Two IP phones worth picking up

Not surprisingly, phones are necessary components to testing IP PBXs. Not all phones work with all PBXs. Further, most derive their actual feature set from the PBX, which means that a phone really needs to be capable of operating properly with the PBX to deliver all the functionality a customer wants.

In my testing, I used two different types of phones. One, the Swissvoice IP10S, looks like any other office phone, except that it plugs into an Ethernet port instead of a phone port. On the front of the phone are the number buttons you expect, an LCD panel, and some soft buttons that can be assigned a variety of functions.

Getting the Swissvoice phone running required two basic steps: Tell the phone where to find the IP PBX on the network, and then plug it into the network and reboot the phone. When the phone powers up, it downloads its feature set and operating parameters from the PBX. In a couple of minutes, it’s acting just like any other phone.

Using the Swissvoice phone is no different than using an analog one. Voice quality is excellent, there’s no sign of the weird noises, and there’s little latency. In a concession to convenience, Swissvoice has placed a second Ethernet jack on the rear of the phone so you can pass your computer’s network connection through the phone, avoiding an additional drop. With an MSRP of $149 the IP10S is extremely competitive, even with most analog office phones.

The Clarisys i750 phone takes a completely different approach. This phone accomplishes VoIP (voice over IP) by connecting to a computer via a USB connection. You can run a variety of soft phone applications on the PC, depending on what you plan to do with the Clarisys phone. We paired it with soft phone software from XTEN when we needed to communicate with the IP PBXs in our test.

When you attach the Clarisys phone to a computer’s USB port, the computer’s OS treats the phone as a USB audio device and installs it accordingly. The Clarisys phone includes a CD with the necessary drivers. The face of the phone is covered by buttons for dialing and for controlling phone operation. As a result, you can operate the phone from the buttons on the instrument, or you can operate using the application running on the computer. It takes a little getting used to when you make your first call, but the Clarisys is intuitive and it links easily with the software. One inconvenience is the USB cable that exits the phone at an awkward angle. On the other hand, you don’t need a cradle for this phone since calls are controlled at the handset.

At $99.95 per phone, the Clarisys i750 is a bargain for VoIP. Even better, this phone can be used for other VoIP actions as well. For example, during the course of this test, we used the Clarisys phone in lieu of a headset during a test with WebEx, and it worked fine.