Cisco Systems - 7960 VoIP Phone Review

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Cat
Charlotte, NC

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A Solid Corporate VoIP Phone

an IT professional, a mobile office user, an IT project manager, a tech geek, a former network engineer, a fan of Cisco products

Pros

features galore!, sound quality, configurability of phones, mobile flexibility

Cons

phones with add-on mods can't be mounted, complex setup in large deployments

AUG

2007

About Cisco and the 7960 IP Phone
Cisco's 7960 IP phone is a mid-range Voice-Over-IP solution for desktop and ACD use. We chose the Cisco 7960 IP phone sets because they were preferred in our user testing head-to-head against Nortel sets. Cisco's 7960 phone is a part of their 7900 series of phones and accessories.

The 7960 is a step above what most people are used to with a standard desk or ACD based phone. Cisco markets a variety of technologies to work with these phones, adding some serious capabilities, not seen with standard desk or ACD phones in the past.

Cisco offers the following technologies that work with the 7960 series of phones:
- IPCC Express and Enterprise (Internet Protocol Contact Center): Express is the "light" version of the software. Major companies with ACD and recording needs would do well to pay extra for the more fully-featured IPCC Enterprise edition.
- Cisco CallManager: This is a must-buy if you've decided to cut over to the 7960's. This product is the "brain" for the setup, directing calls and enabling extensive feature sets.
- Unity Unified Messaging: This is Cisco's voicemail (and fax, and e-mail) solution.

Depending upon your deployment you'll have some variety of these packages and services for your 7960 phones.

About the 7960 Itself
Appearance: The Cisco 7960 is an attractive phone. If you judge aesthetics by the number of television shows that use these phones as props today, it comes up a winner, appearing in blockbuster hits like "24" on Fox. It's got the same color scheme so many Cisco products have: Dark matte black/grey with a few dark teal blue buttons on it. The 7960 really stands out from a garden variety desk phone because of its large LCD panel display. It's an attractive phone, but utilitarian in its appearance.

Feature Set: Most of the whiz-bang features on the 7960 are enabled via the Call Manager. Here are some key features for this phone:
- Access to weather, stocks, or any other web information that is made available via the call manager. Cisco claims 7960 can be an on-desk "portal" for a wide variety of company-useful information.
- Multiple phone lines: My current Cisco 7960 is programmed to ring on four different phone lines. Each line has its own circular button on the right, for a total of six buttons to the right of the LCD which allow you to switch between lines.
- Soft Keys: There are four "soft keys" on the Cisco 7960 which change depending upon what menu you're in. You can navigate all sorts of menus using these soft keys including a company directory, previously dialed numbers, received calls, missed calls, etc. You use these soft keys in conjunction with the "hard keys" to utilize the extensive features of the phone.
- Hard Keys: The following hard buttons are physically located on the phone: Messages (for voicemail), Directories (for accessing call logs), Services (for quotes, portal use, etc.), Settings (Contrast, ringer type, etc.), Volume, Headset, Mute and Speaker. There is also a ? button located in the very center of four of the hard-coded buttons, which provides information based on where you are in the navigation of the phone when you hit it.

Display: In addition to the extensive, multi-line LCD display, which is not backlit, there are three buttons that do light up when in use: Headset, Mute and Speaker. Of these three buttons, Headset and Speaker light up a vivid green when in use and the Mute button turns a bright red, so you can tell even from a distance of the mute function is in use during a call. Very nice.

Additional Accessories: If you need to support more than six lines on your 7960 you can buy the 7914 module, a 14 button add-on module. Up to two add-on modules can be added to one 7960 but be forewarned, once you've added the add-on modules you cannot wall-mount the phone. This has proven to be problematic for us in several areas where we have had to build shelves to accommodate a 7960 with add-on modules.

Specifications: Here are Cisco's listed specifications for the 7960. Note that you will need to purchase a country-specific AC cord to power the phone, separate from the phone itself:
Dimensions: 82 x 10.5 x 6 in. (20.32 x 26.67 x 15.24 cm) (H x W x D)
Phone weight: 3.5 lb (1.6 kg)
Polycarbonate acrylonitrile butadiene styerene (ABS) plastic in textured dark gray color with silver bezel
48 VDC required, supplied locally at the desktop using an optional AC to DC power supply (CP-PWR-CUBE-2=) Also requires ordering an AC country cord.

