Panoramisk / The VoIP druid 

The Canadian manufacturer Aastra will soon officially announce the venue of a new Wi-Fi SIP phone, called 312, even if the net is already buzzing this info. There are already SIP DECT phone at Aastra but since some customers would like to leverage their Wi-Fi infrastructure in order to carry voice, this new product arrive at a good time.

A new Wi-Fi phone, this is not really a big news since the market is already filled with these small gadgets. But the data sheet and user guide are talking about some innovation that may raise the customer expectation on this area. If we consider that Aastra reports its experience on SIP in the new model and install a similar software in its Wi-Fi model than in the 5xi product range, I think I will love it¹.

In the proposed features I have seen :

• the ability to store the phone configuration, user profile and phone book on a memory card that could be transferred to another phone. This feature was used on some market telephony turrets, but I haven’t seen it on IP phones.
• a real user guide
• Wi-Fi security with WPA and WPA2 using pre-shared keys (no Enterprise mode)
• IEEE 802.11e support for efficient power saving implementing U-APSD
• since such a phone will be in movement, the screen is able to show the Wi-Fi radio signal level and the AP on which it is currently associated, as well as the history of the last one

On the bad points, the information is not yet available on Aastra corporate site, but you can get it on the German entity that develop the product. This is probably linked to the fact the products hasn’t yet been widely launched.

We are very excited about testing this new IP phone with Asterisk and asked to the French Aastra entity to send us a model. This will be done soon so stay tuned…

1. I am a 5xi fan [↩]