Source: smithonvoip.com

I keep hearing a ton about the huge Cisco deployment that is happening at the University of Cambridge and one blogger who covered the news wonder if the university would be using third party SIP based phones with deployment, since Cisco Call Manager supports SIP.

Fat chance.

Here is the problem with Cisco Call Managers SIP support:

1. In order to use third party SIP based phones, the phones have to be certified through Cisco. The cost? $25,000.
2. The customer has to pay a per phone licensing fee. The cost? For a single line phone $175, for a multi-line phone$300.

That’s why I call Cisco’s Call Manager SIP support the $25,000 scam. No end user, in their right mind is ever going to pay that sort of fee just to use a third party phone, especially not one that has to buy 20,000 phones.

Here is an example. Say you are frugal. You really want to use Cisco Call Manager, but don’t want to buy a $400 Cisco IP phone. You want, say a Grandstream GXP-2000, that costs $79.99. Great deal idea right?

Wrong.

Since the GXP-2000 is a six line phone, it will cost you $300 for a seat license fee. At that point you are better off just getting a Cisco CP-7960G. In other words, it does not make sound financial sense to use a third party SIP phone, especially since there is basically no phone on the market that really “crushes” a Cisco phone.

This third party phone support is just another by-product of the Cisco marketing machine. Ride the publicity wave. I feel bad for those that forked over $25,000 and for the consumer who actually thought they would be able to use a third party phone.