Techworld's Peter Judge today picks up on the news that xG Technology, which offers a high-efficiency, low-power and low-cost version of WiMAX that it demonstrated last November, has announced plans to offer a wireless VoIP handset to consumers by the end of 2006.

Company CEO Rick Mooers says xG will be using a viral campaign to market the solution, with the aim of empowering small, grassroots providers to offer mobile VoIP. For now, the company's handsets will be dual-mode -- in addition to using xG's proprietary mobile VoIP solution, they'll also operate over Wi-Fi, and will have an Ethernet socket.

The company says its xMax technology can send 40Mbit/s of data over 15 miles using less than 1W of power, enabling the deployment of cheap and reliable mobile VoIP.

xG's press release is here.