Life span for all phones

[Matt Holder]

One thing that would really ease the minds of people when we talk about moving to 3cx is how long each phone will be supported for.

A £40 yealink phone is great, but not if I need to replace it every two years (for example).

We currently use 3cx at two schools and some offices in our academy trust and keep getting asked about total cost of ownership and support lengths for the phones etc.

Any thoughts please 3cx support?

Matt

 

[lneblett]

Obviously, there are 2 main aspects to this:
1. The period of time that 3CX will support the phone via provisioning, and
2. The period of time that the phone manufacturer will support before declaring EOL (end of life) and EOS (end of support).

Keep in mind that 3CX is using SIP and as it is an non-proprietary protocol, this in and of itself provides some assurance of the devices' usefulness beyond what other proprietary systems may offer. I know of no manufacturer who has a defined product life cycle that is made known beforehand. They usually have a roadmap and live with the product as long as there are adequate sales and there is nothing in the cycle (technology/hardware/software) that precludes the device from being competitive within its market-space or incapable of being advanced/updated. Once sales or margins decline (for whatever reason) they will usually start the EOL cycle which will include the Date for last sales, date of last support and then End of Life date, By this time, they usually already have a successor in the pipeline.

I have clients using both older Yealink, Grandstream and Aastra phones (10 years old now) that continue to serve their purpose and all are long past EOL from the maker.

While 3CX may elect to no longer support a phone, this, to me, merely means that they have moved on to more current makes/models and will no longer provide templates by which to ease the provisioning aspect. However, the phones will continue to work as long as the SIP protocol version in use at the time is used by both the PBX and phone(s).

One thing, is that while the phone may have an EOL, at least I likely won't have to replace the PBX as well as I might with proprietary brands.

 

[cobaltit]

So you give an example of a phone and then you ask the PBX manufacturer for their thoughts. Their thoughts is they have no control over how long a manufacturer decides to support a phone or produce a phone. I can tell you that buying a cheap Yealink phone now and possibly replacing it in 3 years is still cheaper than buying a Cisco option.

 

[leejor]

In many cases, devices are no longer supported because it takes time and effort to "help" some people to keep them working. If it's declared EOL, they can "wipe their hands, of the old models. Doesn't meant they can't be used, or they no longer serve a purpose for many end users. Manufacturers want to sell you new products, that's how they stay in business, the old models have to become obsolete, in one way or another. "If they don't stop working on their own then we'll just have to stop supporting them".

On many systems (not some VoiP ATA's obviously), you can still use a dial telephone made over 100 years ago. Doesn't mean a lot of people want to, but, to make voice calls...it still works.