Introduction

The Aastra 6757i IP telephone is a full fledged business phone designed for Easy Office Phone’s hosted pbx services.  Its really geared towards executives who want a great business phone for their office.  One of the best features of this phone is its extra large back lit lcd display that lets you quickly set speed dial keys or show a list of employees in the office.  Lets have a look at the different features this phone offers and how we ranked them.

Build Quality

This ip telephone is very well built and sports soft touch keys that look very professional.  I have encountered some ip telephones that look very ‘cheap’, but this isn’t one of them.  However I will mention that the Cisco SPA504G is heavier and does seem to be a touch more ‘solid’ that this phone.

Speakerphone and Handset Quality

The Aastra 6757i has a full duplex speakerphone which sounds excellent, with no echo or other problems that plague lower end model ip telephones.  We have run a number of conference calls with this unit and the speakerphone performed great.  From our tests the handset quality was very good especially when using the high definition voice features that are available for this unit.  This phone supports the G722 codec which is a wideband high definition codec designed to give the customer a better quality sound than you can experience with land lines (standard POTS service).

Features

Given that this is the executive class phone from Aastra Telecom it stands to reason that it comes loaded with all kinds of wonderful toys and goodies. The phone has a dual Ethernet switch built in which makes it easy to connect your computer and phone using the same network cable. The soft keys make it very easy to see a list of all the staff members in your office and quickly determine if they are on the phone (the light turns ‘red’ beside their name). You can also program speed dial keys or re-arrange the sequence of buttons. This phone has 4 lines appearances along the bottom right which turn red when engaged. Conference calling, do not disturb, paging, intercom and call transfer all worked as expected. Overall this is a great phone and perfect for executives.

This is the second article in our series comparing traditional PBX technology to Hosted VoIP PBX technology.

Hosted VoIP PBX: Expansion and Upgrades – No Limits

One of the biggest problems with traditional PBX systems is that each system has a set number of lines and extensions that they are capable of handling. An example of the spec used is 4 x 8 or 4 x 12 (and on from there), meaning 4 telephone lines in and 8 local phone extensions can share those 4 lines. Some models can be expanded to include an extra limited number of lines and extensions with slot cards, but there always was a finite limit and this expansion capability was only possible on higher end systems.

Another common problem PBX owners face was not being able to find parts for their system. It is common for PBX owners to be stuck with a system that it is difficult to find replacement parts for. This could happen within five years of purchasing a system. When manufacturers stop supporting older systems, owners are left to search the gray market for “refurbished” parts, used parts or new non-oem parts. Needless to say, this can be risky; it is time consuming and ultimately your efforts may fail.

Can you imagine buying a PBX system without having the basic functions of caller ID, extension voice mail or an auto attendant? Such was the case with older systems. These modules weren’t included with the basic package, they were only available as upgrades. If you had the system for five years and finally decided it was time to expand the capabilities of your system to include an auto attendant and voice mail you might very well have be out of luck, finding original parts that weren’t already fried or at end-of-life was and still is difficult.

Lastly, with the traditional PBX there wasn’t a way to expand the system to incorporate multiple locations. If you opened another office across town, it would need an entirely separate PBX system with different phone numbers and equipment and more then likely a different phone bill too.

Hosted VoIP PBX system equipment is expandable and inter-operable.

One of the most common things that happens to businesses is expansion. This can mean hiring extra employees or taking on extra facilities, in either case extra phones are always needed. Hosted PBX systems are perfect for this. They can go or grow with you and with Easy Office Phone there isn’t a limit to the number of extensions you can have or where they can be located. All you need to do is allocate the right amount of bandwidth and have enough network connections for your phones.

This expansion function of hosted VoIP PBX systems is a real advantage. In the past PBX owners often found out that what they thought would be a simple, low-cost upgrade would turn into significant costs or maybe even a whole new system. Once you move away from an 8 or 10 seat system up to a 25 – 50 seat system your system cost will climb fast, sometimes to as much as $15,000 – $20,000 or more. With a hosted PBX, system expansion for each new extension will only cost you $250 on average, this can be as low as $100. With VoIP PBX systems you can add one extension at a time, it isn’t necessary to do a complete system upgrade.

Hosted VoIP PBX system phones are inter-operable between manufacturers and carriers. The telephones that you use on a hosted VoIP PBX system are SIP compliant phones. This means that you can call one manufacturers SIP phone from another manufacturers SIP phone. For example, you can call an Aastra SIP phone from a Polycom SIP phone or a Linksys SIP phone. Furthermore, you can connect these different SIP phone brands to the same Hosted PBX system. Easy Office Phone customers can use any of these brands within their offices. This is quite a departure from the past when your PBX equipment would be totally proprietary and the phones from one system couldn’t be used on any other system..

For anyone considering a new telecommunication system for their business, expansion and inter-ops are important capabilities you should look for. This makes a VoIP Hosted PBX system an obvious choice for any organization seeking a new telecommunication system.

Introduction

Recently the older SPA series phone were discontinued. The Cisco SPA504G is one of the newer model phones that replaced the Linksys SPA (Cisco bought the Linksys brand). At around $160 this phone is very reasonably priced for a hosted pbx phone.  It is meant to replace the older SPA942 phone from Linksys and will work with Easy Office Phone’s Hosted PBX.

Handset and Speakerphone Quality

The handset feels better built overall compared to the older series phones, it feels heavier in my hand and just more solid.  This unit comes with a full duplex speakerphone and during our tests the quality of the speakerphone was very good overall.  At this price level the speakerphone performed very well.

Build Quality

In terms of quality this phone is close to the traditional cisco IP telephone, it is heavier and more durable than the older generation.  In fact the buttons look and feel like a high end IP business telephone.

High Definition Voice

This phone also ships with the G722 codec which affords the user high definition audio.  The high definition audio sounds superb and the speakerphone supports this feature as well.  The sound quality is apparent when calling other employees but if you are calling someone on an old land line the audio quality will still be the standard quality of landlines rather than high definition audio.

Features

The back lit lcd display looks very good although it is a little smaller than some of the executive phones from Aastra Telecom.  The lcd display is where you see all the call progress buttons like ‘Transfer’, ‘Redial’, ‘Conference’ etc.  This phone supports all the standard hosted pbx functions like multiple lines (it has 4 of them), call transfer, music on hold, conference calling etc.  This phone has integrated dual Ethernet ports which makes it easy to plug in a computer and the phone at the same desk without needing additional cables run to the router.  The dedicated line keys on the phone are also back lit and display green when the line is idle and red when the line is in use.  Unfortunately this phone (unlike the Aastra Telecom phones) does not have any employee presence options but you can still use Easy Office Phone’s Presence Manager to determine when an employee is on the phone or not.