One manufacturer says yes. What it is selling is not quite what the word implies.
The device is the PetPhone, from GlocalMe, the connectivity brand of uCloudlink Group. It clips onto a collar the dog already wears, weighs about an ounce and a third, and has spent the past year working the electronics trade show circuit, turning up most recently in Berlin. The hardware runs around $90 and does nothing without a paid service plan, because what is inside it is a cellular connection.
Here is what it does. Through a phone app, an owner can call the collar and talk, and the dog hears a familiar voice out of a small speaker. The owner can send a recorded message, play music, draw a boundary around the yard and get an alert when the dog crosses it, and follow the animal on a map. The company also advertises AI health alerts, which in practice means the collar spends about six weeks learning how much the dog normally moves and speaks up when that drops off.
What it does not do is give a dog a phone. The call runs one direction. Nothing about the device lets an animal place one, refuse one, or grasp that the voice in the collar came from somewhere. The AI is not translating barks. It is counting steps with a long memory. Take the vocabulary away and what is left is a cellular tracker with a speaker in it, which is a perfectly sensible product and a different one than the name suggests.
Rick Good spent ten years in the newspaper business, including with The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) and The Greenville News (Greenville, SC). He co-wrote, with Melinda Coleman, Rutledge to Riley: Governors of South Carolina, 1776–Present (Published by The Greenville News), and is the author of Mind Games Trivia #1 (Amazon). He has recently spent 15 years creating original trivia content through Sounds Good Mobile Entertainment and continues that with his new company, SGME Software. He edits The Smart Reader’s money, real estate, and business coverage.
