Digium VoIP telephones are by far the best handsets available in today’s market, but not many people know why. Digium have three handsets available, these being the D40, D50 and D70. Each of these have their own advantages and features, and we’ll cover some of them here. Note that every Digium phone provides high definition audio, a fantastic speakerphone, and unlimited concurrent calls (i.e. Answering or making additional calls while involved in an active conversation).
Let’s look at the Digium D40 for starters, which is the smallest device in the range. It offers two line buttons, one of those is typically used for a programmable feature such as Paging or a one-touch button to the Receptionist, for example. The Digium D45 has the same appearance, but includes support for Gigabit ethernet network connections.
The D40/D45 has some unique features when compared to other VoIP phones on the market, the largest of which is the auto provisioning system that Digium has implemented for Asterisk and Switchvox. This allows anyone using an Asterisk-based or Switchvox system, to automatically detect and configure a Digium phone anywhere on their network. This auto provisioning is also capable of pushing a large contact directory to the phones, making sure you have a single contacts list for anyone in your organization. One of the great things you can do with this contacts list (and any Digium phone) is search this contact list by name, using the phone’s keypad, whereas most other phones simply display a large list of contacts which you need to scroll through manually.
Check out the Contacts functionality in this video:
Another great feature available on the D40/D45 (and subsequently all other Digium phones) is the visual voicemail. Voicemail is nothing new to VoIP, but in a standard implementation with other VoIP phone brands, you need to dial an extension, and listen to each of your voicemails and delete them one by one. With visual voicemail, you can view a list of all your voicemails on the phone screen, and select which ones you want to listen to, delete, or forward on to someone else, all without lifting the handset.
Check out this short video to learn more about Visual Voicemail:
The Digium D50 phone will of course have all of the same functionality as the D40, but one thing that makes it a bit different is the paper DESI strip for up to 10 one-touch programmable contacts. Also, there are four line buttons on the right of the display screen compared to the D40’s two. In addition, the keys next to each contact button will illuminate when that associated extension is on a call or ringing.
This paper strip for contacts is certainly nothing new, and has been available on numerous other VoIP handsets to date, but the issue comes in where contacts need to be updated and changed, or deleted. This usually leads to unsightly pen scratch out marks, use of White-Out, etc, or time consuming excel spreadsheets for reprinting the strip with the right contacts. The D50 solves this issue through its Web-based user interface to print out your contacts strip, right from the phone to your printer. This means you can adjust all of your contacts electronically, and then simply print our the strip when you’re done — quickly and cleanly, anytime you make programming changes!
The Digium D70 offers two unique features over the previous two models, these being a side mounted LCD screen for contacts, supporting up to 100 one-touch destinations, and gigabit Ethernet ports.
The right LCD contacts screen has two scroll buttons at the base, allowing you to scroll through pages of contacts, ensuring that you’re never more than a few button presses away from finding the contact you need. In addition, each contact displays a Status icon allowing quick visual identification of employees who may be away from their desk or out for vacation/holiday.
Although the Digium VoIP handsets offer much more functionality when combined with a Switchvox VoIP server, these handsets are perfect for use with any Asterisk-based VoIP system.
In summary, this last video provides a short overview of some of the other features available in these awesome Digium phones that no other manufacturer has offered for an on-premise or cloud-hosted phone system product. Ask us about our Custom Applications and unique functionality that we’ve built for our clients using this communications solution.
Please call us at 1-877-877-9473 to discuss with us why we believe the Digium phone system is absolutely the most versatile phone system for your business communications. If you have been considering a new phone system, I trust you’ll agree the Digium system is definitely in a league of its own like no other!