Francois - I think you are going to see a lot of new product offerings in 2005 from a variety of vendors. I have not had the opportunity to play with the GXP-2000 too much yet, availability is still an issue. I am certain Grandstream is doing everything than can in terms of production, we have a mountain of these pre-sold, we begain marketing the unit for Grandstream months ago, we did not anticipate the supply problems, nor did Grandstream I assume. We are getting a small allotment of them weekly and are fulfilling backorders in chronological order.
For what it is, the GXP-2000 is a good value. I think they had an obvious target in mind in terms of MSRP and did their best to offer the best feature set they could at that price point.
The Sipura 841 I would consider mainly for residential or small/home office use. Again, we're dealing with a sub $100 unit here. For what it is, the SPA-841 is also an excellent value considering the other players on the field. There have been a few issues with the unit that have been thoroughly documented on this listserv. Sipura is proactively addressing these issues as well. This is far and away the most popular, sub $100 IP phone that we sell.
Some other units that are value priced that you may want to evaluate include.
ArtDio IPF-2000 - http://www.voipsupply.com/product_info.php?cPath=95_105&products_id=262
ArtDio IPF-3000 - http://www.voipsupply.com/product_info.php?cPath=95_106&products_id=279
and of course the Polycom SoundPoint IP300 and IP500, these seem to be the best Cisco alternative at a low price point, for commercial environments or call center applications. The Aastra 480i is also a very nice phone, but you're getting what you're paying for it is a bit more expensive.
One other thing worth mentioning, I am not saying it is going to happen, but I would not be surprised in the least to see some Linkys branded, Cisco developed IP phones coming down the pipe. With the success of the Linksys PAP2-NA, I would have to believe the R&D folks at Linksys have a mind to bring some phones to market as well. That could be interesting. I recently met with some folks from Linksys and I asked them about that possibility, but I don't have any more information to offer on the subject at present.
There are also a wide variety of very nice traditional analog phones that can be bundled with an ATA to IP enable them. I have an Aastra 392 sitting on my desk right here next to meet, it is a terrific phone. It is tied into a Linksys WRT54GP2-NA wireless broadband/voip router, which is in turn registered with our Asterisk production server that serves our office. I also have a nice little WIFI VOIP phone I keep in my livingroom which is also connected through the wireless, the phone is based on a Broadcom spec, although the model I have does not support STUN or NAT, so it is a little limited there. Works well other than that.
I'm off topic now, I will strive to share any information on upcoming vendor releases whenever I get it. For now, the most recent ones are
Zultys has several new variations of the ZIP2 phone coming to market shortly.
Uniden has a pretty cool looking new offering called the UIP1868m which is a 5.8GHz Digital VoIP Telephone with a base station you can add wireless handsets to.
Broadcom has a new WIFI phone reference design, if someone does not have them OEM an offering with this soon perhaps we will do it! http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/91160-PB01-R.pdf
I know, I have been talking about that design for six months! When is someone going to make something out of it? The new phone from that Korean manufacturer looks close, but I don't know if they are it. What's the deal with the phone you have now?
-- Kristian Kielhofner _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Biz mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-biz
