VoIP Phone Links.com

VoIP IP Phones- what considerations are important:

Much of the cost for a VoIP deployment for medium to large installations is the cost of the ip phones. Take a $250.00 phone, if you need 100 of them, then you’re pocketbook is going to be dinged by $25000.00.  So, cost is certainly one criterion which drives the decision making process of which phones you will buy.  Our phone choices run the spread from about $100.00 to almost $400.00, so one should match almost any type deployment and budget.
IP Phones are important, because they are what the user is going to interact with daily.  And if you’re on the phone all day, ease of use, sound quality and durability are going to be important aspects of any phone you buy.  There is a plethora of new IP SIP based phones on the market, many which are probably pretty good, but some which may inherently may be more problematic than you might think and not worth getting involved with in the first place.  That is why we have picked 3 well known established IP phone manufacturers, each with a set of models that bridge the gap between the bare bones model and the super duper high end model.  Our list is not without future consideration of adding other models and manufacturers, but should suffice as a good place to match the needs and price points of 90% of IP phone buyers.  Match your IP business phone system with the right IP phone.

Points to consider when choosing an IP phone.

1) Compatibility- Compatibility means that the phone you pick will be able to be used with your phone system. There are many phone systems (PBXs, IP-PBXs) that will only support certain specific phones. Furthermore hosted VoIP services may only support specific phones. Learn what they are and don’t stray.
2) Ethernet connectivity- If you don’t have a place to plug in the phone, you may end up spending more than the phone itself just on getting a cable there. Many businesses only have one Ethernet port at a location and that is probably being used by a computer. If you don’t have an Ethernet port available, select an IP phone with a switch port (You may decide that this feature is one that is just too important not to have anyway. And most of our models we highlight have a second built in switched Ethernet port.). This extra (second) Ethernet port can be used for your PC, allowing the wall port to be shared.
3) Features- Features are what makes the phone work the way that we want it to work. From the number of lines that a phone can handle, to the number of hard and soft key buttons, the phone’s features are going to be paramount in the long term success of the phone model. Users usually only use less than 10% of a phones feature set, but if you don’t have one needed feature, then the whole use of the phone may be a problem.
4) Power- IP phones need their own power which can be delivered by a power adapter which plugs into the AC wall outlet or is delivered by PoE (Power over Ethernet). If your LAN uses POE make sure you buy IP phones that can handle POE.
5) Protocol- Typically, a large percentage of IP phone purchases are SIP compliant phones. Additionally, there are various protocols, the most used one being G711 and G729, that your phone must be capable of handing.
6) LED size- The bigger the LED, the more costly the phone. If you need or want lots of soft-key functions and a nicely well lit panel on your phone, then the LED is important.
7) Who’s using the phone? A call center employee who is taking a volume of calls will dictate a different phone than the one that sits in the break room. If anyone is on the phone all day long, then a higher end phone should be the choice. Typically a higher end phone will stand up under constant day in, day out use more so than economy models.
rket where many hosted providers services are tied to Polycom endpoints.