5 New IP Phones from Cisco

Since incorporating Linksys under the Cisco brand nearly a year ago, Cisco has continued to develop a range of new products for SMB customers. Under their newly christened Small Business Pro Series, Cisco has recently released five new IP telephone models. The SPA501G, SPA502G, SPA504G, SPA508G and SPA509G IP phones pick up where the popular Linksys SPA94X series phones left off, and are much more of a “Cisco” product than simply a re-branded Linksys product.

These products are not officially available until 9/2, but we managed to wrangle some advanced stock available now for purchase at VoIPSupply.com. Read on for the highlights….

1. All five models, ranging in list price from $135 to $225 have dual switched ethernet ports with IEEE 802.3af Power Over Ethernet (PoE) support. It’s nice to see Power Over Ethernet progressing from “feature” to ubiquity.

2 – All five phones have an excellent full-duplex speakerphone, Message Waiting Indicator Light, 4-way navigation key, and 12 button dial pad, dedicated illuminated buttons for Volume, Hold, Menu settings and Voicemail access.

3 – All five models support G.729a as well as G.722 Wideband Audio codec.

4 – All five models can be line expanded with the add-on Cisco SPA500S attendant console. Up two two expansion consoles are supported.

5 – All of these phones can be auto-provisioned remotely via TFTP, HTTP or HTTPS.

6 – These new IP phone models are unique in that they support dual VoIP protocols, SIP and Cisco’s SPCP (Smart Phone Control Protocol) which is used on popular Cisco UC500 platform.

It is expected that the new Cisco Small Business Pro models mentioned above will eventually replace the current Linksys/Cisco SPA9XX series models. Here are a few photos of the new phones as well as some screen shots of the web user interface: