, an analog voice codec with a direct microphone and high-output speaker interface, a 2 megapixel camera interface, a 262k color LCD display interface, a polyphonic ringer and USB interface into a single-chip solution. The BCM4318E integrates a 2.4 GHz radio, IEEE 802.11a/b/g baseband processor, media access controller (MAC) and other components onto a single chip.

Broadcom xChange VoIP software enables the BCM1161 VoIP processor to transport toll-quality voice through the use of sophisticated algorithms. xChange is a modular software architecture that is used across all of Broadcom’s VoIP silicon platforms including Wi-Fi and desktop Ethernet IP phones.

The BCM4318E and BCM1161 devices, together with Broadcom xChange VoIP and OneDriver software, feature support for the latest quality of service (QoS), security and power save standards, and enable a complete Wi-Fi phone solution.