I vaguely recall that we offered a white label VoIP service called Nuvio or 
Nuvio Centrex, it must have been around 20 years ago (seems like more).  I 
think they used Polycom phones, or maybe that was the option we ordered.  When 
I hear Polycom, I think of the iconic 3-legged conference room phones, but 
these were regular IP desk phones.  My recollection is they had the best voice 
quality.  Also, people tend to rate phones by how heavy they are, if they slide 
around your desk because you pull on the handset cord, they feel cheap.

 

 

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> On Behalf Of Daniel White
Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2025 9:44 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Desk VoIP Phones

 

Others like IPiFony?  They used some code someone wrote to emulate SKINNY on 
Asterisk.  I don’t remember the details.

 

Try putting a Cisco 79xx phone into SIP mode.  If you don’t brick it, and have 
the patience to let it do its thing, it only supports half of the features.  
When Atheral first started, we had a client with hundreds of these… we told 
them to rip/replace with something else after trying to do it on 5 or 10 
phones.  Thankfully they listened and replaced them with Polycom VVX410s.

 

The 7940G, especially, is the GOAT of VoIP phones, though, in my opinion.  It 
has been almost 15 years since the end of sale date and you still see them 
everywhere.

 


 <https://atheral.com/> 


Daniel White
Co-Founder

phone: +1 (702) 470-2770
direct: +1 (702) 470-2766

1309 Coffeen Ave Ste 5838
Sheridan, Wyoming 82801

 <https://www.facebook.com/atheralrocks/>  
<https://www.youtube.com/@atheralrocks>  
<https://www.linkedin.com/company/atheral/> 

 

 

 

------ Original Message ------

>From "Josh Luthman" <j...@imaginenetworksllc.com 
><mailto:j...@imaginenetworksllc.com> >

To "AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group" <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> 
>

Date 4/1/2025 3:27:17 PM

Subject Re: [AFMUG] Desk VoIP Phones

 

The Cisco 79xx phones weren't Sipura/Linksys ever.  They were solid commercial 
phones.  Those phones running skinny would work with the CCM (Cisco Call 
Manager) - and others.

 

On Tue, Apr 1, 2025 at 4:44 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com 
<mailto:khoh...@kwom.com> > wrote:

Amazing what a name means to people.  In the case of Cisco, most of their 
products came from acquisitions.  The VoIP phones were originally from Sipura, 
which Cisco bought and put under the Linksys brand.  When they sold Linksys to 
Belkin, they kept the Sipura phones and put the Cisco badge on them.  I have an 
old, old SPA504G sitting on my desk, it does say CISCO IP PHONE though, so 
obviously it’s a serious phone.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sipura_Technology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_Catalyst

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Cisco

 

Cisco is named after San Francisco, the founders came from Stanford.  So maybe 
the customer needs to realize he wants “woke” phones.

 

If he is just showing a preference for stuff from US companies instead of all 
that cheap Chinese and Korean stuff, rest assured Grandstream is a US company.  
But from the opposite coast, I believe their HQ is in Boston.

 

From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com <mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com> > On Behalf 
Of Adam Moffett
Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2025 3:20 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com <mailto:af@af.afmug.com> >
Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Desk VoIP Phones

 

I wish I could answer this.  I deployed quite a few of the SPA5xx phones.  
Those are straightforward enough, so if there's one with Bluetooth and you find 
one new enough to have a Cisco badge maybe you can appease that person.  

 

I did have one proper Cisco that we played with, and at the time I recall it 
being rather more difficult than everything else.  We wanted the option just in 
case we had someone like you have who insists on Cisco, but over the years I 
did VoIP, exactly zero customers ever wanted a proper Cisco after seeing what 
it cost.

 

-Adam

 

 


  _____  


From: AF on behalf of Nate Burke
Sent: Tuesday, April 1, 2025 1:41 PM
To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group
Subject: [AFMUG] Desk VoIP Phones 

 

We've been using grandstream phones for quite a while, cheap and easy to
provision.  One of my new business customers is making a stink because
'he's never heard of Grandstream, these phones just don't work with my
bluetooth headset, I NEED a Cisco phone because that's a real phone' 
I'm thinking that it's mainly about ego, that his friends probably have
Cisco phones on their desks, and he doesn't, so he's making up issues.

I haven't used Cisco phones in many years, Linksys SPA504G's were my
last dabble into non-grandstream phones.

It looks like a Cisco phone with Bluetooth (A requirement) is about $550
for an 8851.  How do you provision those?  Is there any sort of cloud
provisioning?  Still done with TFTP?   Put some sort of call manager on
site?  I really like that I can provision the Grandstream phones while
they are behind the customers firewall without having to do any port
forwarding etc.  Cisco always used to like Licensing, is that still the
case to use them with normal SIP, or are they all SIP now.

Just wondering if it's worth trying to investigate Cisco phones for this
one customer, or if Cisco phones really want a Cisco Callmanager on the
backend.


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