Excellent phones ... if you can get them to work

Lil bit of background ...

I work for a construction company as the "Communications Administrator"/ several other things all wrapped up into one. Anyway, we are constantly looking at what is out there and trying to find better ways to make our communication more cost efficient.

In job trailers with multiple lines of 3 or more we would usually use a small type of phone system setup .... mainly a AT&T/Lucent/Avaya Partner system. As I am sure you can imagine, these systems can be pretty pricey if you have to buy quite a few of them.

So we looked around at other multi-line phone options. We found the 955 and it seemed like it would work out great. It had the features we were looking for ... the ability to expand up to 12 extensions and transfer, page, and intercom between those extensions was very appealing. The phones are all corded so you can walk around the office unless you purchase a long cord or headset. The phones have Caller ID capability and a directory of up to 200 names. There are ports on the phone for data (connect fax/answering machines, etc). They have a speakerphone functionality available as well.

Basically they are a very well laid out design and were going to work perfect. Then the bad news came. (This is the same bad news with most of the 3 or 4-line AT&T phones we have found). They are designed to work on a certain voltage telephone line.

Mind you, I am not an electrician by any means. I got shocked once but I don't think that qualifies me. Our company electricians have only found one jobsite where these phones would work throughout the state of Ohio. The reason they work at their current (no pun intended) jobsite is because the local phone company put some type of voltage regulator on the lines to drop the voltage to a certain number. 49.5 is what it is I think. Apparently telephone lines have their own voltage and most are either under or over the amount needed for these phones. So at all our other jobsites they would phantom ring and lights would flash and all kinds of weird things that caused us to give up hope on these phones.

My suggestion is this, if you are going to think about purchasing these phones .... make sure you can get your money refunded if they do not function correctly.

PS - Our electrician has not been able to find the voltage regulators used on the lines at our working jobsite. (They were installed by Verizon).

Happy hunting.