GSM jumps from the pocket to the desk top British firm Burnside Telecom has launched its latest GSM handset, but it's one to replace the phone on your desk, not the one in your pocket. The Burnside P350 The Burnside P350 The P350 is a desk top phone which happens to use a GSM network. It's quickly deployed in temporary offices, but can also allow a company in …
I think they have been selling Desktop GSM phones for sometime.
I'm sure I saw the 1st GSM desktop phone some years ago.
Considering the demand in homes and offices for landline SMS-enabled DECT phones that look like mobiles and the special low cost deals on call time and handsets for Businesses, I think it definitely a very small niche market. No doubt why Burnside are one of the very few suppliers.
So a product announcement. Not a new product concept at all.
A desktop phone. How quaint! Where I work (a large IT services company), the only desktop phones in the building are the conference phones in some meeting rooms. All other calls are made with mobiles, supplied by the company for everyone. A phone you cannot take with you is a silly idea these days.
GSM gateways and fixed phones have been around a while. Considerably cheaper ones aren't too hard to find. Ebay was awash with rather bodged but useable Chinese ones about a year back.
Gateways in particular are used (against network policies) to use 'friends and family' type billing schemes to call out to mobiles at very reduced cost.
Another straight reposting of a vendors PR piece? Where's the analysis?
E.g. Why would a small business want one of these rather than (say) something like Nokia's Premicell fixed cellular terminal connected to their PBX or Asterisk box. (Let's ignore the fact that Premicell is obsolete ;)).
In fact, could you replace this gadget with ordinary desktop phones, an Asterisk or similar box, and a suitable (but no longer trendy) cellular handset - I think I had the capability of something like this back in the days of Win98/Nokia6150 but the memory is a bit vague now.
I used a similar setup. The company I was working for deployed voip phones to all desks using standard cat5 cabling, then routed all outgoing calls to a gsm enabled router with multiple gsm connectivity option. (actually, it was a pc with a few gsm voice modems connected, each with its own sim) This setup was used because there were no landlines within reach and we needed a cheap internal and a working external phone system deployed within 2 days after the move. (the view of the city from the mountaintop building was beautiful but the basic infrastructure in the area was almost zero)
Chinese companies turn these things out in huge quantities. They're very common in developing countries, either as roadside "business centres" or in offices.
The one discribed in this article seems to be distinguished only by some extra PR trying to flog the thing to the "enterprise" and an exceptionally high price. I'd guess the hardware is just a badged version of a Chinese product.
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