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Cisco Versus the World
Succeeding with Cisco IP Telephony
from a Customer's Perspective
© Ted Wallingford 2003 - 2004
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Table of Contents: i. Background
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1. Inability to perform overhead paging using Cisco phones In many offices, receptionists and managers use an overhead paging, a technique that broadcasts the voices of the pager through ceiling speakers and telephones. Cisco's SCCP phones don't permit their speakers to be used for broadcasting of over pages. Cisco hasn't made this feature available yet, and there is no plan to do so. Using Cisco CallManager out of the box, users are forced to give up their conventional overhead paging feature. There are two ways around this problem: One is to place an overhead ceiling speaker in every office and pull a speaker cable to it, thereby eliminating the need to use the phones for overhead paging. This is a wasteful method (think of all the overhead amplifiers and ceiling-tile removal!) that is counterproductive to the idea of using Cisco phones, or even VoIP, at all. The second way is a solution proposed by Cisco as an added-cost option to be implemented by a reseller: the addition of a custom-made XML application on each SCCP phone that will allow synchronization of paging zones between the overhead speakers in the hallways, vestibules, and shop areas with the SCCP phones themselves. The approach uses IP multicast to simulate a group of synchronized broadcast endpoints. The net effect of such an application would be that the pager's voice could be heard simultaneously on both types of endpoints (speakers and phones). |