VOIP and Siemens Gigaset, first impression.

[Satsearching]

After reading mike557’s posts on voip, I quickly decided on getting an IP phone to tackle the wife’s horrendous phone bills, as she is not teckie I needed something that looked and worked just like an ordinary cordless home phone for her.

Today my Siemens Gigaset C475 IP arrived (with 1 extra handset).
It comes with a base station that has a standard RJ45 and Analogue phone socket with connecting leads (it’s a dual phone so works with IP and normal phone connection) and mains adapter, also on the base is a paging button like normal cordless phones. Just plug into a spare ethernet port on your router.

Each phone has a separate charging station with mains transformer.

Connected everything up, batteries fitted in both phones then sat in charging stations. Within seconds the phone that came with the main base station kit flagged up an sms message saying a firmware update was available. Pressing ok initiated an instant and seamless update (as default the base unit was set to dhcp so it straight away connected to the internet for this update info).

As the other handset was supplied in a separate box, this needed "pairing" to the base station before it could talk to the base station, a few simple button presses as per instructions and it was working. It didn’t flag up as needing a firmware update (maybe the separate handset was from a newer batch or the update was actually for the base station?)

A CD came with the kit, but after a quick play with one handset I found the base unit had grabbed 192.168.1.103 from my router so I put this into IE.

It appears there are 3 ways to setup your sip details, either enter an auto config code (if your IP phone service provides one), or select from drop down boxes, or enter manually, as below I had to set manually but was pretty easy.



Then I had a look at Info Services, this connected to the Internet and gave me the following.


Cool! You can set the LCD screen on the phone when in standby to show your local weather, or an RSS feed or your Biorhythm or your Horoscope or keep an eye on an Ebay bid! Pictures below don’t do the screen justice, it is a very clear and colourful screen. There is some other info service in the menu that says it won’t be available till June 2009 (whatever that is).


I set up an account with smartvoip and had it working in no time, calls to UK mobiles are 5.3p per min including vat, calls to local landlines are free (if within your 300 free mins per 7 days). When in use I could not tell the difference to a normal phone, it works perfect. Then the wife had a go, while she was nattering on the phone to a friend I picked up the other handset and called someone else at the same time! Cool !

Smartvoip shows on your account website all calls made, duration, number dialled and cost (listing the local calls as free). Only scratched the surface after just a couple of hours playing, not tried this phone on normal analogue line yet (need to run an extension cable nearer to my router) but so far I am dead impressed with this phone and voip in general, with our phone bills this should pay itself in 2 months!

Word of warning! When signing up to a voip provider and wanting to use a sip device, make sure the provider does support sip! I first signed up to voipzoom to find out they don’t support sip so limited to PC software/calling.

SS

[pt-1]

Good Forum:

http://www.ip-phone-forum.de/forumdisplay.php?f=535

[PaphosAL]

That sounds cool, SS- any chance of a Tute? LOL!

One thing disturbs me though... I see on your BioRhythm screen that out of a possible 100 score for 'Intellectual' - it only rated you at 06...



Excellent report, m8- and glad you're up and running so quickly!! AL

[lincsat]

I have the Siemens A58, smaller screen on the handset but does the same job. Calls via Sipgate are excellent quality (better than BT). I believe it can handle several VoIP providers like the Fritz box can.

One tip, in your router DHCP settings, assign the phone a fixed IP, then you don't have to search for it's IP address after a re-boot

[mike557]

Thanks SS.
Does the phone support multiple sip accounts simulatneously?
If so, then worth registering with sipgate.co.uk and getting a free incoming telephone number. The great thing about voip is that you can always take your number with you if you move (provided you have broadband).

[PaphosAL]

From the link that SS provided in his original thread, Mike:

Multiline with up to 6 SIP accounts: Configure up to 6 SIP accounts from different providers & assign accounts indiviually to handsets

Cheers- AL

[mike557]

Thanks AL - missed that

Multiline with up to 6 SIP accounts: Configure up to 6 SIP accounts from different providers & assign accounts indiviually to handsets

I was asking because the screen shots do not seem to allow multiple sip accounts. From the quote it says 'assign accounts individually'.

So does the phone support multiple simultaneous accounts on the same handset?

It says it can handle 3 simultaneous calls which sounds interesting but that could be

1 - Landline
2 - VOIP
3 - Extension to extension (internal dect call).

So still a bit puzzled.
Mike

[PaphosAL]

Yes- I had to read that again in SS's report, Mike. He deffo states that his good wife was on the voip phone to someone, and he then used the other handset to voip call someone else at the same time. Then the important bit- his base station isn't yet plugged into the analogue phone point yet, until he gets an extension cable!

Maybe SS will throw some more light on it for us? Cheers- AL

[Satsearching]

The sip account settings pic above are from inside the IP1 "Edit" screen, the screen before this one shows it can have 6 seperate sip accounts? (as below).




I have not tried it with analogue yet and only setup 1 sip account. If you want to see more screenshots from within the other option on the left, I can post some if it helps (still don't understand it all here lol).

Couple of questions.

1. I rung a friend who has incoming withheld call baring on his phone so I couldn't get through, can I somehow make it work so when I call someone it displays a number?

2. This phone supports sms but don't know how to get it working or even if smartvoip supports it?

Cheers
SS

[mike557]

If you run the smartvoip application, it should let you verify your telephone number.
It does this by calling you and quotes a number which you need to enter.
As for setting outgoing clid in the phone, that may be the Display Name option in the phone, if not I have no idea how to send clid.
The finarea companies do support clid which I have working through the PABX.