Using the Phone
All the specs in the world won't tell you how easy a phone is to use and adapt to, and how well it works. Switching from a standard PBX based desktop phone to the IP phone I found the learning curve to be steep and quick. It wasn't tough to pick up on using the soft buttons and the regular buttons in conjunction with each other. Whereas on my old Meridian phone, conferencing in someone was a mysterious exercise in voodoo phone switching, conferencing someone into a call on the 7960 is painless.

The directory comes in handy routinely, so you can see who has called while you were away from your desk. This way, even if someone doesn't leave a voice mail, you know they've at least rung your phone. I find that of all the features available on the 7960, the directory feature is the one that I use the most. I almost never actually look up someone's phone number anymore, I go find them in my log of received or placed calls. You can even do a company directory search but it's somewhat cumbersome using the number pad to enter in names for searching.

While I have not used a headset on this phone I have used the speakerphone extensively, and I've been on conference calls with other people using the speakerphone on the 7960. This is one of the clearest phones I've ever used as a speakerphone. People up to ten feet away can be easily heard and people close up to the phone seem to be properly modulated so they don't blare your ears out. And, with the brightly lit mute button, you always know when you can talk amongst yourselves without interrupting a conference call.

I have always found the sound quality on our Cisco 7960's to be superb, but be aware that the quality of a 7960 is only as good as the network on which it is placed. If the network isn't properly set up to queue and direct the additional data, or if the network is sporadic and suffers from frequent packet loss or downtimes, call quality will be heavily affected. Some phones do better than others at compensating for poor quality networks, and I don't have specific data or comparisons for the 7960.

I've worked a little with ACD users transferring from other PBX-based ACD systems to the Cisco ACD system. There is a steep learning curve for them as well, but they seem to take to the 7960 pretty quickly and it's nice to have a single phone solution for ACD users, regular employees and executives.

As an added bonus, you can plug your computer into the network directly via a port on the Cisco phone, taking up one jack. Both the computer and the phone are seen by the switch on the network, and it is configured to know to direct the 7960 traffic through the Call Manager. This feature reduces most users' jack requirements from 2 down to 1. This can result in a cost savings if you're wiring a building from scratch.

The Downsides
Switching over to a nifty, newfangled phone system utilizing the Cisco 7960 is not without its drawbacks, however. In addition to the inability to wall mount a unit with the add-on modules there is a lot of extra work that must be done to support any VOIP phone, the 7960 included.

Before you buy twenty pallets of these phones and dispense them to your telephony team, consider that the following work must be done for a VOIP system:

- Setup, testing, config and burn-in of your Call Manager System and any other associated systems (Unity, IPCC, etc.) This can be extensive and can take months.

- MAC address inventory of each phone, and entry of each phone into the Call Manager, along with its configuration and association with a specific user. You can set up a batch utility to do this but it can be a pain and now you must really inventory your phones much closer than before.

Basically there's a paradigm shift, with the work going from PBX to the 7960 and its associated Call Manager. If a user moves from one cube to another, they merely take their 7960 phone with them. Once it's plugged in the Call Manager sees the MAC and automatically assigns the user profile based on the MAC.

It sounds like this might be easier than actually dealing with old style PBX phones, but in fact it's not, particularly if employees shuffle and don't take their phones with them. And for large scale move-ins, it can be a whopping pain. You have to make sure that the proper phone, with the proper MAC address, is set down at the proper user's location. Heaven forbid that user should be told at the last minute to move to a cube two rows down, and their specific 7960 isn't moved with them. You have troubleshooting to do.

Additionally, when switching from standard phones to the Cisco 7960 you should be aware that when the network is down, so is your ability to communicate via telephone. And 911 calls aren't yet totally worked out via VOIP. Call centers and sites where I work maintain a few direct analog lines with phones attached, in case work-based or emergency calls need to be placed during a network outage.

Cat's Bottom Line
Having managed large scale corporate installations of the 7960 IP phone, I like this little phone a lot. It's full-featured and capable of delivering a lot more than I had ever expected from a standard desktop phone. The sound quality is great and the features are even better. Users seem to be happier with the Cisco 7960 IP phone than with their previous phones, and in the end, user satisfaction is what it's all about in my world.

Last edited on Aug 31, 2007