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IP Phones: We've Come Along Way!
IP phones, not something that tends to consume the average person's daily thoughts. At least, not like cell phones seem to, as the struggle to have the "coolest phone on the block" is treated as a competitive sport amongst certain circles of friends. Which is rather amusing when you think about the fact there was a time when you didn't have to worry about choosing a "cool" phone, because they only came in one color - black - from one source - Ma Bell, aka the old AT&T (and no, this wasn't in communist Russia!). Yet, whether we realize it or not, our natural indifference to IP phones is evolving. The movement towards unified communications (UC) and fixed mobile convergence (FMC) has been in play for years, and will soon bring the world of IP telephony even more into the mainstream. IP Telephony Brings it All Together What the heck do UC and FMC mean (telecom acronym alert!) anyway, you ask? The techno-geek answer is far too boring and beyond the scope of this particular discussion, so let's keep it simple with this: there will soon be a day when a worker's cell phone is their office phone and their softphone and their home VoIP phone and their PDA and their chat/IM client...all because of the inherent mobility of IP telephony. Imagine that! One IP phone device that covers it all. After all, have you ever considered how much time you actually spend each day transitioning from one communications device to another? Likely not, since it has become thoughtless second nature to search out our PC for IM, our PDA for email, our cell phone for personal chats, our home VoIP phone for talking to mom, and our office phone for business calls. Back to Business VoIP Phones Know that the benefits of UC and FMC are covered elsewhere on our site, so let's get back on track to the world of business IP phones. Most people would have a difficult time differentiating between a fifteen year old black analog/digital desk phone (think Nortel Meridien system) and a modern business IP desk phone - after all, they both tend to be black or dark grey with an LCD screen. But, watch their eyes light up when they see a new $1,000+ Cisco 7971 IP phone with color LCD screen, embedded XML web browser, and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity (it's no mistake that these Cisco phones are in plain site in every episode of the hit TV series "24"!) Don't worry though, if none of that jargon makes sense, we cover that level of detail in deeper pages (that is, if you're interested!). The point is thanks, in part, to IP telephony some office workers now tend to get as excited in selecting a new business IP phone as they did in anticipation of Apple's iPhone release. If you're a small business operator in the process of shopping for a new
office PBX system
, and therefore, are knee-deep whitepapers, IP phone tech sheets, VoIP sales pitches, and questions about "Polycom or Aastra or Cisco phones?", then we invite you to browse our pages that we hope will help take away some of the guesswork. Enjoy!
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