Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Need a Phone At Your Desk?

First time accepted submitter its a trappist! writes "When I started my career back in the early 1990s, everyone had a 'business phone' phone on their desk. The phone was how your co-workers, customers, friends and family got in touch with you during the business day. It had a few features that everyone used — basic calling, transfer, hold, mute, three-way calling (if you could figure it out). This was before personal mobile phones or corporate IM, so the phone was basically the one and only means of real-time communication in the office. Flash forward 20 years. Today I have a smart phone, corporate IM, several flavors of personal IM, the Skype client and several flavors of collaboration software including Google Apps/Docs, GoToMeeting. My wife and daughter call me or text me on the cell phone. My co-workers who are too lazy or passive aggressive to wander into my office use IM. My brother in Iraq uses Skype. I use GoToMeeting and its built-in VoIP with customers. The big black phone sits there gathering dust. I use it for conference calls a few times each month. I'm sure that there are sales people out there who would rather give up a body part than their trusty office phone, but do any of the rest of us need them? Around here, the younger engineers frequently unplug them and stick them in a cabinet to free up desk space. Are the days of the office phone (and the office phone system) at an end?"

Comments

I certainly don't

[jevring]

Like the OP, we use Skype officially at the company. I have even given my phone to my desk neighbor...

Re:I certainly don't

[mdsharpe]

Same here. The company I work for recently moved offices and we didn't bother getting a phone system in the new place. We got a bunch of USB handsets that were desgined to be used with MS Communicator / Lync, but they work great with Skype.

Re:I certainly don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Same here. The company I work for recently moved offices and we didn't bother getting a phone system in the new place. We got a bunch of USB handsets that were desgined to be used with MS Communicator / Lync, but they work great with Skype.

Okay, so they plug in somewhere different but aren't they the "office phones"? In which case it sounds like you do need them. Maybe I misunderstood the original question.

Re:I certainly don't

[somersault]

Maybe I misunderstood the original question.

You did. It was specifically about do we need dedicated desk phones, not "do we need to communicate with one another". The summary even mentioned VoIP.

95% of my incoming calls are reception asking if I want to speak to somebody trying to sell me something. My coworkers and bosses can already mail or Skype IM me. I'd love to get rid of my phone, but I'm not sure I can justify it quite yet.

Re:I certainly don't

[MightyYar]

The original question was a little ambiguous... do they mean "phone" as in a dedicated chunk of hardware for talking on or do they mean "phone" as in some way to interface with POTS? We are phasing out our POTS phones, but we still have a do-dad hooked up to our computers. Many of us also have company-issued cell phones. The computer do-dad (hooked into Office Communicator) is mostly for making international calls, since no cell carrier sells competitive international service. I personally still have a desk phone for international calls, since they haven't switched me over yet.

Re:I certainly don't

[Anonymous Coward]

It was specifically about do we need dedicated desk phones

I got that. I guess I don't understand why a "USB handset" isn't a "dedicated desk phone".

Re:I certainly don't

[jellomizer]

The key advantage of the office phone is that it should be your common protocol inside and outside your organization.
I have an office phone and I still use it. Because if I need to call someone outside my organization I know they will support my telephone call. Not hassle with having them get on skype or install another software or sign up to a service.... I just give them a call. Sure you can use Skype or your Cell Phone. But why should you expect to pay to call out.

Next your phone is always on. Software can get easily closed, for the most part your phone is always on.

Finally you usually get a consistently clear signal. Cell phones break in or out, Skype and other services sometime will glitch on you, however if you are using a LAN line you are not the one on the phone who will need to disrupt the meeting and try to call back.

Re:I certainly don't

[PIBM]

Sadly, that's blatantly false; if your company is using skype and linked a phone number to the account or a virtual PBX in front, then you will certainly be interrupted exactly as with your normal phone. That also applies to any other systems allowing phone numbers to be plugged in..

Re:I certainly don't

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of my incoming calls are reception asking if I want to speak to somebody trying to sell me something.

Sounds like you need a new receptionist.

Re:I certainly don't

[somersault]

Sure if you link it up to a phone system then it acts like a phone, but Skype by default doesn't do that. I have Skype credit and can phone and text outside numbers if I really want to - but I haven't set up a Skype number for other people to contact me on.

Re:I certainly don't

[somersault]

She's actually way better than the previous ones in that she asks rather than just passing the calls through. In some cases I do actually want to speak to the person that calls up. I think when she hears that for example someone is phoning from "Microsoft" she usually thinks it must be important computer related business, when really it's just a Microsoft Certified Partner or some shit. I have no reason I'd want to speak directly to anyone from Microsoft either..

Re:I certainly don't

[GLMDesigns]

I don't either. The last two places I worked at didn't even offer desk phones. They paid for the mobile carrier. We used Skype, IM, GoToMeeting. The only "phone" was in the conference room.

Re:I certainly don't

[PlusFiveTroll]

LAND line, as in not radio, wireless, non-physical medium. You don't hear that saying much anymore since such a huge portion of phones aren't on the telephones system copper any more, and that wireless is generally 'good enough'.

An IP phone would use a LAN line :P

Re:I certainly don't

[alexander_686]

A phone has 2 components.

1. A POTS line. Our firm dropped that in favor of VOIP this month. This is a technical, not functional difference – so it can be ignored for this question.
2. A hunk of plastic (preferably Bakelite) on your desk which is a single function device. We still have those – and I kind of need it. (Combination of cheapness and having to monitor calls for regulatory purposes. VOIP on the laptop would cause compliance issues and bandwidth issues (maybe – or at least that the story we are getting from the network people))

So don’t be too pedantic.

Re:I certainly don't

[flappinbooger]

The original question was a little ambiguous... do they mean "phone" as in a dedicated chunk of hardware for talking on or do they mean "phone" as in some way to interface with POTS? We are phasing out our POTS phones, but we still have a do-dad hooked up to our computers. Many of us also have company-issued cell phones. The computer do-dad (hooked into Office Communicator) is mostly for making international calls, since no cell carrier sells competitive international service. I personally still have a desk phone for international calls, since they haven't switched me over yet.

That's just it.

What do you do if you GET a phone call? Does it play on your computer speakers for all to hear the results of your "test" at the Dr's office? Headphones? Bluetooth in your ear all day? Is it going through your smartphone? What if the battery is almost dead and you've forgotten your charger? What if it falls out of your pocket into the toilet? What if it forcecloses the phone app because you installed a buggy copy of fruit ninja 12? What if your battery only lasts an hour because of a rogue weather app that won't stay closed?

I think people still need something permanent for POTS calls if it's an office environment, but it's going to get way cheaper and simpler.

Maybe a POTS style receiver attached to the PC via USB or actually into the sound card mic-in and phones-out and the pc app has a speakerphone function.

But it's still something LIKE a traditional phone.

Re:I certainly don't

[hawguy]

The original question was a little ambiguous... do they mean "phone" as in a dedicated chunk of hardware for talking on or do they mean "phone" as in some way to interface with POTS? We are phasing out our POTS phones, but we still have a do-dad hooked up to our computers. Many of us also have company-issued cell phones. The computer do-dad (hooked into Office Communicator) is mostly for making international calls, since no cell carrier sells competitive international service. I personally still have a desk phone for international calls, since they haven't switched me over yet.

That's just it.

What do you do if you GET a phone call? Does it play on your computer speakers for all to hear the results of your "test" at the Dr's office? Headphones? Bluetooth in your ear all day?What if it forcecloses the phone app because you installed a buggy copy of fruit ninja 12? What if your battery only lasts an hour because of a rogue weather app that won't stay closed?

In my office we have a smart phone app that runs on the desktop, when a call comes in you can put the headset on (if you're not already wearing it) and take the call, much like you pick up the handset from a traditional phone.

Is it going through your smartphone? What if the battery is almost dead and you've forgotten your charger?

My phone system lets me forward calls to my cell phone if I want to. I haven't owned a cellphone in years that can't be charged via USB, and I always keep a USB cable connected to my computer so I can charge if it I want to - so I never "forget" my charger.

What if it falls out of your pocket into the toilet?

The same thing that happens if I spill coffee on my desk phone - call IT and tell them I need a replacement.

Re:I certainly don't

[hawguy]

95% of my incoming calls are reception asking if I want to speak to somebody trying to sell me something.

Sounds like you need a new receptionist.

When Reception forwards calls, my phone shows a different incoming number than when they call me directly (i.e. to announce I have a visitor). I almost always ignore their forwarded calls since they are nearly always salespeople, letting them go to voice mail. For a while I had one of the receptionists forward my calls direct to my voicemail, but there's been so much turnover in Reception, it's hard to keep them doing it.

Re:I certainly don't

[omglolbah]

We are banned from using skype on the corporate network.

It is 'p2p based' so it is considered dangerous by IT security... This is a company with 150k employees and a massive IT infrastructure spanning 50+ countries.... still all p2p is dangerous :p

Re:I certainly don't

[MightyYar]

Maybe a POTS style receiver attached to the PC via USB or actually into the sound card mic-in and phones-out and the pc app has a speakerphone function.

Basically, that's what the do-dad is. It plugs into the USB port and lets you talk. Some people here have headsets, some have these little handsets that hook to the side of the monitor to "hang up" and others have something that looks like a standard office phone. But they all are just fancy speakers and microphones for Office Communicator. I still have a POTS phone, but it is scheduled to disappear.

Re:I certainly don't

[Half-pint HAL]

Yes, but most companies using VOIP have a bridge and virtual exchange to connect it to the phone network, so as to use it as a soft replacement for the dedicated phone.

Re:I certainly don't

[MightyYar]

In that case, the answer at my company is an unqualified "yes". We do a lot of international calling, and cell phones are inadequate. We use Office Communicator for more and more of that, but it's still hooked to a "phone" through the USB port.

Re:I certainly don't

[somersault]

Well, technically our "dedicated phones" here are VoIP too.. I guess the way I really think of the question is "do you guys still feel the need to have dedicated devices with a dialing pad hooked up to the legacy global phone protocol".

Re:I certainly don't

[Half-pint HAL]

And my answer is "I'll trade in my desk phone for a softphone if the IT helpdesk promise not to ask me to turn my PC off and back on again when I call up for assistance." ;-)

Re:I certainly don't

[nabsltd]

In my office we have a smart phone app that runs on the desktop, when a call comes in you can put the headset on (if you're not already wearing it) and take the call, much like you pick up the handset from a traditional phone.

So, in order to receive a "phone call", your computer needs to be running, the phone app needs to be running, the network connection needs to be working, and the phone server software (which translates from POTS to your VOIP system) needs to be working. In addition, you still need enough POTS infrastructure to be able to handle simultaneous calls to the VOIP server.

I suppose you could let a third party handle the conversion and just run VOIP from them to your office, but then you end up relying on the Internet connection between them and you, and you get some pretty nasty vendor lock in (if they raise your monthly fee, you pretty much have to pay, at least for long enough to find a different provider that is compatible with your existing headsets).

Re:I certainly don't

[shutdown -p now]

Enterprise VoIP software integrates with your landline phone service. So for you, it's a single client, but when you call someone outside the org, you just dial their number (using that same client).

Re:I certainly don't

[ottothecow]

To be fair, a business usually has money to pay for services (and except for skype-to-skype calls, you have to pay for skype too). Why would you want 150k employees running a p2p app?

It's not a security risk, just a waste of bandwidth. Instead of clogging up your network with other people's skype traffic, why not just use a VOIP system that might cost slightly more but will just go straight from your network to the provider's network and then onto the phone lines?

But what do I know...we have an old school desk phone system (ROLM phones) and I love it. Call quality is great, the phones seem indestructible, and I have a nice speakerphone so that I can listen in on long conference calls where I don't have to talk. The phonemail system is ancient and archaic, but it still functions just fine. It gives me lots of transfer, conference, and hold options that mobile phones don't have, and unlike some software on my computer, I can still use it to call IT when my laptop can't connect to the network.

Re:I certainly don't

[Darinbob]

I use a phone at my desk because my coworkers don't all have my personal number, thankfully. And it's basically a black hole for recruiters too.

The deskphones are also ergonomically much nicer than mobile phones.

Re:I certainly don't

[somersault]

A very good point :p

Re:I certainly don't

[rnturn]

"95% of my incoming calls are reception asking if I want to speak to somebody trying to sell me something."

You just made the case for keeping the business's phone on your desk. Otherwise the sales people you normally deal with at work will be calling you at your mobile number when you're on vacation, etc.

Re:I certainly don't

[wiedzmin]

Yeap, I've been using a VoIP "soft phone" for years, both at home and in the office.

Re:I certainly don't

[hawguy]

In my office we have a smart phone app that runs on the desktop, when a call comes in you can put the headset on (if you're not already wearing it) and take the call, much like you pick up the handset from a traditional phone.

So, in order to receive a "phone call", your computer needs to be running,
  the phone app needs to be running,

Right, but if my computer is not running, I'm not getting any work done anyway, so that's not much of a hardship. Users that don't want a softphone that runs on their computer can ask for a desk phone, but I'd rather not give up the desk space to something I rarely use.

the network connection needs to be working,

I haven't worked in an office in the past 5 years that didn't have a VOIP phone system, so Network is always a dependency for a modern phone system.

and the phone server software (which translates from POTS to your VOIP system) needs to be working

Our phone vendor calls that a media gateway - we have two of them, each with its own set of T1 lines, so if one goes down, the other takes over seamlessly (except for dropping any active calls). We also have a SIP trunk that we route international calls over since our normal phone provider has terrible international rates.

In addition, you still need enough POTS infrastructure to be able to handle simultaneous calls to the VOIP server.

We have no POTS lines, and didn't have any even before this "new fangled" voip phone system was installed about 5 or 6 years ago - before VOIP it was a "digital" system, but still had calls coming in over T1 lines, no POTS lines at all. Well, we have a few for emergency use.

I suppose you could let a third party handle the conversion and just run VOIP from them to your office, but then you end up relying on the Internet connection between them and you, and you get some pretty nasty vendor lock in (if they raise your monthly fee, you pretty much have to pay, at least for long enough to find a different provider that is compatible with your existing headsets).

SIP is a standard for VOIP and mostly works well - at home I have a couple SIP endpoints (SIP phones and an analog-to-SIP gateway that I use for my cordless phone) and they all connect over the internet to my SIP provider. I've changed SIP providers 3 times over the past few years, and have ported my phone number with it, so there's no vendor lock in.

Re:I certainly don't

[LinuxIsGarbage]

We are banned from using Skype on our corporate PCs. We're also not allowed to use "pear to pear" software.

Re:I certainly don't

[thejynxed]

Actually, Skype has been deemed a high security risk since the sale to Microsoft. They changed the back-end architecture and none of it has been audited for compliance for Sarbanes-Oxley, security clearance use, etc. I know our DoD compliance officer specifically forbid its use on our corporate networks, and we specifically had to have calls originating from Skype clients blocked. The software itself, and Microsoft, do not provide auditing ability for any use of Skype.

If you work in the health care/insurance industries, it is also not HIPAA compliant in the least, and you/your organization would be breaking the law by using it for business purposes.

Re:I certainly don't

[Technician]

Skype charges for incomming calls. A US free alternative is Google Voice in combination with IPPI.fr and a ATA such as a Linksys PAP2-AT. Google Voice calls, Skype Calls and Landline calls to your Google Voice number will ring your desk phone. Works great. Use Google Voice to place the calls and you can call all of the US and Canada for free without using cell phone minutes.

Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[rolfwind]

Landlines are tied to a place.

Each will have pros and cons and which on is appropriate for the situation depends on this basic fact.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[emj]

Yes I do find that land lines or stationary phones do have a place, I really like being able to call home to someone, or to a specific place. Especially when I know I can only be helped if someone is at that specific place. But considering the amount of cellphones I can have in my pocket on a bad day I would say cell phones are tied to a service; i.e. the service I provide to my family and friends, my work, and soccer practice etc.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[serviscope_minor]

Landlines are tied to a place.

With older systems, sure.

Last big place I worked, the "landlines" were all voip phones running on a virtual network (to ensure QoS) on the same network switches as the regular gig-e network. It used a standard SIP backbone and you could port the number around the place or, in fact to any computer including a cellphone with a data connection. That's not much of a problem in the UK since you can get enough data for voice calls cheaply enough (£10 /mo).

Was it worth it? Probably. The voice quality was generally substantially better than skype, probably because of the decent microphone and QoS within the local network at any rate. Also, for some reason about 80% of the UK population seem to be incapable of keeping their cellphone number when changing provider (even though it's a legal requirement for the companies to let you port it) and with some people, this seems to involve changing numbers on a fairly regular basis.

In contrast, because the voip phone system was semi-sane and administered by semi-sane people, it was more common to keep a number for longer. I say semi sane because there was about a 30% chance of changing number when moving office, based mostly on the flip of a biased coin.

Office phones can also have the advantage that after a set number of rings, they go through to the local secretary, or another worker. I wouldn't want my cellphone to be forwarded to a cow orker if I didn't pick up soon enough.

TL;DR if you can't pick up office "landline" calls on a cellphone then you're comparing an ancient office phone system to a modern cellphone system which is not really a fair comparison.

Oh and fun fact:

Advanced prototype office phone systems in the late 90s had all those features, automatic porting, mobile options, apps and, of course, icon grids and touch screens.

http://www.xorl.org/people/njh/bpstory/index.html

Sadly those never came available even though they would still kick ass.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Anonymous Coward]

Landlines are tied to a place.

You kidding? We have IP phones in our building... you walk into a lab, you login on the phone at that station... instantly it's an exact duplicate of the phone at your desk from accepting calls, to speed dial lists...

When I get home I login on the exact same model phone and the exact same thing happens.

Hell once Avaya patents the idea of an RF proximity dongle there won't even be a need to login... just standing near a phone that is programmed to recognize my key will have it login--and likewise the phones will know not to bother ringing if I'm not around...

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Sique]

They came available. I am deploying them. Not very often (they are expensive!), but there you go.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Anonymous Coward]

"Office phones can also have the advantage that after a set number of rings, they go through to the local secretary, or another worker. I wouldn't want my cellphone to be forwarded to a cow orker if I didn't pick up soon enough."

I wouldn't want my cell phone calls routed to a cow worker either. They don't know squat about OT!

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[VoiceOfSanity]

Landlines also have an interesting benefit... cost. Let me give you an example, using the company I work for. A landline (actually a VoIP phone but is a physical phone) runs roughly $20 a month, no matter how often you use it. On the phone for five minutes a day or five hours, it's the same flat rate, all of $20.

