[Lab] Familiar with virtual office telephony options?

[Justin Hornosty]

mlecha at artengine.ca writes:

> I've picked up some SNOM 715 phones. They're new with the main features
> over others being a USB interface so you can choose your own bluetooth
> headset and Gigabit ethernet, backlit display, and manages 4 identities.
> http://www.snom.com/en/products/snom-advanced-line/snom-715/

Gigabit ethernet is only useful in the case where
you're using the phone as a single port switch with your computer (a big
feature for many - and in a small organization a 24/48port POE switch is
attractive) 10/100 is absolutely fine for voice(and probably even video)
calls.

I'm curious about their USB - can the phone pair with your cellphone (so
that when you're cell rings it gets directed to the desk phone)? Or is
this strictly for bluetooth headsets? (there might be some cool
speakerphone / conference phone applications you could spin up -
polycom soundpoint is damn expensive!)

Major feature of asterisk I wished worked is 'chan_mobile' where you can
set you're cellphone up as a sip trunk over bluetooth. While I got this
successfully working the quality rendered it useless sadly. (though
there *MAY* be some issues with the fact asterisk was running on a
raspberry pi and it just isn't up to the task - something I find a
little hard to believe. I haven't got around to trying this on a
standard x86) Other option is one of the obi ATA's which have usb ports
for bluetooth adapters, advertising trunking mobile phones over
sip. That solution comes to ~$150 for a pretty minor feature (and
probably lacks some of the more interesting features like sms -> asterisk)

-jjrh