TMCnews Featured Article

Panasonic (News - Alert) has been sporting a premature summer glow for a weeks now –from nabbing various accolades from industry leaders to unveiling the industry’s first open source-based operating system desk phone – and today the SIP phones provider showed why it deserves to exude that great color.

Today, the SIP End Points enabler celebrated the fact that three of its Panasonic SIP Cordless Phone products – the KX-TGP550, KX-UT123 and KX-UT136 – have been certified by Epygi Technologies interoperable with the Epygi Quadro IP PBX (News - Alert). The alliance relies on Panasonic’s global leadership in the DECT cordless telephone market with Epygi’s enterprise PBX, according to company officials.

“When we first heard that Panasonic was launching SIP telephone solutions, the Epygi (News - Alert) team was eager to further develop our relationship with the company,” said Warren Sonnen, director of product management, Epygi Technologies.  “With Panasonic’s extensive experience in the business telephone market, we knew these phones would be a great addition to our IP phone partner program.”

Touted by company officials for boasting “outstanding voice quality” and a range of productivity-boosting options in a feature-rich desk phone replacement, Panasonic SIP phones have become part of the company’s core offering. The phones remain their competitive edge thanks to DECT (News - Alert) 6.0 capabilities, which ensure that there is no interference with wireless networks and the cordless design, which eliminates the need to run dedicated network wiring to each employee workstation. 

The company also adds to its SIP phones’ resumes that they are interoperable with the Epygi Quadro IP PBX, a solution designed for small to mid-size businesses (SMBs) that supports up to 300 concurrent calls.

Further, the PBX offering provides support for eight IP phone extensions and up to 1,000 on the larger enterprise PBX solution. The system also supports SIP lines to connect to an Internet service provider, FXO (Foreign Exchange Office) and E1/T1 lines for a medium-sized hybrid office environment.

Panasonic’s KX-UT series is revered for its ability to offer an all encompassing solution for the SMB market by tapping hosted and open source PBX technology. Main features of the series include wide-band, high-definition audio (G. 722 codec) coupled with echo cancellation and an expanded acoustic chamber.

The KX-UT series offers crisp sound quality and is designed to tie in well with a company’s existing communication infrastructure.

“SIP Phones are especially beneficial for small businesses because they offer affordable, flexible communication solutions which offer a lower total cost of ownership,” Bill Savino, marketing manager for Panasonic, told TMCnet in a recent interview. “Small businesses often cannot afford expensive phone systems that include extensive and costly rewiring and are really tailored to larger enterprises.”

“We have seen significant growth with our SIP phones as it relates to the small business market, and small business owners are generally accepting of the new telephony technology,” he added.

Panasonic’s KX-UT136-B possesses 24 programmable feature/functionality keys, a six-line backlit graphical LCD, and two Ethernet ports. The KX-UT123-B boasts HD Voice, and a three-line backlit graphical LCD. The KX-TGP500 SIP phone boasts a corded base unit, one cordless handset and support up to eight phone numbers and three simultaneous calls.