Now, take that cellphone. The way the cellphone companies handle their contracts, you have a base monthly charge for the device (basic cellphone may be less than $10 a month, an iPhone/Android/Blackberry may run you $25-30 a month). Now, calls to company numbers, company mobile devices and 1-800/866/888 numbers aren't billed... but anything outside of that is billed at a per-minute rate. So suddenly that nice shiny iPhone that you use 4 hours a day is racking up a $100 a month charge to your company. Multiply it by the number of employees all doing the same... and suddenly the landline phone looks like a financial bargain to the company.

But since companies today want 24/7 access to their employees, it's the price you pay for requiring your employees to carry those ball-and-chain devices on their hips or in their purses.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[metalmaster]

Also, for some reason about 80% of the UK population seem to be incapable of keeping their cellphone number when changing provider (even though it's a legal requirement for the companies to let you port it) and with some people, this seems to involve changing numbers on a fairly regular basis.

If it works anything like it does here in the States, customers have to have their account number and security pin readily available when switching carriers

Your security pin is something you should know off hand if you bother with the carrier on a regular basis. Some carriers even tie that to your voicemail so if youre checking voicemail you know your pin. However, the account number is a pain because the only place you'll see that is on your monthly statement. I dont know anyone who carries their statement with them even if they know they're coming to the phone store. The only option from there is to call the carrier to speak with a rep who can tell you your account number.That takes time, and most people just wanna get a phone and get out.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Teun]

Indeed, since a couple of years we use a Cisco VOIP system were the old local numbers have been ported to.

There's such a phone on every desk around the world, when I'm logged in on it calls to my local number are automatically forwarded as if I were in my home office.
You can also call up an app on your computer and use the same VOIP number.
We do keep separate mobile numbers but it is possible for us or the reception at the home office to set a forward to the mobile.

Personally I hate being on the tether of a mobile phone so the only time I carry one is when a specific job (consignment, weekend duties) demands it, when that particular task is over the phone is returned to IT. As a matter of fact, we use some dumb phones (many days of battery life!) with their own number for weekend/night duties, the Duty Phone, and at the end of the duty it's handed to the next victim.

I couldn't do without the old fashioned office phone, that's how our clients contact me and it's a lot more comfortable than a mobile.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, In Canada it's dead easy too. At least when I did it 3 years ago. Get a hard copy of your bill, bring some ID that matches the name on the bill, and you are set. You don't even have to call up and cancel your old service. But, on the other hand, you really shouldn't be switching carriers so often. If they suck so much that you want to switch after a couple months, you probably didn't read the contract close enough (hidden fees), or you didn't read reviews that would have told you how bad their service is.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[mystik]

Grandstream is good for "cheap" phones of acceptable quality. They just recently announced this:

http://www.grandstream.com/index.php/products/ip-voice-telephony/enterprise-ip-phones/gxp2200

Although it might sound nice to have the whole interface be a touch screen, I think that the hard-keys for dedicated functions end up improving the usability of the device.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[PhotoJim]

Not to mention, POTS phone service is a lot higher quality than cellular. It's less likely to go down, and the audio quality is superior. VoIP is a little harder to gauge because there are far more variables with it, but good VoIP is higher quality than cellular (although uptime may not be better).

Also, a good wired telephone handset is a lot more comfortable to use than any mobile phone. (On a really long call, handsfree wins, but most times I use my handset.)

To me this is sort of like the argument, "What's better, trucks or cars?" Umm... depends?

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Anonymous Coward]

Never worked for an enterprise have you.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[PlusFiveTroll]

I suspect this is one of the reasons AT&T isn't in more financial hurt.

Companies use to pay Ma-Bell a lot for long distance (and Bell was good at rounding up in its own favor come billing time). Since the advent of the internet and voip lines, and services like my cable company that has no long distance fees with there telephone service, that has to hurt. Now AT&T has the companies hooked on huge cell bills for their income.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[omnichad]

Oooh! That's a NICE phone! I want one.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure some people may constantly change numbers out of laziness, but others do so to drop former contacts. Lazy or shady, I'd rather avoid these people.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Darinbob]

Well, most workers are also figuratively tied to a place as well, their desks or labs or workstations.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't want my cell phone calls routed to a cow worker either. They don't know squat about OT!

It's a cow orker and it's a technical term.

Re:Cell phones are usually tied to a person

[KingRatMass]

All you need to do is go to a new carrier and sign on for service with them. As someone else stated, have a copy of a bill from your previous carrier. Your new carrier will generate a Letter of Authorization for a number port, you sign the LoA. Then the LoA and the copy of your bill that clearly shows the Billing Telephone Number and/or the number being ported are submitted by an agent or the carrier to your old carrier. If all the information on th LoA and Bill is correct, you number will be ported to the new carrier. The process takes 1-7 days in the US typically. If there is any info wrong on the LoA or bill, the old carrier has up to 30 days to notify of a failed port and you have to repeat the process with the correct info

I have 3 LoA's and 3 bills sitting on my desk, next to my work SIP phone, that are being submitted today for number ports. One is waiting for the customer to resubmit the correct bill since the number being ported does not appear on the bill they submit. The original carrier was slick and used the BTN of the customers DSL service for the number being ported.

My work SIP phone has several inbound paths, Toll free, DID, SIP, etc... It also routes calls to different places like my cell phone, other SIP Phones inside our company and even a remote extension at home. All my call forwards are setup and controlled by me. The question of whether or not I need a phone at my desk is as pointless as asking whether I need a computer at my desk. I need a device for voice communication when I'm at, near, or under my desk... and a desk phone happens to be the best device for the job. I'm the opposite with my computer, my desktop PC is relegated to basic functions, my laptop is the one I use to do all my real work.

No

[SirJorgelOfBorgel]

As is the rule with "Ask Slashdot", the answer to the question is "no".

I haven't had a dedicated desk phone in years. Lots of people don't even have their own desks anymore. Skype/IM or if really needed many companies (at least over here) will give you a smartphone just for work purposes.

I Understand the Pain

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the typewriter.
I used to be cool. The cool tool that everyone loved.
The young nubile secretaries pushed my buttons :D and the writers tapped me until I became a conduit to their magical worlds.
I was the greatest invention since the phone.
And then suddenly, rather gradually... it was over.
Now I sit in a closet collecting dust.

I feel your plight, office phone. I feel it.

Re:I Understand the Pain

[Anonymous Coward]

I am the typewriter. I used to be cool.

My father had a counter-argument to this.

He had to produce a lot of documentation, and although he could have written it long-handed or dictated it and given the his work to a secretary to type, he found it easier to type it himself. He could type at 75 WPM, and he found it easiest to compose his writing this way.

His coworkers teased him for doing this, comparing him to a "mere" secretary, but since this worked best for him, he ignored the teasing.

One day, they took away his typewriter and replaced it with a personal computer. These were still exotic novelties, and not widely-used. He learned how to use the work processing software, and he continued to type in his work, as though he was still sitting in front of a typewriter.

His coworkers suddenly decided that he was cool and computer-savvy because he was using this new technology.

He laughed about it, because he was doing exactly the same thing he had always done. But because his new "typewriter" was cool, suddenly so was he.

Re:I Understand the Pain

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to sound too "Steve Jobszy" but the typewriter had advantages over handwriting, but then the computer came along and did everything the typewriter did, but better (well, at least the computer + printer combo).

I don't feel like the office/landline phone is obsolete. It still has advantages over cells:
- no practical restrictions on size, calling time.
- think large office buildings and cell phone reception.
- tied to a place, not a person
- can't be moved, misplaced, etc...

Certainly not dead

[millsey]

Besides I try to avoid giving out my mobile number. Keep work calls at work, don't need to be called after I have already clocked off or am on holiday

Depends...

[ericloewe]

Having a phone on your desk can be crucial if you have to pretend you're doing serious work when someone important walks by. Cell phones or IM aren't as convincing, even if you are working.
There's something about text that makes it inherently less efficient than a simple call, and once you start using IM, you tend not to use video or audio.

None of this means you need a phone system, just a phone that uses your cell phone for handling the calls.

Re:Depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

Text isn't always "inherently less efficient than a simple call". Off the top of my head, and thinking about IM, it can be a lot easier to catch up on a conversation if you can just read the transcript of what's happened so far; it can be easier to understand text instead of a heavy accent over a bad phone line; and it's a lot easier to put snippets of log files into an IM session. I could probably go on.

Re:Depends...

[Anonymous Coward]

I indeed find the 'old' phones more comfy then mobiles. The cable thing is actually a good thing - a friend of mine told me once shortens the time his wife spends on the phone :) I can have my number transferred to any phone in the whole building (provided I remember the pin). Connection quality deteriorated since operators moved all networks to VoiP - it maybe hard to imagine for US folk but that is indeed true - in Europe we used to have quite a lot of services that actually provided better quality for all then it was ever the case in US and it was not only phones and TV...... But I diverse. I frankly see no point of replacing working system with new one is old one provides the same or better service. I also noticed that IM or chatting is quite good for some activities. Sometimes it is much more efficient to get somebody on the phone and get explanations in 2 minutes instead of after half an hour of typing and mispselling. This of course does not mean phones will stay - in our Swedish branch there are no phones in the offices which allowed to find out that holding a phone conference on a mobile is extremely painful

Re:Depends...

[cyberchondriac]

Honestly, I hate the fact that I even have a phone at my desk. I'm in front of my computer most all day, we have something called, "email", and it's been around for decades. But far too many people at my place of work still prefer the phone as their primary method of communication, as though it's still 1947. Granted, if there's a problem with email, then we need the phone, but it's rare that we don't discover the problem before the users at that post office call us.
The thing about phones is, IMO, they're kinda rude: when they ring, it's like, "drop what you're doing, whatever train of thought you're in the middle of, *right now* and answer me, I have priority!" (allowing your phone to go on ringing and then to voicemail is frowned upon around here, and it looks like you're ignoring your job, even if that's not the case). With email, I have a few minutes to find a good break point, and I check it every few minutes.
Add'y, email provides communication in black and white; there's none of the, "he said, she said" BS, there's no escaping accountability, it's in writing. A phone call, on the other hand, leaves no record of what was actually said (at least not without some recording equipment). Then there's the benefit that if you need to refresh your memory, it's easier to revisit and get the info again, rather than calling the info source back. Last but not least, there's no dealing with poor connections and unintelligible accents. I'm usually horrible at understanding speech if it's not relatively clear or if there's background noise.

Sometimes, you need a phone - emergencies for example, but I'd prefer it if that's all they're used for.

3-way calls

[msevior]

I could never figure out how to do those...

Actually I have a fancy VOIP phone which I regularly use along with all the other communication tools listed. I regularly use Video conferencing and skype but the phone has been a very useful fallback when internet connectivity isn't where it should be.

Re:3-way calls

[Anonymous Coward]

You do understand what the IP in VOIP means, right?

Re:3-way calls

[Anonymous Coward]

Most business-style VoIP systems have line cards or voice gateways for park connectivity. True 100% IP connectivity is rare if a call leaves an organization.

The org still gets benefits like only needing one network infrastructure, easy phone mobility, etc.

Re:3-way calls

[msevior]

Yes. But it looks like a fancy POTS phone with a handset, buttons etc.People call it via dialing a number. The fact that it plugs into our LAN is only mildly connected to it's core functionality.

Hang on

[Psychotria]

In one breath you are labelling people who use IM "passive aggressive" (are they really?) and in the next you seem to be advocating getting rid of the phone for other methods of communication (including IM). That doesn't make much sense at all. Also, why does using IM mean or imply as person is passive aggressive. Do you actually know what passive aggressive is, or is it just a buzzword for you? I ask because if someone were truly passive aggressive they probably wouldn't include you in the IM at all.

Re:Hang on

[Psychotria]

I'd like to add to this. I am quite positive that my senior management do not know what "passive aggressive" is. Let's take an example. Recently I was in a meeting with senior management and a potential client. My boss asked the client "can we have a brief about this?" This client said "This is the brief" and moved on with the conversation. After the meeting my boss said the client was passive aggressive because of his answer to that question. Actually, that was not a passive aggressive response at all -- it was more closely assertive. A passive aggressive person would have replied "sure" and then never sent a brief. A passive aggressive person very rarely says "no". I can't see the link between IM and passive aggressiveness at all.

Re:Hang on

[Xenx]

In one breath you are labelling people who use IM "passive aggressive" (are they really?) and in the next you seem to be advocating getting rid of the phone for other methods of communication (including IM). That doesn't make much sense at all. Also, why does using IM mean or imply as person is passive aggressive. Do you actually know what passive aggressive is, or is it just a buzzword for you? I ask because if someone were truly passive aggressive they probably wouldn't include you in the IM at all.

I can't speak for the poster, but he said his passive aggressive co-workers use IM. He didn't actually call IM users passive aggressive. There is a distinct difference between those two statements.

Re:Hang on

[Psychotria]

I can't speak for the poster, but he said his passive aggressive co-workers use IM. He didn't actually call IM users passive aggressive. There is a distinct difference between those two statements.

The implication was/is that passive aggressive people in his/her company are more likely to use IM rather than picking up the phone. It doesn't make sense at all.

Re:Hang on

[Stickerboy]

I can't speak for the poster, but he said his passive aggressive co-workers use IM. He didn't actually call IM users passive aggressive. There is a distinct difference between those two statements.

The implication was/is that passive aggressive people in his/her company are more likely to use IM rather than picking up the phone. It doesn't make sense at all.

It makes perfect sense. Passive-aggressives avoid visible and outright conflict or argument. Why would they want to have a conversation that could turn negative when they could simply shoot off a text or email?

Re:Hang on

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're using IM!! Pay attention! They're still having that live conversation.

Re:Hang on

[Psychotria]

But they're using IM!! Pay attention! They're still having that live conversation.

100% correct.

Re:Hang on

[LatePaul]

But they are different kinds of conversation.

Here's something that happens to me a lot. I get an IM asking me a question, in order to answer it I need a bit more information so I ask a question. I wait. Just at the point where I think there's no reply coming and I can re-focus on whatever I was doing before I get an answer. I reply, adding a further request for information. Repeat a couple of times until I finally say "Send me an email".

If that was a phone conversation the person would generally answer immediately or at least I would know what was happening. Silence on IM might mean they're thinking about my question, or it might mean they've been distracted by an email.

The problem with IM for me is that it's somewhere between email and phone in terms of being "live". It can come across as passive agressive because it demands attention right now but the person at the other end can more easily split their attention across other things. A phonecall would require both my and the other person's attention equally. An email requires my attention but I can prioritise when I reply.

Re:Hang on

[CompuGeek]

I don't know how you get anything done with so many sources of distraction. Turn off the rest of the stuff (email too) and if anybody needs to communicate with you they came walk to your desk or call you. Check your email once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Anything that happens that is so important it needs immediate attention should come over the phone or face-to-face. You don't need to get rid of the phone. You need to get rid of everything else you *think* you need. Just because it's new and *kewl* doesn't mean you need it. They're mostly toys.

Re:Hang on

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks he has a problem.

Home office and videophone

[Zarhan]

Might be a rather specific use-case, but since there are so many telecommuters...I work from home, and I have a Cisco/Tandberg videophone (one of their "personal systems") on my desk. Although I'm practically never at the office, having the video there gives me that much more "presence" at the office than just being a voice (or writing off emails). The quality is much better than just having a webcam and a laptop + being a dedicated device, I never have to fight with whatever video conferencing software there might be. And of course, it has much better speakerphone capabilities than my cellphone.

I have been very happy with it for the last 2 years. Recently, there has been a bit of pressure to start using MS Lync - but the truth is, Lync is mostly still used as a corporate messenger and not for calls. Lync 2013 does provide for more standards-based approach - instead of MS's RTVideo codec, they are actually going to use H.264, so maybe that'll change things. Then again, you can get one of those Lync-aware phones from Polycom and keep using a dedicated phone.

Re:Home office and videophone

[znanue]

Might be a rather specific use-case, but since there are so many telecommuters...I work from home, and I have a Cisco/Tandberg videophone (one of their "personal systems") on my desk. Although I'm practically never at the office, having the video there gives me that much more "presence" at the office than just being a voice (or writing off emails).

But, then you defeat the greatest joy that comes from working at home...Not having to put on stupid work clothes!

Z

Re:Home office and videophone

[shutdown -p now]

Well, you only need to put them on for the duration of the call, and even then only the top half.

Call Quality

[Going_Digital]

How can you seriously conduct business on a Cell phone ? The quality is awful, h_lf t__ time you o_ly get half the sent__e and have to either guess what was said or ask people to repeat themselves. Having a clear line is much more comfortable when using the phone all day and gives a much better impression. If I get a call from a company using a poor quality mobile I think to myself are they so cheap that they can't afford a proper phone ?

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

How can you seriously conduct business on a Cell phone ? The quality is awful, h_lf t__ time you o_ly get half the sent__e and have to either guess what was said or ask people to repeat themselves. Having a clear line is much more comfortable when using the phone all day and gives a much better impression. If I get a call from a company using a poor quality mobile I think to myself are they so cheap that they can't afford a proper phone ?

This! Mod parent up!

Sound quality really falls if both parties are on cell phones and you get
the combined result of two different lossy, low bit rate compression codecs.

Cell phone speaker volume never seems to go as high as that of wired phones either.

Re:Call Quality

[Lumpy]

You cant, but there are a lot of poseurs that think they can.

Even high end phones like the iPhone or a Flagship Android phone has Crap call quality compared to a correctly configured VoIP phone system at the office. and no using VoIP client on your phone over a VPN on the cell data network does not count. You get a ton of problems doing that. Jitter and latency through the roof are just a couple that make it a complete fail on a cell network.

Re:Call Quality

[jrminter]

You are spot on. I work in a basement lab (electron microscopy) constructed with Hauserman partition walls (metal over drywall type core). These act like a Faraday Cage and cause cellular reception to be awful. To make matters worse, my management - trying to cut cost - decided that everybody had personal electronic devices these days and eliminated voice mail on our desk phone. What a mess. I have a hard time reading Dilbert these days -- it is too close to my reality...

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

The "proper" phones are VoIP phones nowadays, with often significantly worse call quality than the mobile phones. Yes, I agree that is quite an achievement.

Re:Call Quality

[Sique]

Then your local phone admin had set them to strong compression and is not deploying QoS correctly.

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please be so kind to mention the provider and country involved, so we know who to point and laugh at.

(in other words reception shouldn't be even that bad)

Re:Call Quality

[csumpi]

I don't think you should discount all cel phones on voice quality.

My Blackberries used to have superb voice quality.
My iPhones always sucked, more like two cans and a string. I can still tell when I call someone with an iPhone, because I can't hear what they are saying.
My Droid3 has great voice quality, same with the wife's SGS3.

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

And throw in the cell-blocking quality of many office buildings - i.e. little to no signal.

