Look & Feel

Cisco SPA525G phone with colour display

If you think the SPA525G looks familiar it’s because this phone and the other models in the range are the direct replacements for the popular SPA900 series, inherited by Cisco as part of the Linksys acquisition in 2003.

There is, however, a considerable uplift in the quality of plastics used throughout and the receiver itself appears to be lifted directly from Cisco’s higher priced 7900 range.

The general impression is of a very solid device that will survive the rigours of office life for many years to come.

Once you power the unit up you can admire the full colour screen which you only get on the 525G. The other models in the range make do with a monochrome display. You can set the background image from a number of pre-loaded files or import one of your own by using the integrated USB host port and effectively use is as a digital photo frame. This is quite a nice touch by Cisco allowing users to personalise the device in the same way they like to personalise their PC and mobile phone.

Features

All the SPA500 devices support both SIP and the proprietary SPCP used by Cisco in their UC500 IP PBX range. I was only able to test the 525G in SIP mode but am happy to report that all the basic telephony features are present and correct. There are also some more advanced options like Busy Lamp Field (BLF) and Shared Line Appearance which unfortunately I wasn’t able to get working on Timico’s Genband based platform but should be supported on Asterisk or Broadsoft based systems.

Like all the models in the range this phone supports Power over Ethernet (PoE) and features a 10/100 switch so you only need one network port at your desk. It also offers a hands-free speaker phone which provided excellent call quality and could easily serve as a conference phone in a small office. This is a big improvement on the old SPA900 series where the speaker phone was always rather a disappointment.

In fact this excellent audio quality is also delivered when using the receiver and generally points to a significant improvement in the quality of components used by Cisco. It also comes with the G.722 wide band audio codec so is ready to offer HD voice quality once support for this becomes more widespread.

It’s in the area of connectivity though that this model really stands out from the crowd featuring both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in as standard. As a rule I’m generally not one to recommend using Wi-Fi for voice but I can see how useful this would be if you have an area that is impractical or costly to cable.

I was able to detect our office wireless network straight away once I switched on the option via the phone menu and after entering the security key I was up and running. During my limited test of the Wi-Fi I had no problems but would still probably stick to a cable connection wherever possible which is likely to be better quality.

The other wireless technology on offer is Bluetooth which is used exclusively for connecting a headset. I wasn’t able to lay my hands on a headset for testing in time for this review so cannot comment on how well this is implemented. You can search for devices and pair them with the phone all through the on screen menu with no need to do any complex configuration. This is an excellent feature that isn’t found in many other VoIP phones and will really suit those who like to pace around or type whilst they talk.

The phone offers a small selection of XML applications offering weather and news with the potential for customers to develop their own apps providing information relevant to their end users (e.g. stocks and shares).

A nice final touch is MP3 support which allows you to import your own audio files using the USB host port and use them as ringtones for different contacts in your directory. Just like the customizable background image mentioned earlier, users really like this type of personalisation and it really starts to blur the line between a desk and mobile phone.

Configuration

Just like the SPA900 series before it these phones offer a number of configuration options via TFTP, HTTP and XML files. A number of SIP PBX’s have already implemented auto configuration for the whole SPA500 range. This includes the VoIPCortex sold by Timico. There is also a browser based user interface for manual configuration which I used for this evaluation. The web UI will be instantly familiar to anyone who has used the earlier range of phones although there does appear have been some work done to enhance the look and feel.

There are a number of different views available on the UI depending on whether you are an end user or a system administrator but click on the full advanced admin view and you are given a bewildering array of configuration options to tinker with, many of which were completely unfamiliar to me. The good news is that I didn’t really need to adjust any of these advanced settings and quickly had the phone registered on Timico’s hosted VoIP platform.

This phones has five line keys each of which can be used for a different SIP account or extension or they can be used to add a speed dial or monitor another extension using the BLF feature (if supported). Configuring some of these options manually does require you to enter a command string into the web UI and for that you need to understand the syntax that Cisco use to tell the phone what to do. This is one area where rivals like Snom have done a better job by providing a much more ‘point and click’ experience which hides all the technical stuff behind the scenes.

