Fritz!Box delivers the whole box and dice

MANUFACTURERS are after all producing modem routers that give you gigabit ethernet and a raft of network functions rolled into one.

Instead of separate modems, routers, internet and analog phones, centralised home storage, answering machines and faxes, you have one tiny box that delivers all, saves power and drastically reduces domestic clutter.

One such box is Berlin-based AVM's Fritz!Box Fon WLAN 7390, which aims to deliver your network internet needs sliced and diced.

It's available in Australia at first through Internode for $399, or $499 with a DECT telephone, however you can use it with other Australian ISPs. The Fritz!Box 7390 sounds expensive, yet not when you consider its seemingly never-ending features and versatility.

Let's start with design. Like Apple, AVM puts some emphasis on looks. Fritz!Box 7390's two-tone red and silver livery, with twin fins, is kitschy 1950s. However the fins are not a nostalgic attempt to reproduce 1957 Chevvy tail fins, they are housing for two MIMO antennas that offer 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual-band wireless operation. Dual-band offers better WiFi reception where there is lots of wireless, yet you'll need devices that can take advantage of it.

Now for configuration. The Fritz!Box 7390 has the most colourful and user-friendly web interface I've seen. It defies implicit culture that a router's web configuration must look nerdy and cluttered to be tech-credible. The interface as well throws up stats about your internet speed performance, uploading, downloading, power use and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) calling.

Next, telephony. The Fritz!Box can connect two analog phones, fax or answering machines, eight ISDN telephone devices, and is a DECT base station for cordless phones. It has five inbuilt answering machines, can internally receive faxes and email them as attachments, and displays detailed call lists for phones and faxes.

Australia MyNetFone service to Fritz!Box

I had little trouble connecting an Australia MyNetFone service to Fritz!Box. Instead of hard wired phones, I used the free FRITZ!

App Fon app available for iPhone and Android to wirelessly link two smartphones to the box. I at that time made calls from those smartphones through the box out through MyNetFone. I linked one of the inbuilt answering machines to the MyNetFone account without a problem.

You can connect four USB printer and storage devices to Fritz!Box either through its two USB ports or hubs. They should be externally powered. The ability to offer local printer functions just as ink checking on attached computers is a nice touch. So is power management of networked external hard drives, powering them down when not in use.

The one problem

The one problem was IPTV. Internode's IPTV to all appearances works without configuration, now you need to manually import a file to have it work with TPG and, I assume, with other ISPs. That's somewhat messy. IPTV should be part of standard configuration webpages.

I was unable to get TPG IPTV working on the 7390, now the Fritz!Box helpdesk says it works. In spite of this hiccup, the Fritz!Box 7390 is a so then thought through attempt to address all home consumer needs in one little box.

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