Re:Call Quality

[Bourdain]

I only wish I had that problem

My employer's IT department has misconfigured the VOIP voice system so poorly, I much prefer to use my cell phone for phone calls as the sound quality is vastly superior...Now I just can't wait until my plan upgrades to unlimited minutes

Re:Call Quality

[wvmarle]

Even high end phones like the iPhone or a Flagship Android phone has Crap call quality

That is because those phones are really pocket-sized tablets that have a phone function added as an afterthought. I really have the feeling that over the past few years general mobile phone call quality has gone down.

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Not necessarily. If there is a larger than expected volume of calls, the quality tanks, regardless of whether you have QoS or not.

Our email server is hosted by one of the bigger companies. If we experience any issues that is localized to our domain name or server, we would call their tech support line and the quality is fine. However, if there are any issues that affects all of their customers, we all call in and their on-hold music stutters. If I call early enough, you can actually hear the music being butchered.

Re:Call Quality

[kannibal_klown]

Agreed, especially depending on your location and the type of building you're in. Some buildings are built like bunkers, and when some places install repeaters the end-result is sometimes less than ideal.

Personally, I'm fine with a land line or at least a VoIP phone for work. Decent sound quality and more comfortable to hold for long phone conversations. Because, not everyone really digs using things "like" Skype.

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's that they are configured badly all over the place. Maybe the problem is that they use them only to save costs and it shows. Or maybe it's a completely different issue.
The fact is I generally get the same or better quality using a cell phone.
And the cell phone quality is barely enough for me to understand someone who speaks a nice clear British dialect.
Everyone else has to repeat themselves between 2 and 6 times before I understand (unless I just pretend to understand) and I fail to see why they _still_ bother to call me, it's not like you can get anything resolved like that.

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Large and isolated facilities often have poor cell phone coverage. Some facilities forbid cell phones for safety (during operation of heavy machinery or near RF sensitive equipment) or security reasons.

Re:Call Quality

[PlusFiveTroll]

The United States. Please laugh these jackass providers that own us out of this country.

Re:Call Quality

[PlusFiveTroll]

Someone has a lack of bandwidth or processing power.

Re:Call Quality

[Solandri]

Just to add some numbers to this, cell phones transmit voice at about 6-13 kbps. A regular analog landline phone has about 30-56 kbps of bandwidth (as those of us who lived through the analog modem days know well). VoIP typically encodes at 16-64 kbps (compressed, so 56 kbps VoIP is superior to 56 kbps analog)..

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

"Good enough to last 6 months to one year, bad enough that you'll be tempted to buy a new one thinking it will make the problems go away."
(Microsoft was first to this sort of "Our new version is awesome, our old version was crap" sort of bashing of their own software. People have short memories.)

Re:Call Quality

[Anonymous Coward]

(Microsoft was first to this sort of "Our new version is awesome, our old version was crap" sort of bashing of their own software. People have short memories.)

As opposed to "our new version isn't any better than the old version, so there's no reason whatsoever for it to exist"?

Re:Call quality

[grenadeh]

You'd be surprised. Most tech companies are staffed nigh exclusively by technological incompetents, and lets not mention non-tech fields.

Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a software engineer - unlike the sales guys I don't have a work mobile phone, just a desk phone.

And it works for when I want to call other internal departments or outside.

Funny that.

Re:Yes...

[wvmarle]

As a software engineer you're likely much more frequently found at your desk than the average sales rep.

So for you, a land line is just the best tool for the job. For an always-on-the-move sales rep, a mobile phone is.

Re:Yes...

[TemporalBeing]

As a software engineer you're likely much more frequently found at your desk than the average sales rep.

So for you, a land line is just the best tool for the job. For an always-on-the-move sales rep, a mobile phone is.

Most people I have worked with - both in software and out - are typically found at their desk. Sales people are the biggest exception to that.

However, unless the company is paying for the mobile they need to provide a landline.

Where I work now, we have a landlines to every desk from our PBX. Anyone can be gotten to easily, and everyone has their own extension and voicemail.
In contrast, the head office in Italy - you only get a desk phone if you are so far up the chain - typically management; and it is hard to get ahold of anyone there as a result since you basically have to call the building secretary, ask for them, then hope that someone can find them and give them a wireless desk phone - in a company of (at one point) over 200 people.

So if the company wants to give me a permenant cell phone and pay for it themselves, then find - I'll take that over the desk phone; but it better have an easy way to communicate with everyone else in the company too so I don't have to go around collecting everyone's full phone numbers.

It's just too expensive to do work for the company on my own personal phones - cell or otherwise.

Re:Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Programmer here too. I use an PCI phone modem with the phone line from wall plugged into the 'in' side of the modem. Windows and most Linux distros have the software pre-installed to both send and receive calls over a phone modem. Beats the hell out of trying to hold a phone handset with your elbow when you need to look something up while on the phone. Sound quality is also loads better than any handset I've ever used, even counting the high class ones.

Well I certainly do

[Viol8]

I have to sometimes make long calls for my work and I *really* don't want to do it on a tinky winky little mobile phone, its bloody uncomfortable. And if I want to use a speakerphone then i'll need the mobile plugged into the wall anyway so the battery doesn't die halfway through and how is that any more convenient that having a landline with a cable? Also our Cisco deskphones have the entire company phonebook available on them which is very convenient. Their only downside is being IP phones , when the local LAN goes down so do all the phones.

Re:Well I certainly do

[GNU(slash)Nickname]

Their only downside is being IP phones , when the local LAN goes down so do all the phones.

This happens often enough to be an issue?

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a headset for the mobile - the kind with a plug not that bluetooth stuff. Works great for long phone calls.

Re:Well I certainly do

[dintech]

"When I started my career back in the early 1990s, every floor had a 'urinal' in the bathroom. The urinal was how your co-workers, customers, friends and family emptied their bladders during the business day. It had a few features that everyone used — upright pissing position, automatic flush, quick drainage, three-way pissing (if you didn't mind standing close together). This was before personal chamber pots or shitting at work was allowed, so the urinal was basically the one and only means of bladder relief in the office. Flash forward 20 years. Today I have a chamber pot, directors en-suite, several scented flavors of toilet stalls, the squat toilet for foreign visitors and several flavors of collaboration urinals including along against-the-wall ones, center circle ones. My wife and daughter pee on the chamber pot. My co-workers who are too lazy or passive aggressive to put the toilet seat down in the stalls. My brother in Iraq uses the squat toilet. I use the directors toilet with built-in bidet and heated seat. The old along-the-wall urinal sits there gathering dust. I use it for conference calls-of-nature a few times each month. I'm sure that there are sales people out there who would rather give up a body part than their trusty office urinal, but do any of the rest of us need them? Around here, the younger engineers frequently unplug them and stick them in a cabinet to free up desk space, it makes a real fucking mess of the floor. Are the days of the office urinal (and the office urinal plumbing) at an end?"

Re:Well I certainly do

[jevring]

We have both "normal" landline phones and IP phones, and yes, the IP phone system going down is actually an issue. It happens regularly...

Re:Well I certainly do

[rvw]

I have to sometimes make long calls for my work and I *really* don't want to do it on a tinky winky little mobile phone, its bloody uncomfortable. And if I want to use a speakerphone then i'll need the mobile plugged into the wall anyway so the battery doesn't die halfway through and how is that any more convenient that having a landline with a cable? Also our Cisco deskphones have the entire company phonebook available on them which is very convenient. Their only downside is being IP phones , when the local LAN goes down so do all the phones.

We're a small company with people working for us worldwide. We give them a VOIP phone, and we have an Asterisk phone server, hosted by Amazon. Now what can happen? Amazon can go down, our server at amazon can go down, our own ISP can go down, our own LAN can go down, and the phones can simply break (and they do). Of course, when we have a problem at our LAN, that has no effect for the other phones. For incoming calls we use another service provider, who links a public phone number to the VOIP network. If they go down, no incoming calls from public numbers. So there are quite some points of failure, and still it works pretty OK most of the time.

Re:Well I certainly do

[peragrin]

It was at my previous employer. Of course the problem was "Local Lan" spanned 7 different ISP's to create the VPN Network the company operated under.If the local cable company(who else does high speed?) on average failed once a month it was really noticable.

Re:Well I certainly do

[dintech]

The point I was trying to make is that sometimes a specialist device is really ergonomic and good at the job, even if other devices can technically achieve the same end.

Re:Well I certainly do

[dkf]

We have both "normal" landline phones and IP phones, and yes, the IP phone system going down is actually an issue. It happens regularly...

Sounds to me like the issue is more that they don't stay down. Down with 3-hour telecons!

Re:Well I certainly do

[Viol8]

It doesn't happen often , maybe once or twice a year, but its a nuisance when it does.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Ironhandx]

Company Phonebook aside... a direct phone number is the easiest way to get ahold of people.

Cell phones are also the devil. If you ever actually want to work a 9-5 and only more when absolutely needed, you should be pushing for your desk phone to be your ONLY phone from work.

People are screwing themselves over because they think its more convenient for themselves. Did you folks ever consider WHY the company is more than happy to give you a cell?

Skype etc is just an extension of that.

Re:Well I certainly do

[upuv]

Tinky winky little mobile. This is a purely a preference choice in mobile. The should be a phone that meets every ones personal style/ergo prefs.

Speaker phone. No problem. I have a very long usb lead that charges my phone while I'm at my desk. I also get the benefit of transferring data to and from the phone that I gather through the day that is not suitable for cloud. Some of this data is photo's of white boards from meetings. So now my charging is doing 3 things. I see this as a huge bonus. I made my phone actually sync data as soon as I plug it in any way. So I really don't have any effort to move stuff around.

My whole entire company phone book is in my phone. And It's automatic. One of the accounts I subscribe to on the phone is the corp account. It's all in the phone now. And I can do voice search across it. Works super slick. No updates required.

I also tend to use ear buds while on the move. This allows me to hear the conversations better. Lets me get stuff done while I hoof it between people.

But I am vulnerable to lost access to mobile internet. But seems less of an issue than when i used an IP desk phone. But that was a bad wired corp network.

Re:Well I certainly do

[neyla]

Why ? Because sometimes it's cheaper. Because employees like smartphones and it might thus help employee-retention. Because it increases flexibility since you can be reached even if not at your desk.

Where's the "screwing over" ? I've got a company-paid mobile phone, and up until now ain't seen it.

Re:Well I certainly do

[fa2k]

I have to sometimes make long calls for my work and I *really* don't want to do it on a tinky winky little mobile phone, its bloody uncomfortable.

Seems like a headset would be a great option, whether connected to a desk phone, mobile phoone or computer

Re:Well I certainly do

[neyla]

For long calls you want a good-quality headset. These exist for both Skype, for mobile phones, and for traditional desk-phones, so this is really no argument at all in favor of any of them.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Well my company give me a cell phone. And it's never left the area of my desk. I don't take it on toilet breaks, I don't take it when I go round to visit people and I will never take it home/out of the office with me. So all in all it's really a wireless desk phone.

Not sure what point I'm making really but there you go...

Re:Well I certainly do

[tehcyder]

Get a headset for the mobile - the kind with a plug not that bluetooth stuff. Works great for long phone calls.

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat. The only exception is people like receptionists or call centre employees, who have no choice.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Viol8]

"I also tend to use ear buds while on the move. This allows me to hear the conversations better. Lets me get stuff done while I hoof it between people."

Sounds to me like your company has you by the balls. But you probably see it as liberating. Funny how perceptions can be different.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Their only downside is being IP phones , when the local LAN goes down so do all the phones.

That you for adding another example to my list! ATM machines, PIN numbers, LCD displays, LED diodes, and now local LAN!

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate them also, but if you frequent datacenters, then they are a must... I use my Bose headphones, and when they eventually go to headphone heaven, I will be purchasing the set with the microphone build in. Having said that I only ever use them to make calls in DC's...

Re:Well I certainly do

[Dasuraga]

because you've become de facto on call 24/7. Granted, a solution is just to not pick up , but that choice doesn't even have to be made with a desk phone.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat.

As opposed to holding a small piece of plastic to the side of your head for the duration of a two hour conference call? And trying to type one-handed?

I'll happily look like a twat and be comfortable, thank you.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Nerdfest]

Regardless of what it looks like, it's far better for doing any sort of support where you need to type. I find that if I send a couple of hours with a phone on my shoulder while typing (which really doesn't work with mobile phones) I end up with a very sore neck or back the next day. It's just not comfortable.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, so here is what I do...

I travel for work, probably between 80% and 90% of my time. I have a "desk" voip line, my own cell phone (which is expensed), and another unlocked cell phone. The unlock cell phone, I use when not in the country. I purchase a local sim for the country that I am in which is usually on some kind of pay as you go deal, and usually includes data. (the only place so far I could not include data was Morocco).

What I do then is to "simring" my office desk line to either my own cell, or whichever local sim I am using. My Desk line has a US number. I also purchased a local UK number which forwards to my desk line. The only numbers I give anyone ever, is the desk line, and the UK number that forwards to the desk line. This way, I can turn the forwarding off anytime I want, the wife can still get me, and I stay sane :D

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat.

You're a twat if you talk on a headset while going through the grocery checkout, not if you do it alone in your cube.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a headset for the mobile - the kind with a plug not that bluetooth stuff. Works great for long phone calls.

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat. The only exception is people like receptionists or call centre employees, who have no choice.

I'm pretty sure you look like a bigger twat for posting this than the guy wearing a headset.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

You could get a cisco software phone running on your PC and using your headset/microphone. It negates the need for the hardware, which I think is the real point here.

Re:Well I certainly do

[neyla]

That's not true. When I'm on call I: have to be sober, have to get the phone, have to be within 20 minutes of work, have to show up promptly if something happens, have to have childcare taken care of so that I'm not tied down. None of that is now true 24x7.

It's true that my boss may call me. If he does, time spent is rounded up, an hour is added and it's overtime at 150%, in other words, a 5-minute telephone-conversation with me costs him 3 hours pay. At that rate, he doesn't call unless it genuinely IS important, and at that rate, I don't mind.

So what's the catch ?

Re:Well I certainly do

[h4rr4r]

Who else does high speed?
A real telco that's who. You can get 100MB or 1GB service either point to point or to the internet and it comes in on fiber. Costs more than $50/month but has an actual SLA and does not have monthly outages.

Re:Well I certainly do

[anarcobra]

This had me laughing so hard.

Re:Well I certainly do

[hackula]

This is my experience as well. I don't know if my company has EVER actually called me on my company paid cell in years. We all use skype at work. Besides, to call you at 9pm or whatever, the person would have to be a scumbag, and scumbags don't work those kinds of hours.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken by someone who has never had to spend 2 hours on a single conference call, support call, or any other call when he also needed to be able to type.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

And trying to type one-handed?

Erm,This is Slashdot. Are you trying to argue pro or con?

Re:Well I certainly do

[PlusFiveTroll]

You don't live in a location where your boss can fuck you out of overtime.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/10/new-california.html

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to sometimes make long calls for my work and I *really* don't want to do it on a tinky winky little mobile phone, its bloody uncomfortable.

So get a bigger mobile phone.

Re:Well I certainly do

[PlusFiveTroll]

With bridged networks the issue does get confused. You can be on the same broadcast domain in the building (switch), across the street (wireless bridge), or 1000 miles away (VPN). But yes, your point still stands. At least he didn't say Internet IP phone.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Viol8]

You're welcome :o)

Though to be fair - there is the company LAN and the "local" LAN connecting my PC and about a dozen others to the nearest bridge.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because typing one-handed, or bending your neck out of shape to hold the handset is making you look like a genius.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Viol8]

To be as comfortable as my deskphone it would have to be the size and shape of a 1980s model. Which arn't terribly convenient to carry around.

Re:Well I certainly do

[PhotoJim]

That's like my company laptop. I don't need it when I'm away from the office that much (and my personal laptop is much better anyway), so it stays at my office in a docking station most of the time.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Arrr, worries about how he looks rather than getting the job done in the most effective manner, how precious.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Zerth]

So get one of these and enjoy your shoulder and back pain.

http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/8928/

Re:Well I certainly do

[atisss]

You can get redundancy.

We do have multiple Asterisk servers on Amazon EC2, each of them can take role of another. Amazon has availablity zones, so if there is problem, it's within single zone, so it's best to have replacement in different zone.

As for ISP - we have several, and as we can control our servers, we can just quickly reroute calls to different ISP in the same office. If all of our ISPs would give us access to switching BGP, it would be even easier.

As our business depends on phone calls heavily, our telephony carrier has granted us use of backup gateway,where they can reroute DIDs within 30 minutes.

Re:Well I certainly do

[SCHecklerX]

If you are running your phones on the same subnet as your LAN, you are doing it wrong. Yes, it's 'cool' to use qos and less drops, but if you really want to avoid headaches while still having the other advantages of IP phones, plug that patch cord into a dedicated phone lan switch.

Re:Well I certainly do

[johnkoer]

You could always get an old school headset and keep it at your desk.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

You get overtime. I don't. I am on call 24/7 and no overtime. I do get to come in late or leave early during that same week though.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I don't want to work 9-5 with two or three weeks of vacation a year, I want and have the ability to have flexible hours and the ability to travel extensively and telecommute during some of the trips so I don't have to use up leave. I get that because I'm easily reachable when I'm not in the office.

I'm also good and lucky enough to be able to select jobs that have reasonable work expectations. The problem is not cell phones, it's companies who demand unreasonable amounts of work.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat.

As opposed to holding a small piece of plastic to the side of your head for the duration of a two hour conference call? And trying to type one-handed?

I'll happily look like a twat and be comfortable, thank you.

Speakerphone, dude.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say I'm surprised WalMart retail workers get company paid cell phones. But I agree, if you work 1st shift (non-scumbag), the scumbags working 2nd shift shouldn't have to call you for a price check or something.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, get it right.. it's "Internet IP Protocol phone"

Re:Well I certainly do

[tftp]

The primary utility of a company laptop is that you can give presentations with it in a meeting room next door.

IT prefers laptops because they are lighter and more portable, so they can be redeployed easily as needed, or sent for repairs without using a forklift, and there is no need to crawl in the dust under the desk. The maintenance loves the fact that laptops typically take less power than desktops. The road warrior appreciates that a laptop has built-in wireless and Bluetooth and has working sleep modes. The neighbors like the fact that a laptop is more quiet than a desktop.

I'm typing this on a desktop because the desktop gives me better performance. This is a good reason to keep a desktop if you need that performance. Most enterprise users do not need that.

Re:Well I certainly do

[BattleApple]

I can't believe you don't just use GoToBathroom. Get with the times, man!

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you need to fire your IPT guy.
Source: CCIE Voice

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a certified Mitel and Cisco VOIP tech, and have been in the field for the better part of 8 years. I have customers including major hospitals, and entire towns (town halls, police, fire, and schools) who require 100% up time. The key to that up time is good design and redundancy. If one controller goes down, another will pick up the slack. If the network goes down, the phones can have backup POTs lines connected to them.

