Hi

We currently use Cisco 7960 ip phones and am looking at doing wireless solution to give flexibility to the call centre takers.

We have 2 options.

1. We buy wireless headsets for the phones but these are like £150 a go.

2. We look at using cisco softphones and buy pc wireless headsets which are like £70. At the same time, the physical phones can be reused within the business which gives an increased cost saving.

So, has anyone in a callcentre use a soft phone approach and if so whats there thoughts on voice quality etc. I also have to consider security on the wireless headset options.

Any advice appreciated.

Scott

Phone versions will be DECT and PC versions will be Bluetooth (probably).

Range is theoretically similar but usually better range and quality on DECT. Bluetooth will need to pair if BT, which can become troublesome, and then they are more likely to grow legs as they have use outside of the Call Centre.

Finally, CC versions have to have an element of acoustic protection built in by law (but don't confuse this with full acoustic shock protection). PC wireless would not have to have anything.

Aside from that, there shouldn't be any problems using PC for the voice path as long as the network and PC's are up to scratch. Make sure you don't have a separate architecture for PC's / Phones (unlikely unless implemented a long time ago, quality/latency should be dealt with by VLAN/QoS/etc).

Ensure this is compatible with your BC plan as power failure may result in loss of calls if the PC's may not be on a resilient power supply.