Ease of use

In general day-to-day use the phone is controlled via the usual mixture of dedicated hard keys and context sensitive soft keys. So far I have found it to be easy to use and intuitive with only an occasional need to consult the manual. Anyone familiar with the old SPA900 phones will be up to speed with the basics of this phone almost immediately.

One minor quibble relates to the directory where I am only given the option to manually add entries one at a time. If I was connecting it to something like the VoIPCortex PBX or a UC500 which can auto populate the phone from its own directory then this wouldn’t be an issue. Seeing as I am setting things up manually, however, I could do with the option to import a simple comma separated text file which I could extract from my Outlook contact folder.

I believe it may be possible to access a company LDAP directory from the phone but it isn’t apparent to me from reading the manual how this could be done (sounds like a job for one of our VoIP engineers).

Price

You can expect to pay around £250 for 525G which, in the highly competitive SIP phone market, places it in the same premium category as the Snom 821. This is essentially an executive handset which has some great extra features but it would be hard to justify it as the standard office phone. The only exception might be where the integrated wireless connectivity is essential for deploying the phone to a particular location. Adding wireless to a Snom 821 would put an additional £30-40 on the cost.

It’s worth noting that there is no power supply provided in the box; Cisco assumes that you are going to be using PoE and has chosen to keep the cost of the phone as low as possible. So if you’re planning to deploy any of the SPA500 phones and not use PoE you will need to add roughly £10 to the cost of each one to cover the PA100 power supply.

Final Verdict

Based on my experience of the 525G this new range of SPA phones is an improvement in every way from the previous handsets whilst retaining the same SIP stack and UI that has become so broadly supported across the VoIP industry.

This is a great example of how open standards has driven innovation in the business phone market. These devices are now starting to be comparable to the feature set enjoyed in mobile devices for many years.

After all if you were looking for a new smart phone today you would want a colour screen, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth plus the ability to upload your photos and mp3’s – all of which the 525G delivers in a desk phone form factor. Most importantly it also excels at the basics by being simple to use and delivering crystal clear audio.

If the price is too rich for you and you can live without extras like Bluetooth and colour screens, have a look at the SPA502G & 504G which offer the same high quality audio but will have a purchase price closer to £100-120.

Just as you’re getting used to all of these new features it would seem that an upgraded version of the phone, SPA525G2, is waiting in the wings for launch in a few months time. This will enhance the Bluetooth capability by allowing you to pair it with your mobile phone.

So you can now answer calls on your office phone using your mobile and use the excellent speaker phone to make mobile call hands free just as you would in the car. It will even allow you to synchronise the phone book in your mobile with the directory in your desk phone (which would overcome the slight grumble I had earlier in this review).

All I can say is if there is anyone from Cisco reading this then you know what you need to bring with you to our next meeting!

PS This review, written by Timico’s Andrew Massing, is the first of many. We get a lot of devices coming our way and will be sharing our experiences as we go along.

In June, according to twitter COO Dick Costolo the micro-blogging site had 190 million users, growing by 300 thousand a day. These users were generating 65million tweets a day – that’s enough for twitter to be building its own brand new datacentre to handle all the traffic.

That’s less than a tweet each a day which points to many people signing up for the novelty value without taking it further. In fact although twitter is termed as a “social networking” site, which it is, there is far more to be gained out of it if you have a specific business objective, mostly currently related to marketing and PR.

I’m not a marketing person, though trefor.net does turn out to be a marketing vehicle which was never really my objective in starting the blog. I joined twitter just to see what it was all about. That and because a friend of mine, Jeff Pulver (joined 2 February 2007), is an early stage investor in the site.

My overall stats however hide a more recent behavioural change and by June I was tweeting an average of over 15 times a day – see chart below.

It may be seen I began to get more active in February because I was involved in the debate surrounding the Digital Economy Bill (Act) and twitter was a way of communicating with like minded individuals and getting my message across.