It all comes down to what you pay for.

Re:Well I certainly do

[omglolbah]

Speakerphone is the spawn of satan.

Even those who have offices usually have the volume high enough that you can follow both calls... and for some reason 99% of people seem to believe you have to shout at the phone for the other party to hear you...

I would much rather my coworkers speak into a headset than speak loudly at a plastic box for hours :p

Re:Well I certainly do

[omglolbah]

I live in a country where overtime is guaranteed by law for all workers with very few exceptions.

*cuddles Norway*

Re:Well I certainly do

[Half-pint HAL]

Anyone, anywhere who uses a headset to make phone calls looks like an utter twat.

Appearance is subjective. If someone using appropriate equipment for the task looks like an utter twat, you may want to reconsider your outlook on life. Would you criticise a mechanic for using an uncool socket set? Would you tell a motorcyclist he looks like a twat for wearing a safety helmet? Or maybe car seats are for weanies and we should all drive standing up?

We await your wisdom, oh mighty Tehcyder!

Re:Well I certainly do

[SkimTony]

Yeah, and when I was a kid I was picked on for wearing a hat at the bus stop in cold weather, but you know what? I'd rather be comfortable than worry about your opinion of my appearance. At this point, if I don't have a headset, I won't bother with a call longer than five minutes; it's not worth it.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Darinbob]

There are indeed people who feel that being reachable on the phone while at home is desirable. Normally this feeling is from managers who want to call their slaves to make sure they're working on the weekend, but there are even some underlings who seem to think it's handy.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Darinbob]

Of course, the vast majority of employees are never "on call". This is normally something only necessary for service personnel, and even then it is not 365 days a year but it rotates across a set of unfortunate people.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Darinbob]

It depends how often you use the phone. If you're on the phone all the time like a sales droid or someone trying to seem important, then a headset is fine. However if you're like me and get one phone call a month then it's not worth the effort to get one. If I want to talk to someone I'll walk to their desk or send an email.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Ironhandx]

You would be more of an exception than a rule.

Also, anyone that basically does code-monkey or software/hardware engineering work doesn't even need a company cell phone and an in-house desk phone network is much more efficient.

It seems we have a mixture of desk-jockeys and others chiming in. The non desk-jockeys are the ones that understand what I'm talking about.

Re:Well I certainly do

[vikingpower]

Man, where are the mod points when you need them ??? I was reading TFA, first, in earnest, then stumbled upon your contribution. I laughed my guts out ( while sitting on this crappy hotel room's chamber pot, though ).

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want people to phone me when I'm on the move. If I'm in my office, I'm probably available. If I'm out and about, I'm in the middle of something else, and don't want to be disturbed. I carry a pager (yes, an actual pager) so if it's actually urgent, you can page me. So if I'm in a meeting, and my pager goes off, I'll answer it, because it's probably important. If I had a cellphone instead, people are far more likely to phone it for things that aren't urgent.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one do not enjoy the images invoked by the use of "Flavors" in close conjunction with "Toilet Stalls" and "Urinals"

Re:Well I certainly do

[Polo]

I go mobile instead (tree)

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

An in-house IP phone system should never go down. And when it does, you go and kick the IP phone admin (in person).
And electricity should also not be an issue. UPS + PoE almost ensures this never happens. (Short of someone fooling around in the wiring closet or catastrophic equipment failure.)

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea you're a pretty big fucking wanker. Suckadick bitch. And choke on some sperms.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

What?! No sand pit?! Muzzies arn't going to be too happy about that. Oh well, I'm sure they can wipe their ass on the rug or something.

Re:Well I certainly do

[neyla]

True. I live in a country where the rights of corporations and the rights of average people are somewhat more balanced than in USA. Ofcourse the population of USA doesn't want any of that, they call it "socialism" and turn away in disgust.

The way I see it, they've made their bed and now gets to sleep in it.

You don't get overtime in Norway either if you're in a independent position, but this is interpreted strictly. Basically, if someone could complain to you if you worked too *few* hours in some month, then they also get the priviledge of paying you overtime whenever you work to *many* hours in some month.

Re:Well I certainly do

[upuv]

I actually have the will power to not answer a phone and I also put it on silent. Basically I have everyone trained that I often will not answer. I'm most definitely not a slave to the phone. It has however made my office life a hell of a lot more efficient over the last couple of years. Net time saver.

So no the corp does not have me by the balls. I[m probably working 1 1/2 hours less a day now. Which is awesome. Use the tools to your advantage.

Re:Well I certainly do

[SpooForBrains]

I had one of these a while back (this one). I used it all the time with my mobile phone and it was both a great conversation piece and ergonomically and functionally superior to putting the mobile to my head.

Be ware, there are lots of people out there now manufacturing similar things and the quality varies dramatically. The one linked in PP looks to be of pretty poor quality.

The phobile is no longer available as far as I know which is a shame.

Re:Well I certainly do

[pnutjam]

What about this? I have seen corded version popping up in the drugstores around here.

Re:Well I certainly do

[Anonymous Coward]

I have installed IP phone systems over the past 2 years, and they all work flawlessly. You may suggest to your IT department to get the IP phone system permanently corrected, as there is no reason it should be 'going down regularly'! (You might also consider repairing your IT department!)

*facepalm*

[girlintraining]

Are the days of the office phone (and the office phone system) at an end?"

Why is it that just because a bunch of younger people have gotten used to a different way of doing things, that somehow makes the way older people do things evil, wrong, out of date, etc.? The office phone is not there so you can twit your friendface and blog the interwebs: It's there for business. It's there for all possible meanings of the phrase "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." It's there because it won't shit itself when 500 people decide to visit a Youtube video about a cat. It has no dead zones, doesn't need you to take the battery out if you try to load too many apps, or the SD card wiggles loose, etc. It. Just. Works.

Businesses like things that just work. Your cell phone may be cutting edge state of the art, the thing all the cool kids are using and blah blah blah, but businesses care about those kinds of things... said no one. Ever. Businesses care about fixed costs and reliability and your cell phone won't ever have either. Configure one little thing wrong and you could be eating hundreds of dollars in overage fees... and god help you if your battery charge is running low and you're in the middle of an important call.

Land lines: Because they just work, bitches.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

Being over 50 I guess that would make me an older person - damn. I have a Cisco phone on my desk, but I never use it. Only the company lawyer ever calls me on it. Everybody else uses my cell phone or Skype. I use my personal cell phone for business, but the company pays me enough that it doesn't matter. The only times I use the Cisco phones is in a conference room and even there I frequently use Skype, since it generally works better than the Cisco junkphones.

Re:*facepalm*

[magic maverick]

Except when they are VoIP and the power is off. And even though there is meant to be a POTS phone somewhere in the building for emergencies, no one actually knows where it is.

So, yeah, I suggest that desk phones are still useful, depending on the situation. In a previous job, people where scattered across up to six locations. We used the phone whenever we wanted to talk. IM just sometimes doesn't cut it, emotions are harder to get through, etc.

Actually, phone (hands free headset), IM and email were sometimes used all at the same time to communicate with the same person/people. You chat with the phone, you send interesting links with IM (or, look, this is what I mean, as you edit the website scratch area), and the email is used to record decisions.

Personally, if anyone says "I'm going to take your phone away, it costs too much and you don't use it anyway", I'd beg to differ. I'd object. And then they'd probably mention stupid MS Communicator (or whatever it is called now) which is meant to have voice, but just doesn't work as well. First thing in the morning, I can phone someone, it just works (except when it doesn't). But the computer, the computer has to turn on (no we can't leave it on all night, IT gets cranky), and that takes up to five minutes or more.

All these communication tools have their place.

Re:*facepalm*

[ray-auch]

Why is it that just because a bunch of younger people have gotten used to a different way of doing things, that somehow makes the way older people do things evil, wrong, out of date, etc.? The office phone is not there so you can twit your friendface and blog the interwebs: It's there for business. It's there for all possible meanings of the phrase "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." It's there because it won't shit itself when 500 people decide to visit a Youtube video about a cat. It has no dead zones, doesn't need you to take the battery out if you try to load too many apps, or the SD card wiggles loose, etc. It. Just. Works..

I haven't worked anywhere this century where the office phones have not been VOIP.

They are subject to exactly the same issues as the office internet connection, if that happens to be s**t then the phone dammed well does go down (or reverts to unusable quality) when 500 people hit youtube.

And no matter how much people twiddle with QOS parameters, if the underlying conncection is s**t then QOS just means "what quality of s**t gets assigned to phone".

The fact that the office phone has gone VOIP is what will, in the end, lead to its demise. It can be replaced by Lync / Skype / etc. at no loss of quality, and a great improvement in convenience - your phone follows you without having to login to another device for a start.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I agree with girlintraining. I'm 45 and will keep my desk phone for the following reasons.

1. I work for the government and making internals costs nothing as it uses VOIP.
2. I work with a team of people and we have group pickup which is extremely important (where's that function on a smart phone?)
3. Desk phones are a hell of a lot more reliable for teleconferencing.
4. I'm in an office and I can see if one of my team members is on the phone by the flashing red light on my phone - This assists me if I need to transfer the call but notice they are busy on another call.
5. The cost of calls using land lines is MUCH cheaper than a mobile.
6. Reliability. As stated they just work!; and lastly
7. You can't use a normal deskphone for facebook or twitter (god help us) and waste work time.

So no we won't see the demise of desk phones for the forceable future or at least until the 40 and 50 years olds retire.

Re:*facepalm*

[girlintraining]

They are subject to exactly the same issues as the office internet connection, if that happens to be s**t then the phone dammed well does go down (or reverts to unusable quality) when 500 people hit youtube.

That is the result of a network admin who is a moron. Even managed switches these days come with extensive QoS features, and more and more come with deep packet inspection. There is no excuse for having your phones take a crap because of a sudden burst of internet traffic. None.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

There is enough noise already in open offices. We don't need no stinking phones.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

" I use my personal cell phone for business, but the company pays me enough that it doesn't matter. "

Thanks for being the asshole that is screwing the others.

"Jenkins is happy with giving the firm free cellphone time, why dont the rest of you donate your cellphone useage to the company like the good employee jenkins over here."

It's people like you that let management know they can screw the employees because you let them happily.

Re:*facepalm*

[Dr. Hok]

I haven't worked anywhere this century where the office phones have not been VOIP.

They are subject to exactly the same issues as the office internet connection, if that happens to be s**t then the phone dammed well does go down (or reverts to unusable quality) when 500 people hit youtube.

And no matter how much people twiddle with QOS parameters, if the underlying conncection is s**t then QOS just means "what quality of s**t gets assigned to phone".

In my company the desk phones are VoIP, too. The good part is, they are also IP routers. All IP traffic of workplace PCs goes through them, so the phone decides about priority. AFAIK the phones are meshed into a magic routing network which ensures QoS pretty well. I work in a multinational company where only we in Germany have this kind of phone. All the others use soft phones. And you can tell the difference. The desk phone users' voices are always 100% crisp and clear, while everybody else turns into a robot or disconnects every once in a while. That's pretty annoying, especially in conferences with a dozen participants, so I wish they'd all switch.

Re:*facepalm*

[dskoll]

I haven't worked anywhere this century where the office phones have not been VoIP.

We use Asterisk and IP phones internally, but our connections to the outside world (we're a small company) are still POTS. That's because any affordable DSL connection for a small company totally sucks for doing VoIP and our POTS lines never go down. Ever.

The amount we'd save by switching away from POTS is so tiny in the big scheme of things that it's just not worth it.

Re:*facepalm*

[Registered Coward v2]

Land lines: Because they just work, bitches.

One more thing - they stay working even when you leave. A number / extension can be tied to position or location so when one person leaves the new person still gets the relevant business calls. Oh yea, they also don't ring in your pocket while you are on vacation.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 25 and haven't seen this where I work, however the percentage of people under 30 at my job is low. You'd be lucky to get signal deep in the building anyway, and almost everyone would certainly have an issue giving their personal cell number out. Nobody likes being called at 10pm by a machinist with a question about a print.

Re:*facepalm*

[ray-auch]

When "internally" is a bit bigger and covers multiple sites you'll find that you typically don't get multiple POTS lines + a PABX into each site like in the old days, rather the VOIP is routed internally to one (or more, if you are lucky) exit points which do have multiple POTS lines. Same as most likely applies to internet connectivity.

Unless you happen to be at the exit site, every call internal or external (and all internet activity) is going over the site to site WAN.

I'm sure someone somewhere has decided this saves money, and it doesn't seem uncommon. Centralised monitoring and logging is also a reason though...

Re:*facepalm*

[Viol8]

"POTS lines never go down. Ever. "

Well, not entirely true, POTS lines do go down, but here in britain BT tends to get its arse into gear when that happens and fix them pdq. If broadband goes down its usually "We're working on it, we might have it fixed by the end of the week. Maybe.".

Re:*facepalm*

[Sique]

You are right, there are features a deskphone (in what incarnation ever) provides which no mobile could. Most important are group functions (group pick-up, directed pick-up, hunting groups), but key lines and company phonebook are also very useful features no mobile provides, and so are call overflows.
It might look not so important if you are mainly working alone, and only use the phone to place calls or get calls intended solely for you. But if you are working in a larger group, those features come in handy. And yes, desk phone mobility where you can get your phone configuration and all calls on any deskphone in the company is a very useful feature - and still a desk phone feature, not possible with a mobile.
On the other hand, I don't make much of a difference between a software phone on your computer or a hardware deskphone from a technical point of view. Today's phone switches allow both hardware phones or software phones to plug into the system without a reconfiguration of the phone switch. From a personal point of view I don't like the softphones, because you have to always wear those headsets, and whenever you leave your desk, you have to take them off, and if you return, you have to put them on again. A colleague of mine has an USB-deskphone, which plugs into his computer and uses the softphone config to get a line, which is a nice solution. Deskphones often offer hands free calling via loudspeaker and microphone, which allows you continue work like with a headset without the headset hassle, so the advantage of the headset is no longer there.

Re:*facepalm*

[wvmarle]

2. I work with a team of people and we have group pickup which is extremely important (where's that function on a smart phone?)

That is probably the killer feature of office phones, and why they're still used big time. Sharing the lines with multiple people. When one is on the phone, someone else can pick up their call and either help the caller directly, or take a message, or whatever. Voice mail is no replacement for that. It's also not easy to pass a mobile call to someone else, as it requires physically handing over the phone (and hoping they remember to give you back instantly as you're out of a phone for the time).

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that just because a bunch of younger people have gotten used to a different way of doing things, that somehow makes the way older people do things evil, wrong, out of date, etc.?

Yeah, and now get off my lawn! :)

Re:*facepalm*

[dskoll]

Here in Canada, POTS service is still quite heavily regulated and the phone company has to provide reliability guarantees. As in Britain, broadband is "best-effort" and too bad for you if it's down for a few hours.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

If the power's off, so's my computer. Since I'm a sysadmin, all I can really do is answer the phone and say "I don't know when your PC will be working again-- the server's are fine".

I don't like those phone calls, so I don't mind that I'm unreachable when I can't do my job anyway.

Re:*facepalm*

[PlusFiveTroll]

Most offices run off PBX's, so a POTS line is never exposed in the building, even if it's from the telco and not a VOIP line. Your PBX battery goes down and you're dead either way. I've set a few offices up on IP phones over POE switches. Battery backup on the switch, battery backup on the PBX, and battery backup on the internet and the only reason you'd know the power is out is it's dark and the computers are turning off. The phones still ring.

Re:*facepalm*

[PlusFiveTroll]

If you live in an internet hole then POTS might be your only way. Otherwise I suggest a IP trunk so you don't have to pay long distance. Local telco's still make a lot off long distance.

Re:*facepalm*

[godrik]

There is an other reason to keep a phone on my desk. That is the only device that can call a phone number anywhere in the world and that I will not have to pay for. My institute will pay for it. There is no way, I'll call people to discuss work for hours out of state or out of country and pay the communication with my cell phone.

If I get a company skype account (or whatever) that can call and be called by regular phone number, sure, i'll use it. Otherwise, I need a phone on my desk.

Re:*facepalm*

[jdavidb]

Configure one little thing wrong and you could be eating hundreds of dollars in overage fees

I worked for the phone company nine years and have had a cellphone for nearly fifteen, and I've never seen this.

Re:*facepalm*

[ArcadeMan]

Stinking phones? I knew we shouldn't have sent the phone sanitizers to another planet!

Re:*facepalm*

[tlhIngan]

Why is it that just because a bunch of younger people have gotten used to a different way of doing things, that somehow makes the way older people do things evil, wrong, out of date, etc.? The office phone is not there so you can twit your friendface and blog the interwebs: It's there for business. It's there for all possible meanings of the phrase "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." It's there because it won't shit itself when 500 people decide to visit a Youtube video about a cat. It has no dead zones, doesn't need you to take the battery out if you try to load too many apps, or the SD card wiggles loose, etc. It. Just. Works.

Businesses like things that just work. Your cell phone may be cutting edge state of the art, the thing all the cool kids are using and blah blah blah, but businesses care about those kinds of things... said no one. Ever. Businesses care about fixed costs and reliability and your cell phone won't ever have either. Configure one little thing wrong and you could be eating hundreds of dollars in overage fees... and god help you if your battery charge is running low and you're in the middle of an important call.
 

One reason I have an office phone is so I can use it for business purposes. I hardly ever make long distance calls (so I never use VoIP at all, including Skype), so my long distance plan is basically "none". I can make long distance calls, but they're pricey, or run down to the store to buy a long-distance prepaid card (cheaper to buy for the few times I use it versus paying for a long distance plan).

At work? I may have to call long distance for many reasons - including talking to other people, teleconferencing, etc. Company pays for the call as it's on company time (or can bill customer for it if it was customer business). I don't have to worry about getting a $200 cellphone bill nor wait the weeks for my expense report for business phone calls (which have to be scrutinized line by line) to be reimbursed.

And even at home we have a landline - again for the same reason. No worries about calls dropping (would you really want to do that job interview on a cellphone? Risking a dropped call seems pretty unnecessary...). And if the battery on the cordless gets low, I can always switch handsets (something most cellphones cannot do, still).

Re:*facepalm*

[Ritchie70]

As far as I know, no accounting whatsoever happens for our company's long distance bill except the company pays it.

For years we had no idea what a massive modem bank was costing in terms of long distance because it was all rolled into the building's bill.

I support and deal with thousands of locations all over the country (USA.) No way I'm making those calls from something I pay for.

