FRITZ!Box Fon 5124 and Fon WLAN 7170 do it all

Have you been looking for one uniting box to rule all of your multifarious telephony and related gadgetry? Well if you live in Europe, search no further -- the new AVM FRITZ!Box Fon 5124 and Fon WLAN 7170 are here. As much as we hate to type the ridiculous name with the exclamation point in the middle, we will admit that we're interested in any solution that functions as a router, handles PBX (for landline connections), is an ADSL modem, and sports a USB host port for sharing drives or printers across a network. The WLAN model (obviously) adds wireless into the mix, for those who want to keep up with flashy new trends. The 5124 is available now for €140, and the 7170 for €160.

[Thanks, Nirav]

[kempest @ Jul 23rd 2007 10:41AM]

What do you mean by new device?
This brilliant piece of hardware is available for more than a year now.

Maybe you meant the new FRITZ!Box 7270. This one has also a DECT base station integrated.

The realy great thing about this is you get one for free when you sign up fo a new dsl line with many dsl providers in germany. That's how I got mine. And I love it.

If you can read german, go to http://www.avm.de/ and check it out.

[i luv nose candy @ Jul 23rd 2007 10:54AM]

Oh sure, it's all fun and games until it goes on the fritz...
Good choice of name, I guess "Broken!Box" was taken already...

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 23rd 2007 5:13PM]

as was "failsmor"

[Adrian Thomas @ Jul 23rd 2007 12:04PM]

Plus AVM also offer a free beta firmware upgrade for some of their current higher end Fritz!Box models that enable VPN client access... I'd assume these will also support the VPN features...

[Martin Trautmann @ Jul 23rd 2007 12:32PM]

802.11g only. Ok, they got 802.11b and their proprietary 802,11g++ as well - but no word of 802.11n

[Ben Curtis @ Jul 23rd 2007 12:43PM]

The 7270 is the model I want but so far is available in Annex B version only... with no plans for Annex A, they say.
With the Fritz!Boxes be sure to get the right model - Annex A for ADSL over POTS, Annex B for ADSL over ISDN. Part numbers for both are listed on their English site: http://www.avm.de/en/index.php3
Regards,
Ben

[Fredster @ Jul 25th 2007 4:29PM]

The 7270 is 802.11n, and this is the one i'm waiting for *drool*. I have the older 7050 and i've been real happy with it, easy to use, cool firmware updates etc. Now if we would only get more of the VDSL love here....:)

[pepe @ Jul 23rd 2007 4:39PM]

The AVM products are and were always way out there excellent!! It's like electronics which are available in Japan only. You know, that kind of cool :-)

[wrs @ Jul 23rd 2007 5:43PM]

As kempest mentioned, 7170 is an old story. In addition to him/her, and under the same condition you can read German (or have a good babelfish at hand), there are quite a few hacks out for that box: http://www.wehavemorefun.de/fritzbox/index.php/Main_Page

@all the others: What's the matter about brokenbox and failsmor? The tool runs as wanted, never experienced serious issues with it. Are your issues something one should know about?

[Travis (stupid blog free) @ Jul 23rd 2007 6:53PM]

No, they're just making fun of the English slang "going on the fritz," which means something is about to break or is already broken. i.e., "Snail-mail it to me. My computer's on the fritz." Very colloquial, yet fairly common. KAPUT!Box would be an appropriate translation.

[mnemo @ Jul 24th 2007 5:01AM]

Isn't the main feature of the Fritz!Fon that is already has the DECT base station integrated? Also support VoIP. The feature list in the original post is WAY too short. ;-)

[Josh @ Jul 24th 2007 9:23AM]

These boxes are great, and give you so many more features with a basic German DSL account than I've seen from my experiences with basic American DSL accounts. Americans would be lucky to get FRITZ!boxes from their DSL providers.

[Till @ Aug 12th 2007 9:37PM]

Clarification:
Joshua is referring in article to the announcement of AVM that the 7170 & 5124 is now available to international customer (=Annex A). The press release can be found at
http://www.avm.de/en/press/announcements/2007/2007_07_17.php3
The German (Annex-B) Version of the 7170 is available since early 2006 as AVM's Research and development is based in Germany, their home market.
The 7270 has a built-in DECT GAP, 802.11n (Faster WLAN), USB 2.0 and everything else.