Aastra releases Response Point to SIP standard firmware

It looks like Response Point is officially kaput.

This morning Aastra telecom announced their first software to take your existing Aastra Response Point phones from their proprietary protocol (that only works with Microsoft Response Point systems) to an open SIP-Standards based platform. This will allow your Aastra RP Phones to communicate with any SIP based platforms such as Broadsoft and Asterisk.

The new firmware applies for all Aastra “RP” phones including the 6751i RP, 6753i RP, and 6757i CT RP models and is available for download here.

The only catch to the firmware process is that once you perform the upgrade to go from RP to SIP, you CANNOT go back to RP. So be very careful and ensure 100 percent that you are ready to go to SIP protocol. Once transitioned to the SIP Standards based protocol, the Aastra models will NOT function with Response Point and will now act and be treated like any other SIP based Aastra phone. This means that future firmware updates would be consistent with the regular line of SIP Aastra phones including the 6753i, 6755i, 6757i CT. These updates can be found on the individual product website on pages on http://mitel.ca/ .

In regards to the “Magic Blue Button” that all RP phones are suited with, the voice recognition will no longer function. After converting to the SIP standards software the Blue button will no function as the following:

• 6751i – Blue button will function as a Swap key
• 6753i – Blue button will function as a Line 3 key
• 6757i CT – Blue button will function as a Line 4 key
• 6757i CT Mobile handset – Blue button will function as a Re-dial key

This is smart move on Aastra’s part as it will give their current Response Point users the option to transition to an open SIP based solution without having to Ebay their current hardware. If you don’t already know, Microsoft Response Point has been EOL’ed by Microsoft and will be completely discontinued this August.

Maybe Aastra will release firmware to take the RP Base unit (RP-500) to theirAastra Pro Link 160 solution. That would be pretty nice; this way a solution that is falling by the wayside can be transitioned to a fully functional and supported solution by Aastra. These are only my feelings though at this moment and currently Aastra only supports the transition on RP Aastra Phones.

So what do you think, any Response Point users out there thinking about doing this transition? What are your reactions to this release?  What are your plans for your current RP system? Was it that successful and is it still?