Avaya SIP phones skip the PBX

At first glance, it seems surprising that a company with a huge stake in the PBX and carrier worlds would enter the PBX-less phone market. But in reality, it’s not surprising: By adding a solution for the smallest of phone systems, Avaya can give its customers a complete upgrade path no matter how large they grow.

This is especially true now that Avaya’s one-X Quick Edition SIP phones will communicate with SIP-based PBXes and service providers. The phones, in essence, handle all the functions of a PBX. As a result, you can use the Quick Edition phones for a small office, and still have the system become part of your enterprise down the road.

Unfortunately, the update needed for the phones to work with an external PBX wasn’t ready at the time of my review, but a company spokesperson said that the capability would be available in July. Even without it, the one-X phone system can already communicate with an enterprise network, send messages to users via e-mail, build a database of phone numbers and voicemail, and be managed as a part of a group as well as individually.

The software that allows all of this was created by Nimcat Networks, the same company that made the software for the Aastra VentureIP phones I reviewed last year. (Avaya acquired Nimcat in September 2005.) Although you still don’t have the range of features you’d get with a full PBX-based phone system, you do get a useful feature set that includes an auto-attendant with a built-in phone directory, voice mail with e-mail notification, the capability to interface with the PSTN (using an optional gateway), and the capability to transfer calls, create conference calls, and hook up an external speaker for a paging system.

The phones I tested, the 4610SW IP phone and the 4621SW, will look familiar to anyone who has used Avaya phones before. The Nimcat software installed on these versatile platforms creates the one-X phone system’s peer-to-peer calling capability: The phones call the others directly, without going through a PBX.

Both phones operate well and have excellent sound quality. The only significant difference between them is that the 4621SW (which costs $100 more) has a larger screen and backlighting.

I installed the one-X Quick Edition phone system on an operational production network that was carrying a lot of traffic at times. The phones were never affected by this traffic, and there was no interruption or interference with calls during the test. The only problem I encountered was some noise on calls to the PSTN, but that problem was fixed by changing the loop length setting on the system administration menu.

Getting the one-X system up and running is extremely easy. If you’re using an Ethernet switch that handles PoE (Power over Ethernet), you need only to plug a phone into the switch, and the phone system comes up and runs. If you use a PSTN gateway, the process is similar, except you’ll need to connect a line to an analog phone port and to the network switch. 

After the first phone is connected to your switch, you may need to enter a few configuration settings manually (you’ll only need to do this once). The phone will power up and assign itself an extension number; when it’s done, you can plug in the rest of the phones. They will discover each other as long as they’re on the same network, and will pull their IP addresses and other networking settings from your network DHCP server.

Next, you can finish off configuration by assigning a user name to each extension, deciding which extension will be the operator, setting up a dial plan, and so on. None of these activities is required for you to make phone calls, but some are necessary to get full functionality. For example, the dial-by-name directory won’t work if there are no names.

All of this is done through the Web-based UI; although it’s rather plain, I found it intuitive and easy to use. Some management functions, such as setting speed-dial buttons, can be handled through the Web software on each phone: You simply browse to the IP address, give the password, and you’re in. This same page allows access to the system management, which is fairly limited beyond defining available features and choosing whether to use the call center capabilities of the phone system.

Caller ID information is displayed on the phone’s screen, and that data is retained by the phone so that users can review past incoming calls and use the stored numbers to dial back. Users can view missed calls and outgoing calls in the same manner.

The only real limit for companies who might want to use phones like these is that the size of the network is restricted to no more than 100 phones. Avaya targets its one-X Quick Edition to organizations with 20 or fewer users; beyond that point, the company says it’s more cost-effective to get a PBX.

Although the one-X Quick Edition does not offer the full range of features you’d get with a PBX, it’s a cost-effective solution, and by July it will integrate with a PBX for more flexibility. Smaller offices and small companies should give the one-X Quick Edition a hard look.