I've gotten pretty burnt out on most voip hardware. Most manufacturers compete on features and don't really do anything all that interesting. Except for some technical details, it's pretty much all the same.

Aswath Rao, whom I know to be an extremely smart dude, was partially behind this ZTE BAVO Home Gateway Mobile EVDO Router. The name doesn't sound all that VoIP-ish. In fact, it has a lot of features that make the box compelling in it's own right, even outside of the VoIP space.

Quoting from Aswath's post on the ZTE BAVO:

[ZTE's Home Gateway] H110 is at once a Wi-Fi router, an unlocked [Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA)] that can support two VoIP accounts with failover to PSTN, a mobile router that can connect to an EV-DO network with an appropriate EV-DO PC card and a file/print server. These are the basic capabilities. But there are many advanced features.

The box is not just an ATA; it behaves like a PBX. The two VoIP lines and the PSTN line will be used like "trunks"; the two FXS port and an optional Bluetooth phone will be used like "stations". The stations can talk to each other as intercom. The route for outgoing calls can be selected based on static configuration or dynamic dial plan.

To quote Aswath: "A consumer may not be ready to configure and operate a sophisticated box like this one." That's true of most VoIP ATAs I've played with. It's no surprise that a box with this many features might be a tad complex to configure. However, in the right hands, this device would be a force to be reckoned with.

For all the functionality it provides, $229 is not a bad price at all. It's certainly one of the more unique ATA-type devices I've seen. Let me know what you think in the comments.