This little fancy gadget is the 9650 IP Deskphone from Avaya. Introduced in 2006, to replace the 6 year old 4600 Series; these phones were initially thought of as clones to Cisco given some of the similarities. This was also Avaya’s first sets to move away from the simple to use user interface, to the flip phone like functionality (to change ringers, you do not press Conference when idling, and most one touch features doubled or doubled in a half.) Sadly the legacy AT&T, then Lucent to become Avaya’s simple, telephone line focused digital or IP sets were never applauded. (This is why I rave this company I used to kinda favor.)
In 2008, similar paper-desi sets came along as the 1600 Series, and digital sets 9500 and 9400 series and 1400 series for paper desis. In the Avaya world, people like to choose to express how they want to assign their buttons. In color and their own words. Some sets that use screens instead do not allow the systems administrator to use their own form of assigning buttons. If you want to put blame, blame the customer, but remember the customer is the one whose right, not the vendor at least in traditional American business norms.
The inaugural models, the 9610 (a single line but with a fancy screen to mimic guest phones via Web based coding), the 9610 (3 call appearances without buttons), the 9620, ditto with buttons, the 9630, (that looked like a Cisco 7960 for the screen part), and two fancier models, the 9640 (ditto with color) and the model shown here. One other set sometimes seen was the 9670, a large screen based phone and can be only used on Avaya switches. (Always assume this with GUI, or color based displays because it needs the “app” to talk to the phone system.) These models included POE, LLDP and other modern features for these sets to be more intelligent to the plumbing of network routers and switches.
Avaya is well known for their signature features, like an active feature lit in green and an inactive call appearance lit in red. In the first generation, only one color LEDs was used for the buttons. Avaya reached out to their closest customers back after the inital release, and followed up with the introduction of the 1600 series with dual colored LEDs. This also followed in 2011, when Avaya introduced another generation with model numbers ending at the end. In this generation, these included the SIP only 9601, the 4610 like 9608, a Gigabit based with a color screen, 9611, and two GUI touch sets, 9621, 9641 (bigger screen than the ’21).
Ironically the flash canceled out the backlit display, just to let you know!
The screen is adjustable, up to 3 clicks. Above the navigation keys, are 8 light colored buttons to mimic feature keys. What was silly is that on the display, on the bottom third would name you the button setup, in the clear highlight. The soft keys were above there, in the dark highlights. In one way, Avaya wanted you to have paperless designation strips, but the buttons were wide enough to be almost a button cap!
This set is permanently set to SIP, with the most recent revision of it’s firmware to 2.7 released last year according to Avaya. It can work on any SIP controller, PBX, open source, whatever. Just it will act more like that infamous acronym known as TROIP or Tip and Ring over IP or a just fancy POTS or Centrex Phone with sexier packaging.
If say you have a very old Avaya phone system but don’t have VOIP, one could get a SIP gateway (analog or digital) assign them as a station, and then register the 9600 set to that gateway and to that number, and wola! Your phone is somewhat more functional than say a POTS phone!
I say “permanently” because putting the proprietary H323 software would not work because the internal memory (like RAM) to store the files for that brief moment to transfer back into the storage part would be too much.
I got this phone from someone in Boston via eBay in March of 2017 using some Christmas money for $30. I do not like to flaunt shopping on eBay because a) I don’t like to flaunt being a cheapskate, b) I feel that buyers get more attention than sellers and c) I don’t like ripping off sellers because I have struggled on the sell side, and so therefore I don’t often advertise that i got it on eBay.
