snom has released a new IP phone for businesses, the snom 715, that offers high performance SIP technology at a low price.

“This is an IP desktop phone for businesses with big needs but small budgets,” said Mike Storella (News - Alert), VP Americas of snom technology. “Gigabit Ethernet is typically a hallmark of more expensive phones, but we are delivering that capability at $139 (MSRP)."

“With the snom 715, we are continuing our push to drive snom’s high quality SIP endpoints into every corner of the business market,” he continued.

The phone also has some powerful features, despite its low price. It has two gigabit Ethernet ports for VoIP audio performance.  The firmware, which is identical to the firmware in the snom 710, also makes it easy for administrators to configure the phones. It also has a backlit black-and-white LCD display. It also supports connectivity over Wi-Fi for even more flexibility in placing the phone.

The snom 715 supports up to four lines, or as snom calls them, “identities.” It also comes with a security certificate built in to make deploying the phone easy. The phone works with any SIP-compliant setup, including on-premises PBXes and remote hosted PBX (News - Alert) platforms, including cloud PBX systems.

New low-cost phones like the snom 715 represent a trend to commoditization and democratization of PBX technology. In the past, businesses phone systems were proprietary, complicated, expensive affairs. VoIP has made advanced businesses phone features that were previously the domain of large corporations accessible to small and medium size businesses.

Open source PBX servers like Asterisk (News - Alert) have done for PBX what Linux did for Web servers and a number of companies are offering solutions based on open standards like SIP. Customers don’t even have to have the server on-premises but can choose from a growing number of hosted VoIP providers.

snom is also exhibiting the snom 715 phone at TMC’s (News - Alert) ITEXPO from January 28-31.