A Korea-based IP telecom solutions provider said today that it’s planning to unveil two of its flagship WiFi (News - Alert) phones at a widely anticipated trade show in Las Vegas next week.

 

Officials from UniData Communication Systems are hailing their new handsets as breakthrough devices that rely on a “unique WiFi platform” and proprietary protocol that offers flexibility to businesses and carriers seeking to meet a wide variety of customer demands.

 

“For example, UDC has been solving problems such as security, interoperability and roaming in the enterprise environment,” said Matthew Park, the Seoul-based company’s marketing director.

 

Specifically, company officials say they’re introducing their 802.11b/g WiFi phone and new WiFi video phone at NXTcomm08.

 

Since it landed on the Korean market10 months ago, UDC officials say their WPU-7700 WiFi phone has drawn more than a half-million residential subscribers there. It’s a market that UDC officials say has been busting at the seams since last summer.

 

The company, founded in 1997, touts its wide industry experience as differentiating its product from competing manufacturers such as Cisco, Polycom (formerly Spectralink) and Linksys (News - Alert).

 

“They’ve made their WiFi phones with a third-party solution package,” Park said. “Our WiFi phone has been developed with 10 years of our own experience and know-how.”

 

Hi-tech industry analysts say that know-how will play a critical role as WiFi’s hot spots – zones of wireless LAN coverage in public areas – become an increasingly important revenue-generator for service providers.

 

According to Long Island-based Allied Business Intelligence, a market research firm widely known as ABI in the industry, WiFi is poised to join third-generation mobile networks in forming a new fabric of “anywhere, anytime” computing worldwide.

 

And UDC, by its very geography, is in a strong position to help lead the market, ABI officials say.

 

According to analyst Tim Shelton, the compound annual growth rate of WiFi hot spots in the Asia-Pacific market comes in around 55 percent, compared to 45 percent in North America.

 

The promise of that growth is part of what UDC officials say has spurred the company to manufacture its WPU-8000 WiFi video phone (pictured), a device that can conference up to three users on a single call.

The device also features a phone book with up to 1,000 contacts, call history, muting and waiting capability and RTSP-based multimedia service.

 

According to park, one of the WPU-8000’s distinguishing features is that it relies on an inexpensive service and doesn’t have to be installed in a conferencing room, with a PC connection and LAN port, as other video-conferencing products do.

 

“Our stand-alone Wi-Fi videoconference phone, WPU-8000, is a personalized phone that allows users to have live videoconference with mobility, anywhere in a wireless Internet area,” he said. “Also, it provides cost-effective calls since it uses un-licensed radio frequency.”