Gossip

Belkin boast: "Cheapest WiFi!" - but also "We're not cheap!"

Stand by for cries of pain from inside component-seller king, Belkin - purveyor, normally, of wires, links, bits and bobs, but now promising to undercut everybody else in the home wireless market.

Having button-holed Graeme Wearden - one of the "erstwhile colleagues" of our Guy Kewney, at CeBIT, it seems that one Allan Colley, the marketing manager of Belkin, force-fed the lad with aggressive marketing bollox about how his company would make a mission of selling WiFi gear for $10 less than everybody else.

The story subsequently ran on ZDNet, saying that Belkins gear would be cheapest. And there, you might think, it would have ended.

Sniffer, however, knows Guy Kewney well, and spotted the man with "the Web presence bigger than the moon" in ZDNet towers and associated watering holes recently. And it was shortly after that, that rumours began to be heard about dissent in the Belkin ranks.

From the packets Sniffer has intercepted, it seems that Allan Colley has got his message across rather too well. The packets clearly contain complaints from Belkin "corporate relations" people, and are directed to ZDNet.

The gist? "Oy! You make us sound cheap!" Well, duh!

The message "Don't tell us; tell Colley" went back to Belkin several times before it seemed to penetrate the flackwall. Expect noises-off to hint at internal conflict, suggests Sniffer ...