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.
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.
In today’s set of updated photos of my telephone sets, this 4602SW is featured. Did some more scurbbin and cleanin and it look a more decent. I bought this a few years back for under $5 at my local thrift store. It does SIP well, unlike some of the other 4600s.
An artsy picture of the Avaya/Lucent/AT&T 302B Attendant Console, made in the late 1980s, one of the few sets with button caps for the switchboard control of the System 75 and Definity PBX. Taken with a Nikon D3200 DSLR camera on Aperture priority, ISO 800.
Being the Avaya Red fanboy that I am, I am always happy to see any phones from the legacy AT&T/Bell System days. As I have stated before, this vendor had 90%+ of the Fortune 500 and then lost it entirely with a company with legacy roots that was 125 years old.
Taken in October of 2017, I am unable to tell what set this is, it could be a 1416 or a 1616. The second digit model numbers what type of signaling it does to make them ether be a “telephone” or a “terminal”. Please read the section on “voice terminals” to remind yourself why your desk phone is not actually that…
Some people love voice mail, many just hate it. Many are apparently so egotistical, they think it’s not worth listening to 2 minutes of a voice based message than a generic email.
People also think email is better, but do you know the history of voicemail?
if the answer is no, lets go down memory lane of Voice Mail.
Voicemail is often assumed to be an electronic answering machine on a server. While it’s true, its origins was almost similar to sending a letter or an email, just with spoken word.
The first indication of such language was in printed publications in 1877. A famous man named Thomas Edison with an invention called the phonograph. For the Gen-X audience and older, this is basically a record player. Millenials are probably familiar to just be cool for the latest trend. While it was well known for songs, the ability to record spoken word, as a way to replace letter writing had the possibility. The “voice mail” language was in the lexicon by the 1910s.
While the answering machine was invented in the 1960s, the ability to install these would be so cost prohibitive, and worse, a wiring nightmare. In the early 1970s, Motorola introduced pagers that provided one way voice messages that would be answered by an “answering center” (this in 2017 is completely archaic with the advent of digital telephony, automated attendants, in fact the size of these answering centers were the size of contact centers, which was not existent at the time.) These pagers used UHF signals and were often used for volunteer fire fighters, etc. In this sense, this could be considered as a voice message.
Sadly, where I live, Avaya or Nortel isn’t “alive and well” unlike another site I follow. Nortel has disappeared in my state in public and private entities in lieu of Cisco years ago and Avaya Red has slowly disappeared too.
On a Christmas Eve tradition before I was born, my family would order pizza out at the local Papa Ginos, that is local chain with more than one hundred stores around the Greater Boston region, basically in four of the six New England states. It’s reputation is fresh quality pizza of with quality ingredients. Over the years Papa’s has had exclusive marketing deals with the local Boston teams such as the Red Sox and currently the Patriots.
The chain has used AT&T products going back to the days of Western Electric. This location I had frequented growing up had used one of those 10 line 1A2 wall mount Key telephones till a cutover around 2001 to a Partner ACS system. The only ComKey I’ve ever seen in production was another store nearby, and that had cutover to a Partner circa 2001 or 02.
I’ve been to mostly the New Hampshire stores, and D’Angelo the sub shop, is a sister brand to Papa Ginos. I don’t recall them using any phone systems, the one nearby me, that I took a few years back with an Avaya van uses POTS phones.
But today, just the next block away from that same D’Angelo, I noticed this phone. Nope, its not a 9600 Avaya IP or 9500 DCP set. No, worse a Polycom VVX 310 set. (I haven’t been here for a while, some days I normally walk here because it’s not that far away from my home.)
This was taken recently at a local Books A Million. I first heard of them when I traveled to D.C. in 2002. They took over the space once held by Borders since they went bankrupt around 2009, specifically I am not sure because I do not frequent Concord.
This was taken at a local Kohls, just a little north of where I live. This is located in massively redeveloped area of box stores when it was just all trees. I can’t remember when it was built, I’m going to bet before the 2009 bankruptcy of Nortel. (Remember a similar post of noticing Mitel sets of their alleged “Do we stand by our man?” post bankruptcy mentality across any former Nortel sites.) Newer stores went with the “screw them” approach of building new stores with Mitel and older stores still run Avaya Blue.
I thought this was an 8410. Till I zoomed in. I did see 8410s (ether D or B as in Blank) throughout the 34th Street Macy’s.
