Today’s Phone of the Day is a retake of the CallMaster IV terminal for the use of Avaya enterprise grade PBX systems. These are not telephones, and they are not attendant consoles and while there is an apparent resembelence of the Call Director, these sets would not be used for “answering centers” since Voice mail had taken many of those roles anyways.

A lot of these “message centers” more than likely was repurposed as “call centers” ranging from ticket agents for airlines, to technical support, to emergency services.

Unlike other push button telephones, the CallMaster is designed solely for call center uses. They work in tandem with the application known as Automatic Call Distribution. ACDs tend to be used to monitor other agents, barge in (or take control) and patch callers to another vendor, another company, another dispatch, etc.

The CallMaster series was introduced to the market in the late 1980s by AT&T, for the use of ether the System 85 or 75 PBX. Prior to, the 7407 (…hey that looks familiar!) was the recommended set for such applications. Despite the ease of use, AT&T had a lot of competition in the lucrative business in call centers between the other PBX vendors, ROLM and Northern, and a company called Aspect. Their PBX systems were strictly for the purposes of call centers. As Aspect became less popular by the 1990s, Lucent at this point took an advantage in this market and started to tout that the Definity ECS PBX would be the go to system for both traditional and call center PBX. Their annual financial statements and their quarterly updates ensured that they were doing well.

 

The first three CallMasters, the original, II and III almost looked the same. This model, the IV was introduced around the same time when the 302C was released into market, which would pinpoint that time circa 1997. Other CallMasters went into the market, such as a PC focused model and a 6416 without a handset, known as the VI.

These model numbers were 603 series if you had configured this in the Definity console. The easiest approach was to type 6 and F6 to cycle through it quicker if you were not familiar.

While this model has a handset retainer ability, most often the handset was not the primary use of communication. Typically a Plantronics type of headset would be used for longer durations.

This was also the last CallMaster to use “plug” connectors that goes as far back as the original design of telephone networks. These were called “carbon” connectors as they litteraly were analog as you could get, meaning the audio was statically low, and the CallMaster would raise the audio, and the volume control of the hand/headset would be done on this same type of plug. Electronic based sets (you know ones with modern printed boards, and less wires and stuff) would move volume control onto the actual set. The VI and the 6416 equivalent would only support RJ9 electronic type of hand or headsets.

When the sets moved to IP, Avaya had similar like screen based sets, such as the 4622. The 9600-like equivalent is the 16CC based of the 1616 IP set, again without a handset. As the model implies “CC” means Call Center, and in fact there is a model number (which at the time of this writing, this Curator is forgetting) but Avaya was too lazy to just do the right thing and avoid clunky model numbering.

603 and 302 Commonality?

There isn’t. End of Discussion.

There are some other sites that still imply after 5 years that these sets are the same.

They are not.

The 302 Series predates to the CallMasters by a half a decade. (And No, these are not the same telephones that predate the 500 Series, just to inform the telephone collector community.) The 300 Series had 5 different versions (that’s if you count the 4 versions in the 302 series) starting with 301 (a very heavy metal like set), and the 302 released after 1990, and the respective versions for nearly twelve years.) The last version was 302D under Avaya.

The irony was the earlier generations would plug into the DCP ports but the only digital part was the signaling between the lamps, and voice. Just like in the CallMaster, the hand/headsets go back a century technical wise. The audio was statically low, and the user would have to crank up the volume and the set would convert the analog mouthpiece into the digital waves for other other end to hear.

• The 302B internals look almost something like a 1950s telephone device at the plug part.
• The 302D was released after the new Millenium and used a standard RJ9 connector.
• A 300 Series needs to have some plug for it to work. A 603/CallMaster series can function without a plug. The former is for security reasons
• A 300 series has beeps, a 603 has the traditional 8 ring patterns, albeit the CM IV has a higher pitch than the 8400 or even the 7400, but lower than the any of the 4600s
• Attendant Consoles prior to 302D had only red indicators, which goes against the user interface of any feature or line activity being lit green over red. Essentially on all other sets, Red means Go.  After 302C, there was the respective red and green indicators on the call appearances. Also, the second row of lamps was to indicate “call waiting” which totally required AT&T and their predecessors to explain two senses of Call Appearances in their Glossary.
• The 302 series had 5ESS cousin, while no Call Masters were supported for any Centrex type of environments, of which Nortel had, the 5300 series.
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• Due to the design of the System 85 PBX being a Band-Aid over the Dimension PBX, the 302s were never supported (despite supporting other Digital sets), and their attendant console attempted to be close to the 302s as much as possible. (See above.) This type of console had to be hardwired from the receptionist’s location to the switch room. One big full Amphenol cable for one device essentially. While this was common for Nortel, ROLM and others, it made it inherently complex if a reception or attendant location would change. (This is probably one of the reasons why they were also called “consoles” because not only were they directly connected much like a computer terminal, just the similarities was the control was directly connected and most often, the control was for oral communication with people, and sometimes machines to check on the health of the PBX.)