The set of SIP phones covers 5 telephone hardware manufacturers, selected to provide TeleWare intelligent eXchange and IP hosted services customers and resellers with a broad selection of devices in terms of cost and functionality to suit their solution requirements.
TeleWare instigated their own SIP testing and approval system in mid 2005 when it became clear that the SIP phones on the market differed widely in terms of levels of interoperability and telephony features supported. “The testing programme is designed to ensure our customers have a wide choice of devices which support all the key telephony features used today,” said Richard Holland, Product Manager for the intelligent eXchange SIP softswitch product. “Depending, of course, on the value and scale of a project, we are also prepared to test other handsets as selected by TeleWare customers,” said Holland. “This approach is in line with the TeleWare policy of maintaining hardware independence and ensuring customer choice and flexibility, both in the infrastructure and at the desktop,” he added.
TeleWare also provides a free-of-charge softphone to all intelligent eXchange customers, both hosted and on-premises solutions; these softphones are available for the PC and the PDA. At a minimal cost, a version of the softphone providing a fully functional Operator Console is also available for use by reception staff or operators directly from their PC.
TeleWare’s largest SIP installation to date is the TeleWare Hosted Services platform in London Docklands, backed by a second ‘redundant’ platform near Heathrow to provide a highly resilient service. This installation has the capacity to support up to 1.5 Million users running the full range of applications. Today, the TeleWare data centres are hosting around 23,000 users working with a wide range of applications.
A full list of phones supported with links to their product specification is provided on the TeleWare website at http://sme.teleware.co.uk/sip_phones/