I know nationwide long distance is included in my cellular plan, but I share 700 minutes among four people on a family plan. I sometimes make work calls from my cell when it makes *my* life better, but I'm always aware of how many minutes I'm burning.

Although some have company-paid cell phones, I'm not one of the some.

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't worked anywhere this century where the office phones have not been VOIP.

Out here in the real world, many of us work in offices that were built last century, and still have a functional phone system. It works - there's no advantage to ripping it all out and replacing it with voip.

Re:No

[Nerdfest]

Where I work, nobody has a desk phone. Everyone has a smartphone and a laptop. You can switch offices easily, share them if people work at home on alternating days, form impromptu sessions in common areas, etc. My smartphone actually gets used so little that it generally gets left at my desk, as I also carry my personal one. It would be quite easy for many people to do without one completely.

Not for the forseeable future

[jorjb]

I work with phones for a living at the largest private employer in Philadelphia.

While office phones are clearly on the decline, they ain't dead yet. We have approximately 20k phones, half of which are VoIP and half of which are either POTS or a digital offering from the local carrier. All of them are converting to VoIP, slowly, and in the process I'm watching the attrition that the OP probably expects. It makes sense to get rid of single lines where they're unused and unnecessary.

However, there remains the complex office setup where you have administrative assistants, or a suite front desk, and shared line appearances. Once someone wants to be able to put a call on hold on one phone and pick it up on a different physical phone, they want it to work like the same technology did in the 80s.

Of course it was easier in the 80s, when those phones shared a dedicated physical copper pair that carried nothing but the voice. With digital signaling it's significantly trickier; Broadsoft has a proprietary protocol to handle this, and the IETF specification (http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-anil-sipping-bla-04) never left Internet Draft status (which, frankly, is a good thing as it's a very poor protocol).

I don't see that complex setup going away any time soon, as it's a common VIP pattern.

Re:Not for the forseeable future

[NJRoadfan]

I remember the Asterisk people resisted adding SLA as a feature to the software since "nobody used it" and it wasn't in demand. I had a store that wanted to go VoIP a few years back, but wanted a setup similar to their old "key" phone system (Nortel Norstar, plus they still had a 1A2 system as backup!). Asterisk got crossed off the list pretty quickly.

Re:Not for the forseeable future

[PlusFiveTroll]

Yea, even though I use Asterisks no SLA and there reasons behind it is very annoying.

Suprised...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to see most people here answering "no".

Actually most of my communication with other teams in my company still happen over the phone and by email to leave a "paper"-track.

Rings very infrequently

[stevegee58]

My phone rings so infrequently that when it does it literally scares me.

Office phones are dead

[Anonymous Coward]

In our office, we have no landline phones at all. Actually, the office complex where we reside doesn't even have phone lines installed. Admittedly, it is an incubator for IT companies, who may be a bit ahead of the curve. We have one (mobile) phone for the whole office, since some still feel a company must have a phone number, but its only use seems to be for telemarketers to disturb us. BTW, this is in Denmark, not US.

Unplug it.

[adolf]

You've already done a fine job of convincing yourself to believe that you do not need a desk phone.

So unplug the phone and put it in a desk drawer. If anyone (including you) complains about it, then there must be a reason to keep it around. Plug it back in for a few months and try again.

But if nobody notices, just rotate it over to the circular file at the same rate as any other disused desktop annoyance. You still get to keep your extension, and you can (presumably) get to your corporate voicemail if you need to by other means.

(And if you just don't like to do conference calls on a cell phone for some reason or other, then the entire Ask Slashdot is for naught. You still need a desk phone anyway, like an addict needs [or does not need] drugs. So either keep using for conference calls, with pride, or stop using it cold turkey, or nobody will care.)

Yes, and I doubt my situation is exactly unique.

[rusty0101]

I work about 45 feet underground and the only cell service available is through a carrier that I won't use. Should my company ever provide me with a cell phone that may change, but I'm not expecting that upgrade any time soon.

I rarely if ever use skype, whether at work, or at home. At work it would not punch through the corporate firewall, and at home I don't have sufficient need to use it to communicate with family or friends as most can reach me via other platforms.

At work I actually have two phones at my desk, one for day to day calls, and another for bridge lines that I need to monitor. Some of the managers around here have 3 phones on their desks to give them that capability for multiple bridge lines, and also to have a line available to contact their managers for issues that need their attention.

The firewall pretty much blocks all forms of VPN, IM and SIP that can't run over http through a proxy. All such traffic is continuously monitored and content which violates corporate policy may subject the employee to disciplinary processes including (and not limited to) termination.

These limitations would be imposed on me if I were using a corporate Laptop or PC at home as well, as I would be required to establish a vpn to work and all my network traffic wold be required to go through that connection.

I suspect that this is not unusual for people who work in the financial and trading sectors. At the very least it is an effort being made by the corporations involved to prevent themselves from being subject to penalties related to insider trading. I also suspect that several companies have even harsher limits on what their employees can do across the internet simply because companies are looking to protect customer and owner assets that may be affected by a variety of black hat hacker attacks as well as reducing the potential for damage caused by disgruntled employees (or former employees.)

Before complaining that this is harsh, and hardly the usual treatment technology users should expect, I have to say that I happen to like where I work, the people I work with, and most of the people I work for. I like most of our customers and most of our stock holders. I can say that this is not unusual in the group I work with, as this is the first company I've worked with where I've had more people leave the group through retirement than through 'better' job offers elsewhere. No, things are not perfect, but on the whole, things are not bad.

No

[YoungManKlaus]

1) We don't (all) have company cellphones, only the higher-ups, people on stand-duty and people who travel a lot. Also I wouldn't want one as it would mean I am always reachable. 2) While it is mostly replaced with IM, it is still a nice tool to make someone aware that you need something _now_. 3) other people in the room can answer it, eventhough your computer is locked 4) you still hear it ring if you are at a colleagues desk in the same room or casually discussing stuff with teammates or people who walk in and want to know stuff (which happens quite often here) 5) you don't need a headset 6) as both ends hold a handset the conversation is usually shorter and more to the point as you cannot idly play around on your pc or stuff.

Don't underestimate comfort

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm going to sit on a 1 hour conference call and all the rooms are busy, I do NOT want to grip my mobile phone for that time.

You still have a desk?

[Anonymous Coward]

You still have a desk? In an actual office building? Do you have coffee machines already, or is there still a lady doing the rounds three times a day for that?

All I've got is a laptop bag with a laptop and a cellphone. Wherever I lay my laptop, that's my office.

Skype - sounds like....well, Skype

[Tomsk70]

I can usually tell instantly if someone is calling from either Skype or a mobile, simply because of the compression and cut-outs.

Just that alone will annoy a potential client - and I really prefer not to give out my own mobile number (because then you get calls from the international helpdesk at 3am).

the OP reminds me of someone that just doesn't realise or accept that MP3's sound crap becuase that's all they've ever known.

Very very much yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I work in a call center environment you insensitive clod!

Re:No

[wmac1]

I was forced to have a landline because it was the telco's requirement for having an ADSL. But since I moved to wireless internet, I have not had a fixed line. I use mobile phone for receiving calls and calling local numbers, a cheap VOIP service (half the price of Skype and Google) for calling my Mom in another country and skype for talking to may friends abroad.

Cost is far too prohibitive in Australia

[AbRASiON]

Cost of mobile calls even on a big business plan is far too expensive to always use the mobile phone compared to the desk phone. As much as your idea about saving the desk space is fantastic (never even occured to me) - every now and then I make an extremely long phone call in the office and on a cell - that would really add up.

Not in all offices!

[Terminus32]

Smart phones and main desk phones without PCs are still the norm in my office! We have PCs but those are used by admin...

For me, yes. For the guys I work with, no.

[Stolpskott]

Most of my job is application/system support work for securities traders in the bank I work at. 80% of the cases we deal with come to us by telephone (the vast majority of the rest are people shouting across the room or walking over to our desks), but the "phone" they call is actually an appliance that auto-forwards to a mobile phone, so no desk phone required.
The traders, however, are using specialist VoIP trading telephones from IPC or BT with lots of knobs, bells and whistles, external speaker boxes, dedicated voice broadcast/multicast speaker boxes, et cetera. Most of those guys would rather lose a leg or two than their desk telephone.

You still go t work?

[alen]

Dude you are OLD

Re:Nerd Myopia

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say that the paradigm of phones have shifted, but just because you or the people who do jobs like you don't use them doesn't mean they are or ever will (or at least in the next 30 years) going away.

Military bases/Government Secure Facilities prohibit the possession of cell phones inside the building. Also, I highly doubt you are going to be authorized skype or some other commercial two way web app on that network.

The best part about mp cellphones is that I don't see the old asshats checking their blackberrys (separate rant) in meetings when they are supposed to be paying attention to something else

No (at least I don't)

[TheHonch]

When my company (actually a government agency) moved six years ago I chose an all mobile solution for us, saved a lot of cabling and reduced the number of phones ringing at an empty desk. Nobody misses the old phones. The mobile solution is also a lot cheaper.

integration

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure yeah. Since Microsoft discontinued the Skype integration with Asterisk, our VoIP phones are more than necessary to contact other Geo-located offices paying nothing than the tie line costs.

I have a Nokia brick

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a Nokia brick you insensitive clod!!!
Please!! I want some time of privacy, wired phone are far superior. I don't want to receive work calls while in the restroom.

Good question

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working in a big telco company, and we have all mobile phones. The phone on the desk got replaced by Lync (Unified Messaging), so every employee gets a smart phone + headset for phone calls using Lync.

Customers, Vendors, Government ...

[thegarbz]

This looks like a very typical case of having found that you can live without something and then suddenly thinking it has no place in society.

Honestly you can have my desk phone when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. Actually no you can have it when you provide me with a SECOND company mobile... which incidentally won't leave my desk.

I am in the same boat as you in my company. We IM each other when we can't be stuffed walking, email each other to put things on the record, use a mixture of sharepoint and other "collaboration suites" if they can be called that, and everyone has my mobile number.

My mobile number however is issued to those who desperately need to talk to me. You won't find it on my business card. You will not get it if you're a customer, a vendor, or even a contractor working for me for all but the most urgent and important of jobs. This is a method of making space for myself. This is something very important if you work with people who think that every job is urgent and you should be called in at any time.

We do have someone who briefly tried to ditch the company phone. He simply forwarded his company phone to his mobile and unplugged it. Less than a week later he spat the dummy on his little exercise when someone called him at 6pm starting the conversation with: "Oh I was expecting to simply leave you a message, but since you're here..."

Re:Customers, Vendors, Government ...

[Anonymous Coward]

^this^

At home I have no landline (because it made sense cost wise). At work I have a land line and use it *all* the time. Because unlike my cell phone it does not have a battery that will go dead in under a day. Has an excellent speaker, and a set of headphones for long calls that are comfortable.

Sure I can use a cell. But why? *basic* cell rate plans start at 40 bucks. Phone lines start in the 5-10 per month range. Not that big of a cost for 2-3 guys. But try 200. Try $2000 vs $8000+ per month.

We also use tons of IM. But for long conversations a phone call sorts things out pretty quick.

This is a silly question of 'hey I found a tool that sorta works lets use it for everything' sort of question that pops up on SD once and awhile. Why yes you can use a metric wrench on a imperial bolt. But it does not work that good. Use the right tool for the right job.

This sort of thing seems to be those who want to be at work 24/7 but can not figure out a good way to do it. Leave work at work. That time you are at home not working is in effect 'work'. You are relaxing so you can go back to work and be effective.

Re:Customers, Vendors, Government ...

[thegarbz]

Really? Someone shows a method of controlling workload and prioritising jobs and you'd fire them?

*Golf clap*

Re:Customers, Vendors, Government ...

[thegarbz]

To extend your comment, I don't have a landline at home either? I do however have an internet phone hooked to cordless and a voice mail system.

This is all for the same reasons as my earlier argument. Every idiot in the world doesn't need a quick ticket to interrupt me whenever they want. If you're expecting me to fill out a survey, add a phone number to an order, or anything else that isn't absolutely important, expect to get my VoIP number and expect that you'll end up at the answering machine.

If it's important I'll call back.

I would have to say no.

[Phoenix]

First of all, unless the cell phone is being provided by my company I feel no obligation to do any work from it (apart from being available to be reached when I'm on call or in an emergency). So unless they provide the phone or subsidize my wireless bill...they're putting a phone in my desk.

Secondly I work in a hospital. We configure the patient call system and the heart monitors to ring to the assigned nurse's handset phone (which is an extension of the PBX system). So going phone-free would be a hardship to our facility.

We may be trending that way but I don't think that the end of the PBX Office Phone network is nigh

Shouldn't the question be...

[AliasMarlowe]

Do you still need a desk phone?

I suppose the answer would depend on the country, with the need basically vanished from much of Europe. We abandoned them years ago, except for the switchboard/receptionists and a handful of fixed lines for FAX machines (still needed for transactions with some countries). Everyone has a company-issued mobile phone; several hundred employees. They're not the top-end Android or iPhone models, but far above the dinky-toy model level. Everybody can be reached, almost anywhere, unless they switch off the phone. Of course, it's standard practice to switch them off when work is over for the day.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[mcgrew]

Why would my employer pay fifty bucks or more for a cell phone when I'm at my desk all day and a desk phone is about five bucks? I'm not taking my work phone home, nor will I use my personal cell phone for work.

Now, does one need a POTS phone at home? Why would you?

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[tnk1]

Why would my employer pay fifty bucks or more for a cell phone when I'm at my desk all day and a desk phone is about five bucks? I'm not taking my work phone home, nor will I use my personal cell phone for work.

Now, does one need a POTS phone at home? Why would you?

So they can call you at home when they want to and they don't even have to admit that they needed to call your home phone. I'd say that they make up for the extra cost by being able to find you to do more work.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[hawguy]

Why would my employer pay fifty bucks or more for a cell phone when I'm at my desk all day and a desk phone is about five bucks? I'm not taking my work phone home, nor will I use my personal cell phone for work.

Now, does one need a POTS phone at home? Why would you?

What kind of desk phone do you have that costs $5? The phone on my desk costs around $600, though it will outlast a $600 cell phone.

Once you add in the telecom costs including phone system purchase, depreciation and maintenance, telecom salaries, etc, I'd guess that the "cheap" desk phone costs around $150 - $200/year, not including usage charges.

But despite what they spent to give me a nice desk phone, I almost never use my phone. About the only calls I get are cold calls from salespeople and head hunters, if I don't recognize the number, I generally don't pick up.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[NeutronCowboy]

I guess Europe is a bit different from the US, where International calls are fairly common, at least to European countries. I was surprised how easy it was to call Germany from France via a cell phone. In the US, you need to let your carrier know ahead of time, and generally pay extra. In Europe, apparently it's all bundled.

That said, here's why a cell phone will not replace my desk phone, even though I have both a work and a personal cell phone (never, EVER get roped into having your personal phone subsidized - you will never have actual off-time again):
* Call quality. My desk phone provides rock solid connection with a call quality that is unmatched by any cell phone.
* Head sets. The head sets that are available for desk phones are miles beyond those available for cell phones, both in ergonomics and sound quality.
* International calls. I can call India, Costa Rica and any other company location directly without having to wait for someone to provision that capability on my cell phone.

Desk phones will go away when cell phones can match them in every single of these aspects. Until then, I will fight to have one.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Vrtigo1]

So it works. VoIP is great and cheap and all, but what do you really use a land line for? I suspect most people will say something along the lines of, when my cell phone is dead, or during a storm when cell service is out, or to call 911 in the middle of the night when someone kicks in your front door, or when your 2 year old is choking. Cell phones are great inventions, but at 2AM when I hear glass shattering I'm not going to want to wait the few seconds it takes to find my cell, unlock it, load the phone app, dial the number, wait for the call to go through, relay my address to the 911 dispatcher, etc. From a land line it takes 2 seconds and the dispatcher has your info on the screen immediately.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[thoth]

Do you still need a desk phone?

I want a desk phone. I want some way to be reached at work and nowhere else.
All that other stuff is good too, for friends and family, but for work-related stuff, desk phone please (and I suppose "work only" ids for IM/Skype/whatever).

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[LDAPMAN]

Unless you have some kind of strange limited plan you can call anywhere from any US cell phone without extra provisioning. There is an extra charge/provisioning to enable international roaming so you have service while your out of the country.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Half-pint HAL]

I don't think it's "much of Europe", but rather "many companies in Europe", because in my experience, it's all a matter of accounting practices and the "cost culture" of your employer. For years I was without a work mobile, because mobile telephony had been designated a "project expense", whereas every desk had a phone anyway. Most projects were short term and couldn't justify the cost/hassle of a mobile phone, when there was a free alternative. The company also made it difficult to move your number when you moved desk. Useful in that it stopped you getting chased down by clients you were no longer working for, but a right bugger if you wanted to give someone a way to get in touch with you. Official policy was to give out the number for office reception and get transferred.

This particular employer was too stingy to switch wholesale to an internal IP network, which meant "follow-me" numbers were not an option. Although it was always the plan, and with every office refit, they fitted natty Cisco IP phones. But didn't actually use any of their useful features because we couldn't go IP-telephony until every office was properly kitted out. I left the company almost two years ago, and despite many thousands of pounds spent on IP telephony, we still didn't have the "follow-me" numbers implemented anywhere except the call-centre in Wales. But even before I left, mobile phones had finally become standard issue (for new staff only, though(!)) and company policy encouraged usage of MS Messenger internally, so I doubt they'll ever use the full IP telephony. All it ever achieved was buggering up our internet connection... because facilities specced the pipe bandwidth on data requirements, but BT tended to rig up the connection to take the voice bandwidth off the same pipe.

Lovely, fancy, expensive phones that meant we got a vastly inferior service to what we got off the old £10-a-pop BT phones. Progress....

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[porges]

I use a land line when I want to comfortably understand the person on the other end. (The world seems to be divided into people who notice that cell phones lose a lot of signal information compared to land lines, and people who don't.)

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Stormthirst]

You use fax machines still?

