I had a local small businessman approach me about his phone system. He spent a lot of money on an Asterisk based PBX that used M850 mini ITX boxes as servers. Then he had a pile of Aastra Mitel phones included in the package. He was charged about $300 for each phone. These were a combination of 6757i and 6737i SIP phones.
He said that some people had commented when they saw the phones, that they looked nice, but the buttons were small and everyone had become used to their Cisco 79xx series phones. He was looking for another solution.
My first question was about his network configuration, and he mentioned he had a large amount of Cisco routing and switching gear as well. What was going on was he had a Cisco Call Manager Express based PBX and then this Asterisk system, and they are not easily compatible with one another. His network staff talked about converting the Cisco phones to SIP, but he preferred buying more Cisco phones instead. He felt this would bring back some credibility as many want to see Cisco phones on desks.
Over the years: military installations, government buildings and city and county infrastructure has migrated to Cisco based hardware. It is so common that many people do not trust anything else. The Aastra Mitel phones worked, but the end users wanted larger buttons and some felt they were light and cheap feeling. Aastra Mitel merged and consolidated and end of lifed some models of phones. You also can't use the configuration file for one model in the other. Be sure to use 6757i config in a 6757i phone for example.
In the end, more of these 7940's were purchased and the Asterisk PBX was replaced with the CME on the Cisco router.
In 2016, a Cisco 7940 or 7960 phone with no power adapter, running power over ethernet (PoE) should not cost more than about $10. They can be found online and surplus stores. You need a router and switch for power and Call Manager or Call Manager Express to use them.
For some this is a good way to go, Cisco Systems work, but they do have backdoors and security vulnerabilities. I am not a Cisco geek, and not making money off of any of their products, just showing that these phones can be bought cheaply and may make for a better presentation to those that seem to care.