Twitter has now become the third biggest referrer to trefor.net which has, since the beginning of the year, been linked to by 412 different sites.

I do see people styling themselves as Social Networking “gurus” which raises a smile. I find it difficult to understand how someone can be a guru at a technology that is still relatively young – I have been in the VoIP industry for 12 years now for example and VoIP is still considered to be just past the emerging market stage

You can’t blame people for seeing an opportunity to make a buck or two though. What the experience with trefor.net does tell me is that twitter is a serious tool that belies the frivolity of its name.

I believe that twitter has the potential to be far more powerful than other social networking sites such as Facebook (look me up – I’m trefordavies) simply because anyone can follow anyone else. I can, for example engage with Members of Parliament without their having to follow me, or even know me. I just follow them and sometimes reply to their tweets – assuming I have something worth saying.

I know most of my Facebook friends but have met hardly any of my 906 twitter followers. it doesn’t matter because there is very little personal data to expose on twitter and I can happily tweet away in semi anonymity without worrying about the bad guys out there.

Anonymity isn’t the name of the game though. It’s all about reach and twitter reaches the parts other social networking sites don’t go.

As a result of this, the volume of data carried by mobile operators has risen twentyfold over the last two years (thanks iPhone), and is forecast to grow almost as much again in the next two years. The figures for fixed operators are less dramatic but still very significant.

Cloud computing is finally coming of age. Gartner forecast that by 2012 20% of all businesses will own no IT assets. That will not only further increase bandwidth demand but will also make high levels of service reliability ever more essential.

Now is the time for network operators to ensure they have their investments in place to service this rising market. As the CTO of an acquisitive company I see a lot of small ISPs struggling to find the cash to make these investments which very much points towards further market consolidation. The game is getting bigger.

PS thanks to Sally Davis, CEO of BT Wholesale for some of the statistics above.

This is no surprise really as ISPs move their base from ADSLMax (“up to 8Meg”) over to ADSL2+ (“up to 24Meg”). It’s a shame that the average is not higher but that’s copper for you. The research showed that cable customers fare significantly better than ADSL.

The Ofcom data also reveals some very interesting stats about performance during peak times that don’t do some ISPs any favours. BT for example appears to be on average the worst performer when it comes to ADSL2+.

Interesting for me as a B2B ISP to note that the peak traffic times for consumer ISPs is 8-10pm compared with 1 – 5 pm for Timico. Our network is relatively empty after folk leave the office.

This is all good stuff, more of which can be found here.

The meat of today’s announcement really concerns the fact that consumers still aren’t getting the speeds they were expecting when they were sold the service.

In March of this year Ofcom published the results of some mystery shopping it commissioned to evaluate how ISPs were complying with the Voluntary Code of Practice on Broadband Speeds.

This code, implemented in December 2008, sets out how ISPs should inform consumers as to the speed they are likely to get out of a broadband connection before being sold that broadband connection. The Code was designed to prevent the all too prevalent situation of expectations regarding broadband speeds not being met.

The research shows that although ISPs now provide more information on broadband speeds that information is often not sufficient to allow consumers to have clear expectations about the service they sign-up to.

Of the total, 15% of the telephone mystery shoppers were not given an estimate of their access line speed (the maximum speed a consumer will be able to get), and 42% were only given one after prompting the sales agent near the end of the sales process.

In addition, consumers are not always being given a consistent and accurate estimate of their access line speed. In some cases, ISPs gave an access line speed double that of another ISP for the same broadband line and technology. The majority of access line speed estimates given to mystery shoppers did not match (within +/-1Mbit/s) the speeds given by the BT Wholesale line checker.

Moreover whilst under the Code consumers are notionally offered a lower speed package if their broadband line comes below their speed expectations, ISPs are increasingly reducing the number of packages they offer and the move to a lower speed offering is now often not possible.

Ofcom’s answer is to revise the Code and this revised Code of Practice is published today. There are a couple of comments worth making regarding this revised Code.