Why not an email to fax gateway. They are typically way cheaper and you don't have a fax machine taking up space/toner/paper sat in the corner of the office.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[NeutronCowboy]

Possible that that changed since the last time I checked my old ATT plan (it was a few years ago). My current TMobile pay-as-you-go plan also required extra fee for international. Also - I think the rates are different. If you get an international plan, calling is cheap. If you don't, you're looking at dollars per minute. Again, based on information that is from an old ATT plan.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[buybuydandavis]

I use skype.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[MarsMan0013]

About 6 months ago, I gave up my desk phone after a power outage killed 30 deskphones and telecom ran out of backups. I only used mine for the occasional conference call or calling in parts from a vendor. Nobody has realized I do not have a desk phone anymore. I agree with keeping work and personal lives separate; that is why I carry two. I am almost always carrying two, my personal win7 phone (LG Quantum) and the work iPhone 4s. Even with two devices I still have the two tethered using Google Voice for the cannot miss calls from the kids schools, doctors etc. When I do not feel like carrying both, I just flip on call forwarding. (example, taking the family to Disneyland) On vacation I just charge up the work phone and toss it in the glove box or travel bag for emergency usage (read: in case I lose mine) With all that said, I don't have a home phone either. My kids use our phones, know the unlock codes and are always available to them, (Kids are 6, 8 and 9) But soon I know they will need their own phones. I would rather get them phones than add a home phone. Hard lines are nothing but telemarketers and other cold call spam. I wont ever use them and wouldn't be surprised if they vanished. Everyone I know is mobile, even my grandmother. I don't know anybody's home phone number anymore. I would rather e-mail someone than go through an office operator or touch tone attendant. And if its a voice attendant, I will never call, any noise in the background screws it all up, you cannot even sniff or cough. It is an act of pure torture. Telecom's supposed advances are what make me hate the phone even more. Why do you think texting and social media are so prevalent. I know I am not alone.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a land line when I want to comfortably understand the person on the other end. (The world seems to be divided into people who notice that cell phones lose a lot of signal information compared to land lines, and people who don't.)

Actually, if you get poor voice quality in a cell phone call, that is most likely due to GSM which has quite poor voice encoding by today's standards. If you happen to call using 3G (or 4G for that matter) they have much better voice quality. However, it has been so many years since I called using land line so I don't know how it compares to 3G or 4G

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Shirley Marquez]

Some US cell carriers block international calling unless you ask them to enable it. (Sprint is one.) It's mostly to protect clueless users from making expensive international calls and running up a large bill; calls to some countries can cost dollars per minute though most are far less costly.

Prepaid plans are another story. Many of them have no international calling capability at all, and you almost always have to contact the company to enable it if the company offers the service. There usually is no fee for just enabling international calling, though some companies offer add-on plans that give you lower international rates but charge a monthly fee.

International roaming (using your US plan from outside the US) from any US cell carrier is ludicrously expensive. If you plan to do any significant amount of calling from outside the US it's generally better to carry an unlocked GSM phone and buy a local SIM for the place or places you visit. One exception is Canada; some carriers offer reasonably priced roaming plans there.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Brian Feldman]

What phone do you have to unlock to dial the emergency number? That's not normal.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[Andtalath]

Huge difference, especially in latency.
In general, SIP and Land-lines work wonderfully with crsp quality and without the whole both speak at the same time due to latency issues both cell phones and skype suffer from.

Re:Shouldn't the question be...

[crutchy]

you use email still? why not simply plug into the matrix and talk to your contacts face to face?

also, i hope you don't drive a car because that's soooo yesterday... you should be flying by space shuttle (or super star destroyer)

point... if you have a fax machine still, why not use it? just because you can do things better (or differently) doesn't mean the way you did them before was wrong. you say email is "way cheaper", but TCO of a computer with email, a land line and internet access is way more than a fax machine. if you already have a computer, maybe the email starts looking a bit more enticing, but if you need to transmit something with a signature, faxing is still simpler than scanning and emailing, and i'll bet companies that use email go through more paper (and toner) than companies that prefer faxes.

Re:No

[thegarbz]

As is the rule with "Ask Slashdot", the answer to the question is "no".

The only reliable rule with Slashdot is that people will take their own anecdotes and suddenly think that it will apply to everyone.

Not everyone needs to reach me everywhere. Hence very few people have my smartphone number, and none of those people are customers, vendors, contractors, auditors, or people around the office who have a history of self importance.

If I'm not at my desk it's because I'm either doing something important, I'm in a meeting, or there's some other reason why I would likely not want to talk to you if you rang my mobile right now. It's like having a PA to sort through the low priority shit. If you are important you'll have my number, if not you can leave me a message that I may hear when I get back to my desk.

And no I'm not going to stop and check the caller ID on a phone that rings every 5 minutes while I'm in a meeting. A desk phone gives me space to get my work done.

We still use it a lot

[cerealito]

I don't know elsewhere, but here in France offices have phones ringing all the time.

We do have IM and voice conferencing via MS Office communicator or Webex but we mostly use those for calling our offshore teams or for conferencing with more than one person at the same time.

There's this culture that considers IMs as second priority. IMs are easily discarded, and people might claim that they didn't get them. If you want something to get done you have to make a call.

Recruiters

[benjfowler]

The only reason why my office phone ever rings inbound, is because some piece-of-shit recruiter has scammed his way past the switchboard in order to waste my time.

The phone is vaguely useful for teleconferencing, and when I don't want to spend my own money using my own mobe for business. Apart from that, it's an annoyance.

For everything else, there's Skype/Lync.

Re:Recruiters

[Anonymous Coward]

The only people I've ever known that tried to shorten "mobile" to "mobe" were 15-year-old schoolgirls.

Have you, pray tell, not noticed that it sounds an awful lot like "pube"?

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Desk is absolutely needed for conference calls--my deskphone is IP, but its call quality is far superior to my PC. In addition, anything I'm doing on the PC does not affect the phone call...

I recently have had customers who preferred the phone...

We have a few remote people, there is NO WAY they can communicate as effectively via IM as they can via phone... so it's needed for them...

That said--I was just away for 2 weeks with no out of office message up, I had ZERO phone calls during that time. In addition, clearly the phone could be replaced by the PC if the call quality was improved... but until then, having a little mostly headless computer sitting on my desk that does a very good of placing IP voice calls is still needed.

No, but...

[Jawnn]

...I consider my VOIP soft-phone as something apart from a traditional base-and-handset phone. Setting aside that difference, I still need a "phone". First of all, my position requires that people (vendors, customers, etc.) be able to reach me via the PSTN, and I, them. Second, I need the features afforded by our PBX. Other people in my office need those features even more. Yes, Skype is superior for a certain subset of telephony tasks, and I use that too, but it is not a phone system, and it's too expensive as a PSTN gateway, compared to other VOIP-PSTN gateway services. Corporate IM? Same thing. It offloads a LOT of communication that used to require a phone call, but there are times when the nature of the conversation is impeded by the need to type.

Yes

[Marksolo]

Considering my work has yet to upgrade from winxp and the most restrictive IT policy ever, yes.

Getting new software requires serveral memos, even if the software is free and the computer network is too slow and has no quality of service.

Instead we invest in $80,000+ telecom suites for our advanced telecom needs. The upside is the telephone network is great.

Not every desk

[OMA1981]

We have roughly 350 employees. We use MS Lync with a softphone available on every client through a USB headset. We also have a handful of physical phones distributed throughout our office which can also be easily moved around. Users can simply dial out on the phones, forward their client to the phone, or even log into the phone and make it their own for a few minutes.

The biggest question is will your office culture embrace this solution or will it be a thorn in the side of productivity.

Re:Not every desk

[zlives]

Lync seems to be our next phone solution as well... we are running it just as presence piece now with remote call control of our Soft/Hard cisco phones, but eventually i can see it replacing the cucm

But desk phone usage *is* declining

[rundgong]

Less and less people get desk phones. In my last three jobs I have not had a desk phone.*
All I have been given is a mobile phone. However this does not mean PBXs (office phone systems) are not being used.
The mobile phone is still connected to a PBX so I can make free internal calls, call co-workers with shorter 4 digit numbers and have all the other PBX services mentioned in the summary .

Of course people who make a lot of calls still need and use hard phones. But where I have worked this has been a minority

This is fairly typical for tech companies in Sweden, i think. It may not be representative for other companies in Sweden or tech companies in other countries though.

There are also two different questions in the summary.
Are office phones coming to an end? No, but usage is declining.
Are office phone systems coming to an end? No, but usage patterns have changed to include mobile phones and IM

* Except when I worked as a developer on a PBX. Then I had around 8 phones on my desk. I still didn't bother to configure any of them for usage as my office phone...

Re:But desk phone usage *is* declining

[Architect_sasyr]

* Except when I worked as a developer on a PBX. Then I had around 8 phones on my desk. I still didn't bother to configure any of them for usage as my office phone...

PBX developer who doesn't actually use the phone for communication purposes. This may explain a few things about my local Xen box ;)

Re:But desk phone usage *is* declining

[rundgong]

I know your joking, but I doubt you would want software written by someone who spent most of his day talking on the phone. For that we have project managers... :-)

I still had my mobile connected to the PBX, just no *desk* phone, because that was what suited my usage pattern best.
Also, it always made more sense to have them connected to my dev system than the office system.

It could have been a good geeky exercise to have one of every kind of phone connected to the same number though. (Analog, ISDN, h323, SIP, DECT, mobile and a soft phone on the PC). But i'm not sure my neighbor would like that when all of them starts ringing at once :-)

Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump says, "Email is for wimps." Sometimes face to face is right. Sometimes the phone is. Other times email or IM or SMS. Get over it. Be technology agnostic and use the right tool for the right job.

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

In my current job we have desk phones - for me it's the first time since the 90's. I had already forgotten how damn ANNOYING it is when people sit at their desks yelling into their phones all day, I'm supposed to get some code written here. In a modern civilized environment, people would take their mobile and go into the corridor to discuss who is going to pick up Aunt May from the hospital and what to buy from the grocery store on the way home.

I don't want a phone.

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

where I work we have real phones in the worst sense. Voice Mail is a distinct system, with limited storage, and not properly synchronized so the timing is always a little off. I've tried traditional headsets but they always seem to be cordless, and on 400$ devices they always seem to have issues with their batteries and charging (even though they sit for 16 hours a day on a charger.) I hate the old stuff.

I have a headset for the computer anyways. I want my voice mails in my email anyways. The headset is very comfortable, cabled to the computer for reliability, rather than having battery issues like a smartphone, it can follow me, when I VPN. I can re-direct to a smart phone if needed. Forget the phone, just let me use standard SIP applications to connect to a bridge. (I'm on Linux... but the employer is windows oriented, so I can see this turning into 'thou shalt use myfavorite windows app' through simple bloody-minded thoughtlessness.) for conference calling, I have speakers, just need a decent mic on the desk.

My company uses personal cell phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Gives everyone $50 a month and tells us to use our cell phones.

Fixed line in IM/Mobile :)

[nomaddamon]

We have few hundred employees and 2 actual physical fixed-line phones (at reception)
But we do have "fixed line numbers" for pretty much everyone

All is done over VOIP with intelligent back-end,
when someone calls me on my fixed number (or some call is redirected to me):
* If I'm behind my laptop, company IM rings in laptop with options to redirect/hold/answer via headset/answer via mobile/etc.
* If I'm away from my laptop (IM status auto changes after 5 min of inactivity), my phone and laptop ring at the same time (laptop silently), so i can answer it from my phone or do whatever from laptop
* If my Outlook/IM status is "DND" or my workday is over then i get a e-mail notification and the call is redirected to reception / help-desk (depending on caller)

Having and actual physical phone on my desk would mean that i miss 70% of calls (i have to move around the office quite a lot) and it would take up valuable desk space (where would i put my Chuck Norris motivational picture then :))

Best tool for the job is a toolbox

[Blue23]

What I'm interested in is how the collection of communication you have ties together. Say a call comes in to the receptionist, how does she transfer it to you? How do you transfer a call to a coworker, or conference them in on an existing call?

Do you have separate work and personal mobile phones, so when on vacation (or after hours for those that don't have to pick up anyway) you can leave the work phone behind? And of course set your voicemail message to direct callers to the appropriate coworkers who are covering.

That's what I like about a wealth of communication devices, they each have their own strengths. My company desk phone is VOIP, connects using out intranet to all of the other branches (including internationally) and has robust transfer, conference and directory as well as a host of features my mobile does not. In the same way my mobile has features my desk phone doesn't, and we have a corporate IM and email as well, letting me use the best tool for the job.

Any yes/no question headline

[Gothmolly]

Can be answered 'no'. Lets move on.

I work in a call centre...

[Anonymous Coward]

...so it certainly does help.

Cell Phones Not Always an Option

[Chibi Merrow]

There is so much legacy copper cabling running between the floors in the labs I work in that they're practically Faraday cages. Even my desk, which is outside of a lab proper but has a lab above it, I get no reception. "Desk phones" are still necessary in situations like that... Though I prefer asynchronous communication via email or IM, so people can deal with it on their own time.

A few of us who are lucky enough get to use Spectralink mobiles, at least. There are repeaters for them inside the labs.

Riot Control in Hernando County Florida

[Anonymous Coward]

Nerve Gas has been sprayed in unprecedented amounts by "authorities" near Spring Hill Florida.

If my co-workers were actually in the same timezon

[technomom]

If my co-workers were in the same timezone that I am in then maybe I wouldn't need it. But I spend my entire morning and evening talking to people in China and Ireland. Skype and the other voip alternatives just don't have the quality needed to sustain an 8 way hour long call.

Death of land line greatly exaggerated

[sjbe]

Are the days of the office phone (and the office phone system) at an end?"

Not remotely. Sure mobile devices are going to take huge swaths of market share from land line phones but it's not hard to find use cases where a land line phone is required, useful or even preferable. Off the top of my head:
1) Managing multiple lines into a company. Could be done with wireless theoretically but much easier with landlines presently
2) Legal/statutory requirements. Particularly for certain industries like financial services there is a requirement to have a landline
3) Mobile phones get lost, land line phones don't.
4) Separation of work from personal life. With a mobile device it is harder to separate the two unless you carry two of them and who wants to do that?
5) Cost - land line phones can be a lot cheaper to own/operate and aren't obsolete after 4 years.
6) Office features including paging, multiple lines, better speaker phones, etc
7) Comfort - land line phones have handsets that are actually designed with the human head in mind
8) Sunken costs - Land line phones are already installed to most buildings in the US and other parts of the world.
9) Reliability - land line phones are FAR more reliable and have better voice quality than mobile devices almost without exception.
10) Users - lots of workers are not techie geeks and find a land line phone a preferable method of communication
11) Many users do not need to move from their desks. Why pay for the extra cost of mobile when it is not needed?

Re:Death of land line greatly exaggerated

[Kjella]

Not remotely. Sure mobile devices are going to take huge swaths of market share from land line phones but it's not hard to find use cases where a land line phone is required, useful or even preferable. Off the top of my head:

I'm not going to argue you point for point, but here's the statistic for Norway since 1998, light blue is landlines and dark blue is cell phones. Just last year there was a 7.2% decline in landlines and a 12.3% decline in landline traffic. This is what our biggest telco said earlier this year:

Telenor: In 7-8 years, no POTS in Norway and most of copper decommissioned

At Telenor's Capital Markets Day today, Berit Svendsen, CEO of Telenor Norway, explained that the cost of operating Telenor's copper network is no longer sustainable. Consequently, Telenor will roll out fibre and migrate copper-based customers to either fibre or coax - or mobile. In 7-8 years, there will no longer be any "plain old telephony service" (yes, that's what she called it) in Norway.

Arguably the first incumbent operator that put an end date for POTS. Copper will survive, in a modernised form, only in some rural areas where Telenor do not face fibre competition. But in large parts of the country, copper will be decommissioned entirely.

In practice when calling to a cell phone - which now outnumber landlines almost 4:1 - landlines are no cheaper and customers calling you from a cell phone themselves probably won't notice the difference between calling a landline and another cell phone in a place with good coverage and a good headset. And this is a fairly sparsely populated country with a fully built out "traditional" telephone network, if it's not worth maintaining here then I think copper networks will disappear from most urban areas on the globe.

Re:Death of land line greatly exaggerated

[sjbe]

I'm not going to argue you point for point, but here's the statistic for Norway...

Circumstances in Norway may be very different than those in the US where I live. Land line usage in the US is also declining as a percent of use but it is in no danger of disappearing any time soon.

In practice when calling to a cell phone - which now outnumber landlines almost 4:1 - landlines are no cheaper..

I can get a land line for ~$15-30/month and often less. There is almost no useful cell plan you can get here that is that cheap and that doesn't even take into account the full cost of the phone.

And this is a fairly sparsely populated country with a fully built out "traditional" telephone network, if it's not worth maintaining here then I think copper networks will disappear from most urban areas on the globe.

Most of the US is quite sparsely populated as well. Copper networks in the US aren't going away if for no other reason than they are needed for internet service to homes and businesses. POTS service will probably disappear at some point and be subsumed into VOIP once the network gets sufficiently robust. There is no money in POTS but there is plenty of money in last mile internet delivery so the copper networks are going to be with us for quite a while. In some places fiber will replace them but that is still a land line.

Re:Death of land line greatly exaggerated

[Kjella]

There is no money in POTS but there is plenty of money in last mile internet delivery so the copper networks are going to be with us for quite a while. In some places fiber will replace them but that is still a land line.

The question is though, will it be used for telephones? Some 76% of all households and 84% of the population here have broadband (I think cutoff is 128 kbps, but median is now 7.9 Mbps and average around 14 Mbps) and almost all offer some kind of VoIP telephony in their service but hardly anyone is buying it. Either people use their regular Internet service to run Skype or something like that or they use their cell phone, the actual phones are certainly disappearing. Also phones are less and less about calling, voice and texts are almost flat while mobile broadband is up 60% YoY.

I can get a land line for ~$15-30/month and often less. There is almost no useful cell plan you can get here that is that cheap and that doesn't even take into account the full cost of the phone.

I don't know the US market that well but at least smart phones is not an apples to apples comparison. My parents have some extremely simple phones that are roughly as advanced as a landline and use them relatively little - the phones were $35 and the plan is $18/month minimum they can dial for that they rarely exceed. The old ISDN line they had cost $32/month and didn't include any minutes at all. Sure I have an iPhone and a data plan to match, but I'm paying for a whole lot of other things than talking on the phone.

Re:Death of land line greatly exaggerated

[sjbe]

The question is though, will it be used for telephones?

Yes but it will be kind of like the situation with smartphones. Voice simply becomes one more form of data. My smartphone is a computer that happens to be able to make phone calls. You'll still see phones but they'll eventually be VOIP phones. POTS is a remarkable bit of engineering from an earlier era and it works really, really well in a lot of ways. My father was an AT&T engineer for many years so I got to see lots of central offices and other interesting stuff the public doesn't usually see. The problem is that while POTS does a very good job transmitting voice, it's kind of a one trick pony. People want more than just voice these days and since the telecoms only get one line into the house they need to have it do more than just simple voice services.

Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

My office phone rings more than ever. For anyone who typically works from the same spot they're a better tech. They're more comfortable to use, the sound quality is better, there are no batteries to worry about, and they don't suffer annoying glitches (a half dozen times I've had my smart phone freeze or lockup while trying to answer a call and had to pull the battery).

