[asterisk-biz] New Cisco SPA-525G Desktop IP Phone Coming Soon w/ BlueTooth, WiFi and More

[John Todd]

On Dec 25, 2008, at 6:54 AM, Cory Andrews wrote:

> http://blog.voipsupply.com/new-products/first-look-cisco-spa-525g-desktop-ip-phone-with-wifi-bluetooth-and-more
>
>
> Cory J. Andrews
> Director New Market Initiatives


I posted a comment on the blog, but it does occur to me that this is a  
better forum for a back-and-forth discussion than perhaps the Comments  
section on that page.  The phone looks very nice, and I think that  
this kind of feature set will sell well - good to see some innovation  
from Cisco phones!  The Bluetooth capability is really nice.  It would  
be amazingly far-sighted of them to have Bluetooth association create  
SIP NOTIFY events - would that be the enabler for all sorts of  
interesting features or what?  When you (or at least your Bluetooth  
headset) sit down at your desk, the phone could send a NOTIFY and  
calls start flowing to your desk.  (or "REGISTER" - not sure which  
would be more appropriate.)  When you move away, the SIP server is  
NOTIFYed that you are away, and routes calls to your cell phone.   
(Yes, I know, I'll stop my crazy talk about "features" and  
"innovation" - it just gives developers headaches.)  This is of course  
all stuff that Asterisk can or could do easily as the core, and allow  
those components to be accessed quickly by the huge development  
community.  But of course that only means hardware revenue for Cisco,  
and no Call Manager revenue.  The Open Source barbarians might storm  
the gates in San Jose with swords made out of Linksys phones.  But I  
don't particularly care about the internal contentions in CSCOs  
product group - I'm only interested in what features are available on  
equipment I (we) can use.

I'll throw a few more bones of contention out to see if you or someone  
else on the list know better than I some of the answers:


No G.722 of any sort?  Surprising.

Also: I’ve been remiss in keeping up with these for a while. Can XML  
URLs be pushed into the phone on an INVITE yet or is that still a  
“complex feature” only available on the proprietary protocols? In  
other words: do a screen pop on the phone when a call comes in with  
some arbitrary web-based data displayed?

I've tried beating that idea into the heads of the Sipura/Linksys/ 
Cisco people for literally 7 years now, and there has been a  
resounding silence.  Doesn't this seem like an obvious feature?  When  
a call comes in, have DATA on that screen instead of just caller ID.   
I've heard various hemming and hawing about "Oh, well, XML would be  
too slow" or "That would require a new RFC!" and nonsense of that  
ilk.  Bollocks!  They do it on the SCCP phones, and SIP accepts easy  
header extensions with no new RFC.  This has been bald-faced  
intentional feature absence so that the SIP phones didn't steal the  
show from the bulky and proprietary Cisco back-end products.  If those  
SIP phones could do it, Asterisk would eat MORE of Call Manager's  
lunch than it already has.  Maybe I'm frustrated about something that  
has been possible for a long time on those phones - it's been a few  
years since I really delved into the manuals on the SPA software  
loads.  Do you know if it is possible yet to do screen pops on the SIP  
images of these phones via an XML URL?

PS: MP3's from the speaker on the phone?  Err... why?  Cool feature  
and everything, but mono audio from a speakerphone is not exactly  
"listening pleasure" material.


JT

---
John Todd                       email:jtodd at digium.com
Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director
445 Jan Davis Drive NW -  Huntsville AL 35806  -   USA
direct: +1-256-428-6083         http://www.digium.com/