[Tfug] VoIP phones

[Bexley Hall]

-- On Tue, 10/28/08, George Cohn <gwcohn at simplybits.net> wrote:

> 
> For years I supported a large Nortel phone network in Tucson.  The big 
> players try for the first approach to lock you into buying their 
> hardware to go with their switches.

Yes.  But, to be fair, a PBX installation can benefit from centralizing
some resources instead of distributing them into the station sets.
E.g., speed dial settings can be stored "for free" in a central box
whereas storing them *in* the individual station sets means each
of those needs some (nonvolatile?) memory for that purpose.

Note that this also has an affect on how the system is *used*, as well! 
E.g., it can be considered a *feature* that would allow a user to
move his settings to his new "office" just by hand-carrying the phone
to his new office (instead of having the "attendant"/etc. move those
settings on his behalf).  OTOH, if the phone dies, those settings
are lost.

> Nortel actually made two different 
> digital phone systems called Meridian and Norstar.  Although the phones 
> looks similar, they were not interchangeable between platforms.  Then 
> they went to VOIP but using their proprietary protocol called Unistim
> to lock out users from using other brands of phones.

I think that is also true of the Cisco sets.

But, again, you can argue that these all "should" rely on a central
box for economies, ease of administation, etc.  Plus, this seems to
be more in line what people expect in those markets.

> SIP phones don't actually need any other hardware other
> than a network 
> connection to talk to each other.  You can demonstrate this
> by plugging 
> three cheap Grandstream phones into a network.  Once you
> know their IP addresses, you can dial each other just by
> "dialing" the IP address.
>
> However, this in non-intuitive for the casual user and
> that's where the 
> box in the middle comes into play.  Not only does if function as a sort 
> of DNS translating easy to remember numbers into IP connections, it 
> provides the other features like menus, voice mail, conferencing, all 
> the typical features one expects from a phone.

Exactly.  But, there is nothing preventing you from moving this
functionality into the phone!

> To build a smart phone that provides all of these features again locks 
> the user into your brand.  It's doable but with vendors like Nortel and 
> Cisco starting to support SIP, it may hurt your market acceptance.

I'm not sure I understand how that locks someone into using "your
brand".  They can reely use a Cisco phone alongside -- *if* they
are willing to purchase and install the requisite hardware and
software for the Cisco phone.

This is an open source/hardware project so I don't think there is
any "market acceptance" issue in the traditional sense.

Though thinking about the likely "market" proves just as confusing...
are these one off "sales"?  Or, "corporate" purchases (deployments)?
:-/

> Just my .02 worth having worked with a lot of different
> brands of phone systems.