My or has about 1500 employees - about 500 of which are office staff. Amongst those we have about 30-40 regular cell-phones and about 15 smart phones. Everyone else is land-line only (and even the people with the cell phones have a landline and use them when in the office).

The NHS...again

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if anyone else works for the NHS, but we're pretty reliant on landlines. Not to mention that a fair proportion of NHS hospitals are large enough that you can't get phone reception in most parts of them. At all.

I certainly don't need one...

[johnlcallaway]

We are moving to a new building. Our ops manager was all gaga over his new IP phone system, and it was so cheap at only so much a month per phone. That made me think .. I don't really use the phone. At least not as much as he is going to be charged for it. I'm a developer, I hardly every get business calls from outside the company. Most of the tech support is done over the Internet. So I suggested that with phones in the conference rooms, I don't need a phone at my desk anymore.

He was a bit reluctant, and I don't know if it will happen. But really .. why should the company spend money on a phone I'll use maybe once a month. He was concerned about the company forcing employees to use their cell phones, but I suggested that since it's my choice, no one is forcing me to do anything. And with thousands of hours of roll-over minutes, I doubt if I'll use them up anytime soon.

I think it was more like if there weren't as many phones needed, maybe his job wouldn't be as important either....

Yes, my smartphone is on my desk.

[jcdr]

Is a smartphone not a phone ?
I just replaced the keypad by a smartphone and the handset by a headset.

I do too

[captainpanic]

Advantages:
1. Comfort. A big phone is just more comfortable.
2. Keeping everything separated. Work calls me at work, which means they don't bother me at home.
3. Speaker phone. As said before, speaker option on a mobile is (1) often still a little crappy and (2) drains the batteries, which means you need to plug it into your charger, which is inconvenient because the cable is just too damned short.
4. Name-based speed dial for the whole company. There's probably an app for that on smart phones too, but we have it on the desk phone, and it's very convenient.
5. Money. We already have this infrastructure. It's paid and depreciated. Especially internal calls cost practically nothing.

Disadvantages:
1. No smart phone to play with, i.e. no angry birds
2. My colleagues and business partners cannot reach me 24/7, but I don't call that a disadvantage.

Re:I do too

[PlusFiveTroll]

> 5. Money

Cell phones are expensive for constant talkers. There are many jobs that people talk on their phones a good part of the day, with the added requirement of looking up information at the computer. Only a few crappy services offer unlimited voice for $50 a month. An IP trunk is only $25 a month, which can be shared across a lot of users.

A softphone is an option for someone who sit at there desk, unless they want a handset so they can walk around the office with it. Why not use a cell then? Signal, I've worked in a few industrial shops that acted like Faraday cages to cell signals. Had to use a portable to work on the machine and talk with tech services at the same time.

Also, a lot of companies like to record their employees calls 'for quality assurance purposes'. Now you have a call coming to the corporate PBX via one channel, out to the cell company via another, then to your phone. You can end up with situations of very high latency that way.

Lastly, most desk phone systems these days don't mean it's just a desk phone. The systems I work on you can punch a button and type your cell number in. When you don't answer at your desk, the call follows you to your cell.

Re:I do too

[Anonymous Coward]

Advantages:

1. 3 Digit Dialling across wide spread organisations. (IF your company has less that 1000 Employees and you have an Extension longer than 3 digits your installer was either lazy or stupid)

Re:I do too

[shutdown -p now]

The real substitute for your desk phone is not a smartphone; it's a good headset and some kind of VoIP. A headset is more comfortable than any phone, and name-based speed dial is that much more efficient when you have the keyboard to type in those names - not to mention that, in a large company, you might also want other ways of locating someone, such as going through the org chart.

I've been using Communicator / Lync for that for the past 5 years, and it works great. I'd imagine that Skype can be set up in a similar way (though I wonder if it can integrate with Exchange to look up contacts there). I've got rid of my desk phone 2 years ago, and didn't really notice the loss.

Re:I do too

[Glendale2x]

If I have to use speakerphone my Polycom is a world better than any cell phone. Headset options are infinitely better than Bluetooth options. Back in the day I preferred a wired headset if I was going to be on the phone all day; now I have a wireless Plantronics since I'm not on the phone as much. The desk phones always work and work well. I notice whenever I'm talking to someone that has VOIP or is on their cell: the worst is when there's a one second lag on the other side's VOIP handling, it really screws up the flow of conversation when both ends end up talking over each other. I guess if you're both on VOIP and have the same amount of voice lag it probably balances out, but it's really pretty much crap when one side is trying to do something "modern" that sucks.

Yes, there's ways to set things up properly, but by and large all these alternate methods end up falling short more often than not. My office phones are VOIP Poloycoms and they work great, but they're on the LAN where every detail can be configured properly.

Plus my work phone is for when I'm working. Call it for work. If I really want to or need to be reached for work things on my cell the desk phone can be set to forward calls.

Re:I do too

[pixr99]

Or you bought a block of DIDs and decided that using the last four might make for a good, consistent, internal extension!

digital upgrade long overdue

[mango9]

Desk phones (in small businesses) and home phones are in serious need of a digital upgrade. The copper line is still a major asset in most places for use by DSL so why not upgrade the phone to a digital device which can offer many of the services offered by cheap cell phones such as text messages? Much could be done even without additional power. Options like a wireless hub could be added etc etc. Why do telcos not push this as standard? It would surely make better use of their resources. What am I missing here?

Re:digital upgrade long overdue

[NJRoadfan]

Even if you have FTTH, the phone company's terminal usually gives you standard POTS connections. Verizon's telephone offering for FiOS is VoIP based, but there is no way to interface with it digitally via something like SIP. Your only option is those POTS connections. Don't know if it can handle text messages, the only noticeable upgrade over POTS is the online voice mail box and the ability to do call forwarding, multiline ring, and "follow me" ring.

Re:digital upgrade long overdue

[mango9]

So why not dump POTS and route it all via DSL to the exchange?

Absolutely still need

[NCatron]

We are encouraged to use phones for major communication from one person to another - it leaves no paper trail. There have been WAY too many lawsuits where email chains were used as evidence.

Re:Absolutely still need

[admdrew]

Damn, where are you working where you're worried about litigation for doing work-related activities?

Personally, I *rely* on the "paper trail" for most/all of my work communication; my IM/email history is invaluable in helping me remember specifics about issues or projects I'm working on.

...that said, we still have desk phones.

No.

[OneWordAnswer]

No.

IP phone quality lacks

[hackertourist]

The IP softphones I've used have problems with audio lag, dropouts, terrible sound quality (not helped by crappy headset microphones) and shitty UIs. A physical phone omits some of these problems, but you have to spend $$$ to get an implementation that's as good as POTS.

Re:IP phone quality lacks

[Charliemopps]

Not true at all. You need a new provider.

We all hate the guy

[Anonymous Coward]

Who calls in to the conference on a cell phone.

Re:Yes, and I doubt my situation is exactly unique

[mjr167]

This. I work in a Faraday Cage so no cell phones for us :). We also have this thing called a "CD Player" where you take these circular disks, put them in the device, and it makes music.

End Of Office Phone ?? NO Way

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, not the end. "The Man" does not get to use my personal phone for company business, EVEN if they offer to partially reimburse me for the use.
My phone, and that is that.

Carry TWO cell phones? I think not, already have too much other stuff on my "utility belt". Additionally, if you take "their phone", then they expect/demand that you work 24x7. If you want more than 40 hrs/week... you need to pay me for those extra hours... and you KNOW that ain't gonna happen.

Just sayin"...

I would ditch the mobile for a Cisco IP phone

[e065c8515d206cb0e190]

In favor of Cisco IP: latency, coverage (barely any cell reception in my office), sound quality (especially in speakerphone mode), office directory, sturdiness, cost, cost, and cost

Yes-ish

[Anonymous Coward]

We use a VOIP phone system. Our company is small (10 employees), but we are spread across three different locations. We could probably get away with just 3-4 phones, but we have 10. The phones can be set up to forward to a different line, normally our personal mobile phones, if we would like. I don't want to be contacted when I'm not working, but others have set up this feature. They like the convenience of giving out the company number without having to give out their personal number.

Haven't had a desk phone for 10+ years!

[Terje Mathisen]

Here in Norway pretty much all medium-sized and larger businesses have agreements with a cell phone company that basically means that all company-internal calls are free, as well as all external calls made via cell towers located around their office locations.

I.e. all the calls that you would have used a land line phone for in the old days.

We have of course never had the horrible "cell phone receiver pays" system used in the US, partly because all cell phones have gotten numbers from a couple of separate ranges, never used for land-line phones, so that we always knew if we were calling a fixed or mobile phone.

The last time I bought a cell phone with a contract clause must have been 5+ years ago, it was for one of my kids.

Terje

Re:Haven't had a desk phone for 10+ years!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same in Finland. Most companies got rid of landline office phones during the previous decade. This entire discussion feels like a strange timewarp.

Re:Haven't had a desk phone for 10+ years!

[Anonymous Coward]

That works fine unless your office is in the basement. Subterranean cellphone reception is typically poor to nonexistent.

Re:Haven't had a desk phone for 10+ years!

[vikingpower]

Amen. Same here in Austria. In my company, we have VoIP phones sitting on our desks. Even they gather dust - nobody uses them, especially not the geeks I work with. The number of new landline installations, per any time period, in private homes, has sunk to nearly zero. Everybody is on mobile, period.

Re:Haven't had a desk phone for 10+ years!

[Terje Mathisen]

No problem: We even put up a micro/nano-cell base station inside our EMP-secure (deep basement) server room!

Terje

Sure.

[nospam007]

As a dispatcher I have a large one with several dozen direct lines connecting me to signals, crossings, other dispatchers, security etc.
And an external phone for internal calls in case the large one shuts down.
An additional alarm phone that rings everybody all over the circuits.
A special phone to alarm the switching station in case something on 25000Volt line happens.
Then I have a land-line phone in case of emergency the only one where conversations aren't recorded.
And a Sip-phone in case the land-line doesn't work.

And my cellphone in case all of the above don't work, which is usually during bigger works, when people stand around the hole and somebody says: 'You can cut those, that aren't our cables'.

12) security

[paul42]

I work in areas that do not allow cell phones for security reasons.

Re:12) security

[Anonymous Coward]

13) Power - landline phones are either powered by their own phone connections or by the power grid, meaning they are usually on. No need to worry about charging them, no chance of turning them off and as such missing a call.

i do

[amigabill]

I need one. and i do have a smartphone, corporate IM, email, etc. though Skype is officially forbidden for some reason.

For my previous job, i'm not sure i ever had a work related phone call in almost 14 years. at my new job, i'm on the phone a lot. what i found is that just using my cell would be more expensive than getting a voip kit like Ooma for my home office, and connect a desk phone to that. then i use a Google Voice phone number that rings both that and my cell, so i can still take calls if i'm travelling or something, but by far mostly use the desk phone as it's cheaper than upgrading my cell plan to work with this many minutes.

i do use IM as well as email, but phone is still a big part of it.

Physical Phone : No ...

[Anonymous Coward]

The physical phone is not needed you can simply run a softphone on a PC/Laptop.

But a headset/handset/speaker(phone) is essential unless you hardly use it, it's just these are plugged into a computer instead of the handset

Get rid of the phone but keep the number

[wompa]

We use Lync as a phone system at my company. I have both a wireless headset for use at my desk and a USB for when I'm traveling. My phone number follows me wherever I go. Anybody can call the number and it rings wherever I'm signed in.

The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[RobertLTux]

For all that matters i would be all in favor of dumping Fixed Phones if it means that i can talk to %person% not %persons_desk%
IF I WANT TO TALK TO FURNITURE I WILL TALK TO MY OWN

Re:The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are really some old geezers left that actually walk over to the furniture to pick up someone's phone, they'll hopefully retire soon. I never pick up other people's phone unless I have good reason to assume that i can help the caller almost as well as the intended recipient, and instead of walking over, I just press a button on my phone.

Re:The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[Anonymous Coward]

For all that matters i would be all in favor of dumping Fixed Phones if it means that i can talk to %person% not %persons_desk%
IF I WANT TO TALK TO FURNITURE I WILL TALK TO MY OWN

Hi you've reached the pocket of %person%...

Re:The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. A "landline" is tied to a physical or functional location so if their coworker or secretary answers the phone, I can typically get useful information.

Re:The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[knorthern knight]

Speaking of retiring... or being on vacation... or a promotion... or leaving for another job... or being fired, when person A is replaced by person B, do you really still want person A's phone ringing when Joe Public calls the company to buy their product/service? NO!!!

It's not a case of reaching the desk of Joe Blow, but rather, reaching the desk of sales or support or whatever other function the public expects to respond.

Re:The End of "You have reached The Desk of ...."?

[Anonymous Coward]

IF I WANT TO TALK TO FURNITURE I WILL TALK TO MY OWN

And fuck you, if we want to talk to you we will pick up when we want and not when you want.
Selfish prick.

desktop instrument

[Anonymous Coward]

Using your cell phone is fine in some cases but there is alot more going on then a simple call and a physical desk phone.
How would you handle 500 seat call centers? What about municipalities, school districts, hospitals.There is also Hotel/Motel that can have thousands of analog phones...
There are alot of users that sit at a desk all day and use a physical phone.

You could use a soft phone with usb headset but still need a PBX on the backend to process calls.
The backend PBX could be IP or TDM, it doesn't really matter anymore.

The physical phone does have some advantages. Voice quality is typically better at least compared to my cell phone in my office. I have speed dials and button appearances that are useful also.
Some other features that I use/need are call park, transfer, barge in, 3 party conference, seperate call forward busy/no answer internal/external options.

Maybe I am old school, but I like a physical phone. It always works.It always have dial tone.

Softphones

[DaMattster]

My company uses VOIP soft phones. They work pretty well

Stupid "Green" Building

[FunkyELF]

Absolutely I need a phone at my desk.

The geniuses who built our brand new "green" building put coatings on the windows to block UV rays and save of heating/cooling.
I have 4 bars of HSPA+ standing outside of the main door and a big X, no signal, once inside that main door.

I can forward my calls to my desk phone but I miss all my texts until I leave for the day.

I have a phone at my desk

[DrXym]

I don't even know the number. I wish to be honest it was taken away because it's just a nuisance - it takes up space and rings occasionally, always a wrong number or asking someone at another extension. Pointless. Most companies could replace them with Skype, and a few phones in conference rooms, small meeting rooms and a few hotdesks.

Re:I have a phone at my desk

[admdrew]

Agreed, although - screw Skype: the (Mac/Windows/Android) app itself is mediocre at best, and terrible at worst, and I shouldn't have to open and potentially log into an application just to place a call when at my desk (where cell reception is non-existent).

Physical phone - no

[JasterBobaMereel]

The physical phone is not needed you can simply run a soft-phone on a PC/Laptop.

But a headset/handset/speaker(phone) is essential unless you hardly use it, it's just these are plugged into a computer instead of the handset

Note both Skype and mobile phones have very bad audio quality compare to copper or properly setup VOIP

Re:Physical phone - no

[Phreakiture]

Note both Skype and mobile phones have very bad audio quality compare to copper or properly setup VOIP

Agreed completely on mobile. Disagreed by an equal amount on Skype unless your connection sucks. Of course, if your connection sucks, then that's a more general problem and falls under the same category as improperly set up VOIP.

Yes, Skype, like a cell phone, uses a lossy codec. Unlike a cell phone, however, Skype actually assigns it enough bandwidth, and the frequency response of the audio is far better than the 300-3000 Hz response you will get out of a standard wired telephone system. You won't miss what's missing because of what you get in return for it.

Of course, if your experience differs, then I would suggest going back to the start and figuring out why your network sucks.

You don't know...

[Anonymous Coward]

... where your d..k is. A phone is the most efficient means of communication. Don't know any corporation that issued all of their employees with cell phones, I am not saying there are none but certainly they are not a majority. Ther rest of you folks can continue IM-ing each other but most people choose speech for exchanging information.

Desk phone stays on the desk when you go home

[water-and-sewer]

One nice benefit of desk phones I haven't seen posted here:

When you go home at the end of the day, the phone stays on your desk. So, no one calls you. If your cell phone *is* your workphone, they can call you on the way out the door, on the bus, while you're feeding the kids dinner, and all night.

Sometimes it's nice to know work stays in the office, and home is home. You can do that with a cell by turning it off, but I don't know many people who ever do that anymore.

Re:Desk phone stays on the desk when you go home

[Zarhan]

They can call. I don't need to answer. If I see someone from work calling, it's my discretion if I answer. If I'm just goofing off, I might as well answer. If I'm having a moment with family or especially if I'm on vacation, they can call all they want - I'm not responding.

I get paid extra when I'm booked for on-call duty outside of office hours. When that happens, sure, call away.

Re:Desk phone stays on the desk when you go home

[grenadeh]

That is the worst part of working over VPN. My boss used to call me like every 8 seconds because he's a micromanager. I'd be like dude leave me alone.

IM is best

[znanue]

The OP suggested it is lazy or passive aggressive to use office IM as a means of communication. Let me say as a developer that I love office IM and want most simple communication to be done over it.

It allows me to check it when I want without interrupting my concentration on whatever logic problem I'm working on.

I find that I am less social and less capable of communicating well when I am deep into a programming problem. IM lets me take my time at forming a response.

It usually leads to a faster social interaction with less fluff so I can get back to what I was doing.

To me, IM is a fantastic means of communicating a very small amount of information or coordinating over a rather tiny issue. Face to face communication still has its moments, and in some environments it may always be superior to IM, but I very much disagree with the idea that the only two motivations for IM are laziness and being passive aggressive.

Z

Re:IM is best

[Applekid]

The OP suggested it is lazy or passive aggressive to use office IM as a means of communication. Let me say as a developer that I love office IM and want most simple communication to be done over it.

It allows me to check it when I want without interrupting my concentration on whatever logic problem I'm working on.

I find that I am less social and less capable of communicating well when I am deep into a programming problem. IM lets me take my time at forming a response.

It usually leads to a faster social interaction with less fluff so I can get back to what I was doing.

To me, IM is a fantastic means of communicating a very small amount of information or coordinating over a rather tiny issue. Face to face communication still has its moments, and in some environments it may always be superior to IM, but I very much disagree with the idea that the only two motivations for IM are laziness and being passive aggressive.

Z

I concur. It's telling that someone is advocating the elimination of a method of communication at the same time deriding those who use a different one.

I didn't realize it was passive aggressive ask something with a fire-and-forget IM instead of playing phone tag or walking across campus and hoping they're there.

Re:IM is best

[admdrew]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. In addition, the good IM clients have a history, which I've found invaluable for sending (and saving) links, chunks of code, or error logs.

