Today’s Enhanced Cordless Phones

Gigaset Communications

When it comes to electronics, everyone plays the numbers game. Camera shoppers seek out more megapixels, computer shoppers want larger hard drives and TV shoppers drool over bigger screens.

Manufacturers of cordless phones tried to similarly entice shoppers by marketing ever-higher frequencies. They pushed 2.4 GHz over 900 MHz and then 5.8 GHz over 2.4 GHz. But it’s now game over, thanks to Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunications (DECT).

This year, major cordless-phone manufacturers will make cordless phones that use only the 1.9-GHz DECT standard, and they tell us that no successor to DECT is in the works. That’s unsurprising, because DECT cordless phones deliver an interference-free signal that’s clearer than what the old frequencies delivered.

DECT dominance makes it easier to shop for a cordless phone, because you won’t have to worry about the pros and cons of different frequencies. What’s better is that prices won’t go up. Manufacturers tell us that the price this year for a DECT cordless phone that has caller ID will cost $25—the same as what a similarly equipped 5.8-GHz cordless phone cost in 2010.

And the universality of DECT doesn’t mean that innovations have stopped. So, in a world that seems to be increasingly cellphone-based, cordless phones remain products that are worth talking about.

FEELING BLUE. If you shop for a cordless phone, you’ll definitely notice fewer brands. Thomson, which manufactured GE and RCA cordless phones, left the U.S. market in 2008, and Philips bowed out in 2010. That leaves three major manufacturers: Panasonic, Uniden and VTech. (VTech also makes AT&T-brand models.) The three companies control 93 percent of the market, according to market-research firm NPD Group.

The market has shrunk in large part because consumers increasingly are ditching their landline phone service and instead using only their cellphone. Approximately 23 percent of all Americans rely only on their cellphone for calls, according to a 2010 survey from Pew Internet and American Life Center. (An additional 17 percent use their cellphone as their primary phone.) That’s up from 16 percent in 2008.

But don’t write off the cordless phone just yet, NPD’s Ross Rubin says. He predicts that the decline in sales will level off in the next 2 years as younger cellphone-only users move from apartments to homes and discover the need for multiple phone handsets. (Cordless phones today can handle up to 12 handsets.)

In the meantime, cordless-phone-makers are courting these people by lowering the price of their Bluetooth-enabled cordless phones this year. The price for a system that includes two handsets and an answering machine will drop to as low as $80 from $100.

Bluetooth cordless systems now can pair (or link) with up to four cellphones and allow you to send and receive cellular and landline calls from the same handset. There also will be more Bluetooth models this year—at least 10, compared with seven in 2010.

GO LONG. In addition to its clear signal, DECT also allows you to roam with the handset twice as far from the base station as you could with a 5.8-GHz cordless phone. DECT models boast an advertised range of 350 feet, although in reality you’ll likely get much less, because the signal has to pass through walls or other obstructions that are in a building.

New accessories, which Panasonic debuted in June 2010 and which Uniden added this year, double DECT’s effective range. Range extenders are cordless amplifiers that you plug in to a power outlet that’s between the base station and the farthest handset.