Firstly according to Ofcom it has been produced in conjunction with its existing signatories (mainly the large household names ISPs as the Code is not seen as relevant to business users). Okay.

Secondly this revised Code is more complicated than the original which makes me wonder about its usability and therefore effectiveness and indeed why the existing signatories agreed to it.

For example ISPs are now expected to offer their prospective customers a range (20th%ile to 80th%ile) of speeds that they might expect to see out their line. If the speed subsequently comes in below expectations ISPs have to be able to tell the customer how their worst 10% lines perform.

This adds to the complexity of the systems that ISPs will have to develop to support this Code. This is on top of the complexity created in the system by the Digital Economy Act!

Businesses need to spend their time making their lives simpler not more complex!!!

The reality is that for a given technology there is not going to be a massive difference between ISPs. Your choice is really copper or cable and copper has a much bigger footprint than cable.

The way forward I believe is for Ofcom to stop ISPs promoting the absolute max speeds they can (occasionally) provide and to concentrate on a simple “typical” range. Marketing departments won’t like this of course.

There will I’m sure be plenty of comparison sites publishing actual speeds obtained by customers of particular ISPs.  The public will be able to make its choice based on these comparisons and any other related parameter such as bundles of other services, quality of tech support, price etc.

I understand that some ISPs using O2/Be are also concerned that the Code suggests that customers unhappy with their line speed should be able to leave anytime within three months whilst the ISP’s own contract with Be has a minimum 3 month term. This would clearly leave an ISP out of pocket if customers were to exercise this right to leave. Be will have to change their Terms.

Ofcom still has the old version of the Code on its website – I’ll provide a link when the new one is available.

That’s because I was out of the office most of the week in an exhausting series of meetings and dinners culminating in a couple of days in Lymington on the south coast. I spent the entire time talking about MPLS, Unified Communications, “the cloud” and current regulatory hot topics in the ISP industry.

The picture below shows me coming up on deck with the team for fresh air before moving on to talk about data centres and  the future of mobile data / handheld devices.

In case anyone worries we did make sure that we were well fed and watered during the meetings. A supply of premier cru chablis and bordeaux accompanies the smoked salmon/crab/lobster/duck/caviar/aged aberdeen angus fillet steak (delete according to taste).

Trefor Davies (centre) surrounded by some hardworking Timico customers taking a break from talking networks

PS I have a backlog of jobs to get on with this week including some more serious blog posts. Watch this space.

I have to admire the marketing nouse of UES whose sponsored race was entitled the “Reduce your utility bills with UES Maiden Handicap Stakes”.  This message will have been carried in every newspaper in the UK on Tuesday -” The Watchtower” excepted if it is still going.

You may have noticed that the weather was a little damp. It’s what makes God’s Country so green and pleasant.

Rows of unhappy bookmakers brave the elements at Ffos Las racecourse

From left to right Andrew Diplock, Commercial Director, UES, Gerallt Jones, Partner Corporate, Hugh James, Christian Pegrum, EON, me, Kate Williams, Marketing Manager, UES

It has been a huge organisational effort for Wayne. His passport is now much thicker as it has visas for Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia and finally Mongolia.

Wish him luck – we want him back

The initiative is not based on a standard panic button solution but on a CEOP Facebook App and a CEOP Facebook page. This means that only users who install the app will have direct access to CEOP.

I have met CEOP CEO Jim Gamble during the course of meetings between CEOP and the ISPA and understand the hugely difficult nature of their job. CEOP volunteer staff have to spend much of their time looking at horrendous photographic evidence of child abuse. It isn’t something that a person can do for too long due to the mental stresses involved.

The success of the whole Facebook initiative depends on whether or not the CEOP app becomes viral. To facilitate the distribution of the app, Facebook has agreed to support the initiative via an advertising campaign.

CEOP deserves your support.

It covers a bit of the history of VoIP technology, where it has evolved to today and some current issues such as number porting and naked DSL.

vol4_p2_26-32

For more information on the ITP you can visit their website at www.theitp.org/journal