(Part 3) Best telephones according to redditors

"I've looked for years for a phone that brilliantly marries the practicality of a life-saving communication device with the incomparable form of the disembodied lower torso and limbs of a 1980's mall rat."

Telephones can have decent microphones. The telephone sound is the removal of frequencies above say 4 kHz and below say 800 Hz.

You can likely wire an RJ9/RJ22 jack to a 1/4" TS plug or use something like this

https://www.amazon.com/Adapter-cable-3-5mm-Headset-Phones/dp/B015G2DPEO/

and convert the 1/8" jack to a 1/4" TS plug.

!

Maybe

Here is a phone that just dials 911. No service needed as long as you have the phone jack.

https://www.amazon.com/Emergency-Red-Wall-Telephone-Preprogrammed/dp/B01N459EXY

> They just don't seem to scale well to 300+ devices (pricing wise).

They scale horribly. For 300 users you should be looking at an on-premises PBX and using a voip trunk service.

I'm at 100 phones, so 1/3rd your load, and just went with a FOSS solution: freepbx on a commodity server, which is just a fancy web wrapper around asterisk. I went with Yealink phones because they're cheap and look nice enough to impress management. My project cost was very low for his kind of thing. I understand the DIY approach isn't for everyone but VOIP phones are simple to do if you have sysadmin experience.

>and the handsets we have are about 10 years old - but they all still work. I think we've had maybe 2-3 fail in that time.

10 years is really the EOL for phones. Its a bad practice to keep them longer. Soon your mortality rate with skyrocket and you'll have a hard time finding replacements. Or they will have a serious security vulnerability and the vendor won't provide a patch. Also from a politics perspective you don't want to be the guy associated with decade(s) old phones because, "Alan said they're good enough." Part of your job is to dazzle management a little now and again because that's how management works. They talk up ROI but ultimately go with their guts. A phone with a color screen is an executive toy they crave.

Handsets are relatively cheap nowadays. A basic voip phone is about $40:

https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GXP1620-Medium-Business-Device/dp/B00VUU8EZM/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_229_lp_t_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TB9CWR78Z55WBJJN5GE4

A more featured phone $100:

https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GS-GXP2170-VoIP-Phone-Device/dp/B019X06IFS/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_229_bs_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=QDJ86RDFCDNEBR3ZQARA

Or $70 for a middle ground phone:

https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-Enterprise-Telephone-GXP2130-Included/dp/B00JBVVZV2/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_229_bs_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=TB9CWR78Z55WBJJN5GE4

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BUIWA08/ref=psdc_1086954_t3_B019X06IFS

I'm too lazy to find the Yealink equivalents, but they tend to be higher quality than Grandstream at nearly the same price.


Note, resellers like voipsupply will quote you volume prices and beat this pricing.

So anywhere between $15,000 to $25,000 for you to replace all 300 phones.

>Is there some other big name I should be considering?

Probably Shoretel if you dont want to try something like Freepbx or 3CX (which I only hear good things about). You can also buy support for these products if you choose to go this route.

Just touching on telephones, we’ve been using https://www.callcentric.com/ for years for residential phone and they have some practically free plans. They used to even have free numbers if you’re not fussy about area code but I think they discontinued that.

To get dial tone I’d just KISS and use something like this.

Edit: forgot this: Grandstream GS-HT802 2 Port Analog Telephone Adapter VoIP Phone & Device, Black https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JH7MYKA/

You could skip the asterisk solution, and use the grandstream PBX. The GUI is significantly cleaner (also with less features) but should be able to have voicemail, ring groups, call queues or "agents", custom dial rules, etc. It would save you a lot of money over a traditional phone system.

The PBX would run around 300-500$ depending on where and what you get, but amazon has one for 360$ here https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-UCM6204-Innovative-PBX-Ports/dp/B01LZKCBD7/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1524428192&sr=1-1&keywords=grandstream+pbx

this pbx should be easy to setup (youtube videos are great on the subject) and the one price includes all features, and software updates are free as long as the device is still "supported".

As for your phone endpoints, grandstreams are cheap and work great. Their best phone IMO is around 100$ on amazon, and they have cheaper options as low as 50$ (on amazon)

grandstream GXP 2170 is pretty nice
https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GS-GXP2170-VoIP-Phone-Device/dp/B019X06IFS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1524428063&sr=8-1&keywords=gxp2170

Or the 1625 (for the cheaper option) for 40$ https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GXP1625-Medium-Business-Device/dp/B00VNMWRFK/ref=pd_sim_229_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00VNMWRFK&pd_rd_r=EJ27CJTWYAPA4D2Z7HNE&pd_rd_w=YQDrV&pd_rd_wg=3Cr2u&psc=1&refRID=EJ27CJTWYAPA4D2Z7HNE

The above phones will work with any sip based phone solution

If you're looking for the "easy drop in and just works" solution, you could try ring central, or 8x8. But i think theyre crazy expensive for what they actually do.

voip.ms

https://www.amazon.com/Grandstream-GS-HT812-Port-Profiles-Router/dp/B01M2ZJQAF

That combo works fine for me. I picked it out the box because a local cable company uses the same so I figured it had to be half decent. As for the service, get whatever you want but I just picked something cheap that had E911.

PANASONIC Expandable Cordless Phone System with Link2Cell Bluetooth, Voice Assistant, Answering Machine and Call Blocking - 2 Cordless Handsets - KX-TGD562G (Rose Gold/White) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0721Q6JB9/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_k0UXCb65Z1SCR

I got my dad one of these pendant's.

