VoiceCon: snom Brings HD Business VoIP Phone to North America

IP phone maker snom technology AG announced Tuesday at VoiceCon San Francisco it is coming to North America with a new business SIP-based VoIP phone enterprise and small and medium business (SMB) markets. The phone was introduced in Europe in October.

The snom 820 is the first model of a new line of advanced business VoIP phones, complementing its existing snom 300 VoIP telephone series. The 820 costs $419, compared to $129-$299 for the 300 series. The higher price tag is primarily because of its business-centric features, explained Mike Storella, director of business development for snom.

These include a high-resolution color display and support for wideband audio codecs for high-definition sound quality. It also includes support for Wi-Fi and power over Ethernet, which can be important to businesses to enable plug-and-play installation.

The 820 also has advanced business communications features, including five-way conferencing, multiple ring tones and the capability to provision up to 12 different SIP identities per phone. It also is VPN-capable and supports SRTP and TLS security standards that effectively prevent the recording and the sniffing of data.

Since it builds on the same firmware as the 300 series, vendor partners need only validate interoperability, said Storella. Partners will be testing the new phone over the next 30 days, he added.

This past summer, snom announced interoperability with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 as well as IP PBXs from Epygi, Fonality, SIPGear and Voxitas.

The snom 820 is generally available in the United States and Mexico through snom’s network of distributors and resellers.