Today’s Phone of the Day features a [Newer Generation] ahem “Euro Series II” Partner 6D set of a place where I spend a couple days a week with some people who help me get through my life.
I have not referred this to “Euro” or “Euro Series II” because those were obscenely bad greymarket rumors spread like motherfrecin wildfire on eBay in the early 2000s (“Euro”) and the 46xx like models in 2005 (“Euro Series II”.) I am the last to defend Avaya currently, but they would frown upon infringing the brand of the phone system. While it was common folklore that it was European inspired when AT&T did the design in 1994/1995, it’s never been officially confirmed by Avaya or it’s decedents. And yes you read that right “AT&T”. This model was released about 1995, over a year before the Lucent spinoff. Some sites like my old town’s library before to moving out in 2010 had these Euro series sets but with the AT&T brand. So people, PLEASE do not call these sets like this one “Series II”. You’re spreading lies and misinformation!
“Introduced by Lucent in 1996, this is the second generation Partner phone and they were called the Euro model due to its smooth European styling [dubious, citation needed]. The same Euro design was carried over to the 6400 sets for the Definity large PBX and the 4400 sets for the medium sized Merlin Magix system [dubious, apparent belief of correlation equals causation]” Joe the UCX Guy – nice pictures, but very questionable facts.
Another thing to note, (correct me if I am wrong any retired Avaya folks) but development of Partner and Merlin systems were on the East Coast and the Definity development was split in Colorado and New Jersey and there was zero if any synergy of design because since the Partner, such sets were compatible to the Colorado/New Jersey designed System 75/Definity system. Hope this debunks the correlation equals causation claim above.
Under the hood, these phones are NOT “digital”, unlike what Joe says about said sets. Under the hood they are proprietary “hybrid” telephones (many were H7317 models on all Partner telephones.) This signaling protocol predates back to the Merlin era, where the analog signals (like mini relays and those integrated circuits that make clicking noises) which provided the lamps and ringing, and the digital pair had signaled the voice, so no static, no jitter or what. This in turn had a three pair wiring, so up to 6 wires had to be crimped on an RJ 45 plug on pins 1&3; 2 &4, and 5&6, the in between pair I believe was for the voice. I know ,AT&T loved their copper, but look on the bright side… it made it easier to put Cat 3 to Cat 5 wiring for future applications – like I dunno Ethernet? See what good AT&T did to phone cabling?
This design also enabled the Partner to put analog telephones or devices on an adjacent port. This in turn enables answering and fax machines to go over those analog pairs. But from what I know, the Partner today only requires one pair of wiring, and you can punch it down or crimp a RJ45 or 11 on pins 4&5
Pursuant to Avaya documentation this is just called the “Partner 6D” set. Up to six Key lines, two intercom keys, and direct outbound dialing when going off hook, typical of the Partner systems, the Merlins and Key telephone systems prior.
NO to Euro, yes to Partner Series terminals.
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