Basically, you can program up to 4 phone numbers for it to call once the button on the pendant is pressed. You can also program it to call "911" (which you can turn off). When it calls the first number, it asks the person answering to press "7" to continue. This is to make sure it hasn't reached an answering machine. If no one answers or doesn't press "7", then it will call the next number.

Once they press the pendent button and the call is made, they can speak to and hear the other party directly from the pendant.

If you'd rather get an e-mail/text rather than a call, you can get a cheap VOIP (Voice over IP) telephone number and program the pendant to call the VOIP number. Then you program the VOIP to send a text or e-mail upon receiving any calls to that number. Well, you don't "program" anything, you just check a few boxes in the VOIP set-up menu system offered by your VOIP provider.

A VOIP phone number can be as cheap as $1.00/month. Take a look at Callcentric or VOIP.ms.

Good luck!

Remember that bluetooth has a pretty short range so your base would need to be near where the phone is charging. Panasonic phone with obi would probably be cheapest.

How's this Amazon IoT button, for waiter page amongst other things. Less clutter on the table. Might come down a bit in price point but probably competitive with your offering. If the waiter is distracted anyway, I don't like a system where there are always lights lit -- within days wait staff will be signal blind and ignore them just as if they weren't there.

Do you pay attention to banner ads? It's visual pollution.

Larger point, there are search engines. And I find three, five, seventy, or fifteen hundred already on the market -- possibly proven -- alternatives. Every time anyone posts an idea. Why?

Nobody has to be discouraged by this in any way. You can take a look at the dozens of alternatives, pick three you feel are best, test fairly cheaply, and sell any or all. What you will have gained is simple competitive awareness necessary to compete as a viable business idea. One minute on a search engine.

Something is screwy when first news of all the variety of different ideas has to come from me. I should think one might like to do a minute's homework so it at least looks like they thought things through.

So what the fuck is it with the zero research shower thoughts that look like everybody takes incredibly short showers? Every fricking time. Nobody is embarrassed because they could not spend an instant looking up this awesome idea they had -- or if they did could not search for any likely alternatives. Is it malignant inventor's syndrome or something even worse?

You're going to find running a business more challenging than running a simple search.

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SINGCALL Wireless Calling System of course, for one dollar you can do what one Mexican restaurant does, give you a red flag you can raise.

wireless waiter calling system Competitive threat? Maybe you've drawn a red line around everything that is not precisely your idea. Do you think customers will?

WAITER CALL BUTTON SYSTEM FOR RESTAURANTS: No searchy. No findy.

Tabletop signaling device for restaurants " The signaling device includes a plurality of light sources and switches for illuminating vertically spaced panels disposed on the front of the signaling device, each panel having predetermined and distinct indicia disposed thereon for signaling a specific message. " Damn that sounds familiar -- maybe you should work on a cure for search blindness.

But wait, many restaurants have tabletop kiosks. Do you honestly mean to tell me, of hundreds on the market, ZERO signal the waiter? I wonder what I would have found had I spent TWO minutes looking.

Whoof, those first 8-10 hours are frustrating as hell. I had a couple of 7962's from a friend and successfully got ONE of them working but hated having to basically guess what the config files would look like.

That being said, I would absolutely recommend Yealink. If you don't need/want a color screen, I'd look at the Yealink T42S. If you DO want a color screen, I'd seriously look at the Yealink T46G. I've got a T46G and have beat the HELL out of it over the past ~3 years and absolutely love it.

Kids version of intercom might work with modifications?

Additionally you could get used PBX and go with it.

Per Microsoft's website, Skype needs the following ports to be open for Skype to work:

TCP: 443 // UDP: 3478-3481 // UDP and TCP: 49152-65535

Make sure those are open on your VLAN and that your security software isn't restricting access to them.

If opening those ports isn't feasible, you may want to invest in some VoIP phones that support Skype, and make sure your VoIP phones are on a completely separate VLAN than the security software.

One such phone I know of: https://www.amazon.com/Polycom-VVX-Phone-Skype-Business/dp/B01LWN4S32/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525895145&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=skype+phone&psc=1

We use a company called Skyswitch.

They're really good as far as call quality. They've also had no outages in the last 4-5 years we've used them (at least in our area).

We primarily use Cisco SPA 112 as the ATA for residential customers and Polycom VVX 410/411 for businesses.

I have no experience with Google voice though.

So something like this , or am I misunderstanding?

BW 2.4'' Wireless Quadband GSM Classic Desk Telephone Telephone handset for Business or Family (Especially for Older Folk) - Black https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B01HTEEE9W/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_X8NkDbETFGBYD

Maybe this one?

For my landline that I keep around, I use CallCentric with a Siemens Gigaset phone and I'd STRONGLY recommend it. In college I used this setup for a landline and it worked fantastic.

https://www.amazon.com/Gigaset-GIGASET-C530IP-Cordless-Expandable-Landline/dp/B014A781GS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1465944605&sr=8-4&keywords=Siemens+Gigaset

Not the exact phone I have though.

I haven't had issues with Callcentric, but I will note that I have been trialing voip.ms. Unfortunately they don't auto-bill like CallCentric so it's annoying to fill my account up every few months, but they've been stable, too.

If users are placing calls to different area codes or numbers, you could conceivably do this automatically at the gateway, but you're chasing diminishing returns to avoid buying a $55 phone

Emulating the limitations of a key system is usually not the way to increase productivity. Chasing this solution will bite you in the future.