Console headset interface for Cisco IP phone

[RFguy]

I have a dispatch center telling me that they will be upgrading to a Cisco IP based phone system. They run a mix of Zetron 4010 consoles and Motorola Centracom Gold Elite.

Does anyone have any experience with these phones and interface to the console in the following areas:

1: Off-hook contact closure (flag)

2: headset audio to/from console. They use Plantronics H51 headsets and P10 adapters.

3: Logging recorder audio feed from phone

So far the only info that the people that supply the Cisco phone have been able to provide me was music on hold (when I mention radio, they think music).

Thanks in advance.

[Bill_G]

Since you don't have native sip capability in the consoles, you need to ask for a pots interface from the local phone. Depending on the contractor, their solution will be useful and elegant, or nukkin fugly and take lots of rework. They probably won't hand you logging audio, but would prefer to log off the eth packets directly with their own product.

[joescanner]

We're waiting for Bill_G to come back from vacation and tell us that this won't work, but what we're looking at doing is using the TX/RX +/- from the headset jack on the phone into the back of the unit, and jerry-rigging something from the illuminated headset button on the bottom of the deskset for the off-hook contact closure, for the motorola gold elite and older CCII+ consoles (the latter of which use a similar hack to get headset audio from a Siemens/Rolm tradeboard).

[Bill_G]

Ye of little faith. (grin)

We'll figure something out just like we always have. The copper Meridian phones resisted. The fiber Siemens resisted. The Cisco's will too. Have soldering iron, will travel.