This picture shows a phone in my own collection. This is an Avaya 4424 Digital Telephone. This phone was originally used in the Merlin Magix series of KSUs. They look like their other digital phones, the difference is the form factor, where the built in microphone is located (on the lower right where there is two holes), and its ring tones. The “menu” keys may appear to use a similar TUI like in the larger systems, but it works differently.

That’s if you have it tied into an IP Office system, and then it works just like the larger PBXs.

The console on the IP Office claims this is a “DCP” (Digital Communications Protocol the proprietary signaling of their TDM) telephone, which I find it very interesting because the Merlin Magix uses another proprietary protocol. This is common with all the major vendors, where they don’t use backwards compatibility with their KSU or PBX switches.

These models were made just a year before Avaya would become a spinoff of Lucent. On the back of this phone it says Lucent Technologies Made in the USA. Well not too long after that Avaya was spun off and they outsourced the manufacturing to another company and later made these phones in Mexico before they would make them in Asia and kill sales of these phones including some of the 4600s and most of the 6400s.

I suspect that when they were developing the 4400s, that there might had been future plans to make this phone be compatible with the mid line class of systems, and maybe that was why they put a model number on these phones, the other Merlin phones like the MLX didn’t have model number.

This picture was taken in 2008, where I got this phone at a flea market at $3. 3 or so years later, I would acquire a system that this phone would be compatible with. It is sitting in my “datacenter”.