I am very familiar with the Sipura/Linksys line of ATAs and some of the phones. My problem is that I am offering to replace traditional PBXs with an Asterisk-based PBX. Many of those customers are used to brand names like Avaya and would like to have a top brand, nice looking, with the best audio, etc. phone sets.
Frankly speaking, the SPA941 looks kind of cheap, and its sound is not that great.
So, I am told that the best VoIP phone available is the Polycom, and I started researching them.
Disappointment Number One: I find out that Polycom has a policy of only allowing special people, priests of some sort, to access their sacred firmware. Well, I guess that if their quality is as good as they say, they are entitled to be arrogant and unfriendly to customers. Call them Soup Nazis.
Disappointment Number Two: (and as opposed to #1, this is a biggie) It seems that most Polycom phones do not have a web server built in. I simply couldn't believe this. One of my concern is the dialplan. With Linksys, it offers a lot of flexibility with the phone making decision as to which gateway to connect, etc., etc. OTOH, even the top of the line Polycoms: all they have is the crummy low res display as a configuring interface.
Both brands can be auto-provisioned.
Is it fair to say that Linksys has much more expertise in HTTP, routing, Internet, while Polycom is the standard as far as voice quality??
Comments, opinions?
-Ramon