[Asterisk-Users] IP Phone that OFFICIALLY support Asterisk

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

Wed, 20 Oct 2004 15:47:59 -0500, Henry Devito <hdevito at qwest.net> wrote:

> Where can I buy the act phones?

Since we are helping them with some stuff we buy them directly,
although we wouldn't normally qualify to buy directly as our order
quantities are low. I don't know who their resellers are in the US or
Europe, but if you want to contact me off-list, I am happy to make
sure you will be looked after.

> I went to their website and they look like
> decent phones.

They are decent phones and as I said, whenever there has been a
glitch, we contact ACT and they will work on a fix. In this respect,
their commitment to work out customer issues is in my view far more
important than anything else.

By contrast, take Hitachi Cable and their cordless WiFi SIP phone
WIP-5000. We've visited them, tested two units there with Asterisk on
my Powerbook and it worked after they upgraded the firmware. We then
got two samples and agreed to do further testing for Asterisk
compatibility. The samples had different firmware and they don't work
with anything -- the only thing that works is ping. We tried to get
Hitachi to work this out because otherwise those WIP-5000 phones seem
really decent hardware. Unfortunately, Hitachi never respond, never
return calls, never even provided an opportunity to try a different
firmware.

So, what's the benefit of some cool looking and seriously engineered
piece of hardware if the vendor simply doesn't seem to care to make
the firmware work? It's a toy you can show customers and say "Look,
this is what the future of VoIP is going to be like". Nice loking
paperweights. What a pity.

rgds
benjk
-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

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