Using an analog phone with asterisk

[ABradley]

Well, my boss is set on using his hold 2.4GHz cordless phone when we move to our new building (where I will be implementing AsteriskNOW). I have two questions:

1. By using an analog phone out of the FXS port (in my case, on a Sipura 3000), what, if any, functionality would he lose vs using a regular SIP phone ?

2. If I hookup an analog phone to the FXS port of a Sipura 3000, will that phone only have access to the PSTN line on the FXO port of the same Sipura 3000, or will that FXS port be treated as a completely different device by Asterisk, as if it was any other SIP phone on the network?

[rushowr]

The analog phone would have a Zap channel associated with it and is treated like any other phone.

[ABradley]

per voip-info.org…

The Zap Channel Module provides an interface layer between Asterisk on the one side, and the Zaptel interface drivers on the other side. These drivers, in turn, provide the ability to use interface cards to connect your PBX to traditional digital and analog telephone equipment.

Does that mean that a Sipura 3000 is a “interface card” (like a PCI card) and not an analog terminal adapter (ATA) ?

[rushowr]

Oh wait, I’m sorry…The Sipura 3000 is a SIP ATA…The phone will be treated as a SIP channel, not a zap.

[ABradley]

Oh ok, great, then since I can treat the FXS port on my Sipura 3000 like any other SIP device on the network, I won’t need to buy another ATA to connect the analog phone to Asterisk (via the network). Thanks for the info rush!

So that answers the second question; how about the first:

By using an analog phone out of the FXS port (in my case, on a Sipura 3000), what, if any, functionality would he lose over using a regular SIP phone ?

[Matthew_kleinmann]

The user interface for any functions beyond normal dialing and answering are more convoluted.

Some things, such as not having a voicemail button are pretty easy to deal with. You need to remember the voicemail extension. Other things like how to transfer calls, DND, call forwarding etc, should all be possible, but you generally need to remember a bunch of * commands from an analog phone, where on a most real SIP phones you have buttons for this stuff.