VoIP Q&A: Cabling Help, Plantronics EHS Cable for Grandstream Phones, and How to Setup PBX with Remote Extensions

Our tech support team here at VoIP Supply offers great pre- and post-sale support plus provisioning, consultations, and configuration and installation help.

We get a lot of VoIP hardware and software questions and realized that these solutions should be shared with everyone.

Here now are our top three (real) questions and answers from this past week (from VoIP users just like you).

Q: [Customer just bought several new phones from VoIP Supply] For connecting to the network, do they need a hard Ethernet cord connected? Just trying to figure out where we can actually put the phones since our modem is up in the front office as well as our two computers, but we used to have two phones in the back for employees to utilize.

A: Yes, they will need wired Ethernet (Cat5, Cat5e, or Cat6) connections.

You can setup your VoIP phones just about anywhere in your office. But, cabling is not the most fun job so if you get stuck, let us know and we can probably recommend an IT company that does cabling in your area.

Q: The phones that we’re using are the Grandstream GXP2140 and Grandstream GXP2130. When considering a Plantronics Savi W745 headset, what is the correct EHS cable to purchase with it?

A: What you’ll need for those Grandstream phones paired with the Savi W745 wireless headset it the Plantronics APD-80.

Q: My business is based in the US and I want to bring analog lines into a PBX locally and then forward those calls to remote extensions overseas. Can this be done with an Elastix appliance or any other solution you have?

A: Yes, it can be done with any VoIP system with VoIP phones. The PBX doesn’t care what IP address the phones are registering from, or if that IP address is local or in another country.

It will send calls to phones on the same LAN, remote phones located throughout the US, or remote phones located around the world, all exactly the same.

They should be warned, however, that the quality of the connection in the foreign country could cause audio quality problems. But technically, there is nothing unusual about this setup.

That’s all for this week, stay tuned for next week’s VoIP Q & A.