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jtrimmer@gvcdirectinc.com wrote:
I have a quick question about communigates pbx features. I’m looking at sip phones trying to decide what we should get here at my work and I’m still pretty new to sip terminology and features so maybe some of you could help me out.
Like most everything else seemingly nowadays, it's a constant learning experience anymore.
We have 4 analog lines that will be coming into a Mediatrix 1204 4 Port FXO Gateway (Just Ordered) which will then be linked into communigate where communigate will handle call routing for extensions and lines (Correct Thinking?). Now my question is this that I keep seeing on all the phones where they might have 6-12 soft keys that can be programmed but they all say 2,4,6 lines support. Since I have 4 lines would I in turn need a 4 line phone or could a single line phone with softkeys be used aswell just programmed to pickup a certain line through communigate?
I have one Digium Wildcard TDM800P with one quad FXO and one quad FXS module along with a Wildcard TE121 (single-span [TEJ]1 card). I am however using Asterisk instead of CommuniGate, so I can't speak directly to the integration with CommuniGate itself. Just wanted you to have some background for the next part.
Next question is quality on these sip phones. Anyone had experience with some of mid to higher end business grade phones, and know some that compare with traditional business phones? I’m just afraid of ording a $200 dollar phone and sounding like I’m in a tunnel every time I use it.
To be honest, I'm not sure you even need to spend this much. I'm using around twenty Polycom SoundPoint IP 320's and one SoundStation 6000. The 320's can be found on-line for less than one hundred dollars (USD) and support up to eight simultaneous calls or four conference calls, and have two physical line buttons. The physical line buttons don't really mean a whole lot with regard to number of calls in the SIP world as much as the number of unique registrations (or identities) one can appear to be from a single phone.
Having said that, the Polycom phones also have a fantastic reputation for sound quality, and I can certainly agree with that. They are also extremely flexible as you can configure far too many different aspects of the phones via their XML configuration files which can be loaded at startup from the network.
I don't mean to sound like a Polycom representative here. I'm sure pretty much any SIP phone will work for you across four analog phone lines. I just don't think you necessarily need to spend so much if you're just looking for good, solid phones without too many of the fancy frills on the mid-range phones. I mean, these things even have an embedded XHTML mini-browser on them! The only thing missing possibly might be a backlight for the LCD screens, which would be a nice additional feature if your coworkers tend to work in cave-like conditions like mine.
Anyway, I can't help too much with the CommuniGate integration obviously. I've wondered about how to maybe integrate Asterisk and CommuniGate myself in the past, but haven't really spent any time on it myself. But if you have any SIP related phone questions, feel free to drop me a line.
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