I *do* like having an office phone to very quickly explain a problem that would otherwise be a little difficult over IM/email. Those phone conversations typically start over IM, though; I always ping someone over our work chat, asking if I can call them up quick in those situations.

Re:IM is best

[grenadeh]

Phone calls are a waste of time. I don't need to hear your voice. People don't need to hear my voice, or anyone's voice. The only people who do are those who need reassurance and, for conferencing purposes, they want to know you are listening. At [insert business telecom company here] I work with, they use conference bridge and mandate most people put their soft-phone mics on mute 'less they are currently saying something. I work on the phone, unfortunately, and I would be infinitely more efficient typing than talking.

better edge's war

[Anonymous Coward]

Do You Still Need a Phone At Your Desk? => No
Are the days of the office phone (and the office phone system) at an end? => No

Cell phones won't work

[ebinrock]

I can agree on the corporate IM, Skype, etc., anything that uses the hardwire LAN, but cell phones? Forget it. Until they figure out a way to make the reception consistently reliable inside steel-and-concrete buildings, they're useless. (And no, we didn't get budget approval for repeaters or femtocells in our building.) On top of that, I'm in a unique situation in my building that's even worse -- we recently moved into a newly renovated building that used to be a downtown bank. Guess where they placed some of our offices? In the vault! Yes, that's right. The architects in their noble wisdom decided somehow that they needed to spend a quarter million dollars just to cut apart one section of bank vault wall and convert it into office space by putting drywall and ceiling in it. Cell phones are DEAD in that whole area. Whatever you use in there, it's got to be wired, not wireless. And, because I work for a local government, I'm lucky we've caught up in technology in any way. We have dedicated phones, but they're at least Cisco VoIP phones, for what it's worth (model 7965). Overall, I'm pleased with the technology and facility that we have; it's a LOT nicer than what we recently came from (the old place was a 60-plus year old typical government dump of a building, you can imagine).

Don't answer calls from cell phone numbers

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't answer calls from cell phone numbers. A few of my associates insist on calling when they are driving home. I see the number and don't answer. If I accidentally answer and the line is noisy, I start yelling at them that I can't hear and ask them to call back.

A few yrs ago, a project manager on a contract was this type too. He'd schedule conference calls during his commute home, so he could bill the time. I subverted his calls by getting everyone else to say they couldn't understand him. For those 6 months, he had to stay late at his desk like everyone else on the team. It felt good, if a little mean. ;)

I have a high quality SIP phone (16K codec) connection (FreeSwitch rocks!) AND a plantronics headset. Clear, no static. This is not a line from the local POTS provider either. 8K sounds like trash after you get used to HQ calls.

I spend 6+ hrs a day on the phone. The company pays for the lines and internet connection. I'll be damned if I'll use my emergency cell minutes for business calls.

call quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with your general statement and I'd like to qualify the OP's opinion by saying, our sales staff who are on the phone all the time *require* the reliability of landline (basically VOIP now). Cell phones have choppy reception, degraded quality, and of course it's limited by battery life. Other side issues (on my smartphone anyways) is the buggy interface: sometimes the screen takes a while to unlock, and even the phone "app" craps out every now and then. I've tried dialing on the virtual phone on my computer and is as klunky as using a virtual keyboard. Or the ipad's software keyboard.

If I only made the occasional or internal calls, I wouldn't mind what the OP is doing and junk the phone. But for the sales folks who are on it all day dialing require the reliability of a dedicated VOIP and the call quality from a good microphone/ receiver of a "real" phone.

Now, are VOIP always perfect? No. Callcentric's recent attacks gave us shoddy call quality, calls being dropped, until we were off the grid completely. Fortunately, we had a backup service and transition was smooth.

Some people need pickup trucks to do their jobs. Others, a simple sedan will do. And the rare few will need to "look busy and important" with the appearance of a luxury car.

Desk phones are obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

In my workplace, desk phones are only used by those who forgot their cellphone for the day. They send out a blanket email apologizing for forgetting their phone and reminding everyone of their desk extension.

I say yes

[Murdoch5]

I know this is going to cause a lot of people to revolt but I don't care, I think having a desk phone is a very useful work tool. The fact is most people can't send a useful email, people send emails so void of actual information that you need to start long threads to get to the point of the matter. When you can just call someone you can spend 3 minutes hashing out your point instead of a day of poor emailing, what makes more sense to you? Even if you get one great email in the course of a day, it wont make up for the 100 bad emails you need to deal with. I'm pro phone.

Re:I say yes

[admdrew]

Agreed. And I dislike the argument that a phone takes up too much space. Really? Virtually every other desk item I have is larger than my desk phone.

Re:I say yes

[Murdoch5]

Thank you! At least the world still has a few smart men and women.

Yes, I certainly do

[aglider]

I need a very simple communication medium that can maximize the chances to work at any time, in any place.
Even when I'm in the data center in the basement.
I call it "plain old telephone".

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't had a landline phone since returning to Finland from the US 5 years back, either in the office or at home.

Every family member has a cell phone of their own. Landline phones don't support SMSs. The house has a landline, but that's for ADSL only.

And no, I haven't seen a fax for years. Scanners and digital cameras (or phones) do the trick.

Only if the business wants to get rid of POTS...

[Above]

There are plenty of businesses that run with no traditional phones on a desk, including some of the most phone-intensive ones. Many call centers for instance have dropped the desk phone for a 100% software solution. Lots of small companies with no physical office space use soft phones for mobility and work from home users.

The business must adapt to make it possible. Rather than dropping a grand to put a land line in an office (which is what it costs, time you do phone, PBX, wiring, people time), they have to be willing to spend $200 on headsets and such, and $200 on software and training. They have to be willing to have road warriors make it past the corporate firewall to the PBX for VoIP. They have to run and manage the internal network to a standard where it can deliver quality voice, and cats on youtube don't affect voice quality. It's all very much possible, but it is not quite as trival as the OP implies.

However, having seen a few places that dumped the land line, I can say it is the future. Wide band audio sounds a million times better, yes you can get it on a desk phone, but it's far cheaper to deploy soft clients. VoIP soft switches make least cost routing to dozens of providers much easier than traditional PBX's. Integrated video and white board features can increase collaboration for companies with people in multiple locations. Having everyone have the capabilities to participate in call center like functions during emergencies can be a huge win.

The only place I see the OP going wrong is with the cell phone included as a business device. They are simply not clear enough, or reliable enough for many business purposes. They are a much better tool than a pager to reach someone who is out of the office, but they are not a replacement for in-office communication at all.

I actually think there is a "killer app", well, feature, in this space which could turn the phone industry upside down. Imagine if Dell/HP/Lenovo integrated on most of their products a second mic/speaker jack, but presented it physically as a RJ11 unit on the side of the laptop/desktop/monitor. The ability to plug in everything from an old-school Ma-Bell handset to a modern GN-Netcom handset would make the transition from physical phones to soft clients MUCH easier. I'm really surprised someone hasn't tried it on a business laptop yet for road warriors who spend a lot of time on the phone on soft clients.

Defense

[Anonymous Coward]

For the many who work in the defense industry in secure environments they are not allowed to bring in cell phones. A land line is a must for communication to the outside world.

One point of contact - Next question please

[cercie]

Every business is different but having one point of contact by voice is essential. My cell phone can fall in the toilet, be turned off, be out of range, etc. As to all the other collaboration tools, my land line is integrated into them. Why complicate the matter.

Blackout

[Anonymous Coward]

Landline phones have essential unlimited battery life and work even when there is no electricity.
Also, call quality is consistent and reliable.

I have been exclusively using Lync for two years

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Lync exclusively for messaging, calls and conferce calls.

We have a few Lync-enabled Polycom phones for conference rooms and the occassional desk. But for the most part, actual desk phones are rare. No one is ever really in the office, so spending money on corporate phones adds no value.

You assume cellular connectivity at the office

[ZedNaught]

My windowless office in a computing facility is like a Faraday cage. No signal.

Hi!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I liked it. http://www.nhadep24h.vn

My phone is my lifeline

[isaachulvey]

As a contractor, I spend most of my busy days on my desk phone in conference calls with people from all over the country. We also use various live-meeting tools to share documents and presentations, but for all the audio, there's few things as reliable and clear as a wired telephone system. Most times the bad connections come from people "on-the-go" calling in from their cell phone.

For inter-office communication it depends on the immediacy. If a coworker is working from home, I'll drop them an IM or an email if it's not urgent. Otherwise, I may give them a call. If they're in the office, I'll usually just walk over to their desk and ask. It also helps I sit in a 10 foot radius of my project team.

Our phones are also of the VOIP type which means I can forward my desk phone to my cell when I work from home and still utilize all its features.

Not voicemail

[Anonymous Coward]

I support a lab where there are no individual phones. We do have room phones. No cell phones or laptops are allowed.
If I need to google or do anything online, I'm at my desk. That phone works & I answer it.
Most calls are "Are you there?" type things.
Voicemail, I haven't checked since June 2010 - because it's either a long technical thing I need to rewind multiple times, etc that should be an email or they need to talk directly and they're looking for me.

All our phones are VOIP. I'd love to replace the device with a softphone.

Betteridge's Law of Headlines

[Raven42rac]

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no" Most newer IP PBX systems can be programmed to use more than one number, that is, someone calls your desk, you're not there, it tries your cell phone, you're not there, it sends you an IM, etc. I think the true answer is "it depends on the nature of your job".

Mobile phones.

[Z00L00K]

Many companies here uses only mobile phones except for faxes and conference rooms.

Re:Mobile phones.

[admdrew]

Works for some people, but I work in a skyrise in $LARGE_METRO_AREA, and we have little to no cell coverage around the office.

Cell phones suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Half-duplex. 'Nuff said.

Re:Cell phones suck

[mrquagmire]

You've clearly never tried to have a conversation using an actual half-duplex device.

Of course not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all of us who have to interact with customers want them calling our mobile phones. :)

I Love My Deskphone

[Anonymous Coward]

I love my deskphone. I'm a little embarrassed to say that I actually have three on my desk right now(two are for testing). I don't want my deskphone to go away.

I am not my work and conversely, my work is not me. That means that at 5 or 6pm I go home and work is abandoned. I do not wish to hear from managers, colleagues, clients or vendors at that time. They still call though, sometimes after midnight with matters that they actually think are urgent or "emergencies", when in reality they are only "bright" ideas of PHBs. Thanks to my deskphone, my work life and my personal life have clear boundaries and I wouldn't change that for anything.

Many times, I have meetings or I'm at client locations. Having a cell phone interrupting these activities would be highly undesirable. A desk phone prevents this form happening. Sometimes, I'm in my office and simply want to think without being disturbed. Again, a deskphone makes this easy.

My deskphone has lots of features that allow me to park calls, transfer calls, easily initiate large participate count ad hoc conference calls and lots more that a cell phone can't do or isn't convenient. My deskphone also integrates with corporate systems like email and CRM. Handy.

My deskphone is easy to use. It has large physical buttons that respond instantly when I grab the handset and stab at the keys. There's no booting, waiting for the phone app to load, struggling with a too small keypad or the miscues of a virtual keypad. It just works. Always! It doesn't drop calls, even if they last for hours and calls don't fade in and out.

My deskphone doesn't make my ear/head hot and the speakerphone is fantastic. It also uses a voice codec called g.722 or HD voice that makes the calls even clearer and more "realistic" that previous phone systems. It's almost spooky when interoffice calls are on speaker.

My company likes my deskphone too. With it they can track usage and call activity, integrate features such as the previously mentioned CRM, etc. But, a huge deal is that the number stays the same. Clients call one number, the corporate number, that hasn't changed in 20 years. They don't call random cell phone numbers that aren't really tied to the company. Additionally, should I leave my position the extension number will stay behind so people can reach my replacement and still get business done. Additionally, I don;t have to deflect and direct callers to my cell who are seeking assistance from my old job function.

Along the same lines, there is also no channel fatigue. The OP describes five different communication mediums. They're all good and I enjoy many of them. But, I don;t want to worry about which medium I need to use to reach which person. Nor do I want people worrying about that when trying to reach me. So, the deskphone keeps it simple. There is one channel to reach me, it is the only channel and the most effective channel. If I am not there, people can leave a voicemail, have someone track me down, have someone transfer the call to me, maybe even my cell if it's permissible, all from withing the same call on the single medium.

Even at home, a lot of these things also hold true. Sure, my family members all have their own cell phones and people call them directly more than anyway else. But, there is a house phone that I or others can and do call and reach whomever might be in the house at that moment. I don't have to call around looking for someone at the house to find out if a check came in the mail or if I left the iron on.

I could go on and on, but you've already had plenty of opportunity to decide that I'm old and therefore dumb for not realizing that smartphones are the only way forward.

Yes

[nycsubway]

I work at a hospital, in a research department. Surprisingly its more efficient to talk to people over the phone than it is through other means. You can only type so fast, and sometimes you need to use a lot words back and forth when you're talking with someone who's in a different field than you.

I'm not talking about help desk stuff... if a scientist needs clarification from an engineer about a technical problem.. the phone is the best method. If you are trying to recruit participants for medical experiments... the phone. If you are talking to someone from a different department about transferring data... the phone. If you are talking to a nurse or surgeon on a medical unit about a patient in a research study... the phone.

As always, just because the engineers think it will people time if they improve technology doesn't mean it actually will. Hospitals have tried replacing phones with other devices, and it just doesn't work. The phone is the simplest device for communication, and it will stay.

One of the biggest challenges engineers face is accepting that the current technology is adequate and that no radical changes are necessary.

Because of ATT

[Frontier Owner]

I couldn't live without my desk phone. I get just enough signal that occasionally a text message will come thru on my mobile. About the only time its useful is when I'm out of the office, or in certain spots in the building. Most of the time, we collaborate thru IM of some flavor or email. Policy is, all decisions must be documented thru email, even if its a phone call

Won't give up the desk phone

[mu51c10rd]

I have no plans to remove my desk phone. That is the number on my business cards, and the number used for vendors. I also use it for conference calls. I would rather not do conference calls on my cell, nor do I want 4-5 vendors a day calling me on the cell phone. I find a desk phone makes for a nice answering service...it rings and gives voicemail...but I rarely actually answer a call on it.

IP phones

[Anonymous Coward]

Also our Cisco deskphones have the entire company phonebook available on them which is very convenient. Their only downside is being IP phones , when the local LAN goes down so do all the phones.

One question - do they support IPv6? If no, then the other issue is that as you scale up - get more employees, you have to buy more IP addresses - which piles on. If the IP phone supports IPv6 however, you don't have to bother - every /64 link you get will accommodate an unlimited #IP phones (in this scenario, 2^64 is unlimited)

Re:IP phones

[JacksonG]

Simple answer is yes.

But since the typical enterprise ip phone deployment uses rfc1918 address space and the only place a public ip might be required is on the voice gateway your point about needing to buy more ip addresses is irrelevant anyhow.

Emergencies

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing everyone seems to forget about the desk phone is 911. Cellphones are not a replacement for the 911 information your company automagically sends to the 911 operators over your phone line. I work for a university, and all of our landline phones send building and room information to the operator in the event of a 911 call. It's literally saved a few lives since the emergency response folks knew where the incident was.

Have a cell phone try and accomplish that.

Wrong Question to Ask

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any reason to get rid of it? Even with everything else, there are a thousand reasons to still keep it, as long as a person uses at least one of those reasons, there is no need to get rid of it.

Also, work is already moving into the non-work time at an alarming rate. The desk phone is the only way to stop it.

Lab

[kria]

IM works great, except when a tester wants to talk to you from the lab, where they don't have a personal machine. I don't travel, so there's no reason for the company to give me a phone. I'd rather there wasn't a compiled list of people's personal cell phone numbers for anything other than emergency on-call purposes.

Yeah, I still need one...

[Anonymous Coward]

Desk phones are still how salepeople do their work. As a group they're generally afraid of technology, so they stick with what they know, which is the standard phone. Given that I support them, I also have to have a phone or they have a hard time figuring out how to contact me, :-)

You talk about a lot of things...

[Anonymous Coward]

You list off a bunch personal preferences in the opening topic but most of those things do not affect how most people in corporate America choose to speak with others. I can sit for a half hour constructing an email, considering all possibilities of what a client needs, or I can pick up a phone and find out what they need in half that time and sell it to them too! People I manage are intrusive with their continual texts or BBM's when I'm trying to focus and more time is wasted trying to extract the intent of the message so a proper response can be provided, when a 20 second phone call would have resolved the issue immediately. While it's nice to know we have so many technologies for a technogeek to list off, at the end of the day many of us simply want to communicate.

Call quality

[kelemvor4]

Call quality of cellphones just is not sufficient for business teleconferences. People attending meetings with cellphones are frequently asked to drop rather than wasting many folks' time with "what? could you repeat that"

Cellphones are important too, but they're not quite a replacement for a landline in business.

Skype or other VOIP is fine, as long as you can access it from your location and your company does not forbid it. Many do, since it's trivial and legal to record audio from them unlike a land line telephone (in the US).

As for people not being able to figure out things like 3 way calling.... If I had someone that inept on my team they sure wouldn't be around long. Conference calling is something any elementary school child should be able to master in a few minutes.

Battery Life

[HockeyPuck]

If you have to resort to long conference calls on your cell by having it constantly plugged into the USB port on your computer to keep it from running out of power, you might as well use a landline.

I can also have my VOIP desk phone at my office relocated to my home office phone without having to physically move the phone or forward the number so phone calls from my home office phone look like they're coming from my office.

Also, it's crystal clear, loud and doesn't drop.

7+ years of experience says "no"

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent 5 years at IBM with my phone set on "Do Not Disturb" all the time, and never checked the voicemail. If anyone had something important to address, they'd send me an email, see me face to face, shoot me an instant message, or get me on the internal IRC server. The phone was just too much of a hard interrupt, and people tend to use it without consideration for the fact that what they are interrupting is probably less important than what they are calling about in the first place.

These days I work for an international media giant. Unplugging my phone did get IT's attention, but leaving it on DND is OK.

Maybe twice in the last seven years I've had people accost me about not answering the phone or checking my voicemail. In both cases I was able to tell the people in question that their problems weren't crucial enough to warrant a hard interrupt, and email would have been the best vector. The lack of consideration in others pretty much drove me to drop the phone all together as a comms vector.

Re:Yes, and I doubt my situation is exactly unique

[Mac Scientist]

My lab is 10 m underground, and there is no alternate carrier coverage. We're not allowed to use most VOIP applications. My office has metal walls and a metallic window film, so my cell phone doesn't work there very well. And I'm not even a spook or defense contractor.

My land line is tied between my office and lab. Sounds like a good plan for it to stay that way.

still need a dedicate land line

[MrDiablerie]

I telecommute for work and I used a Logitech Skype phone with an incoming phone number for about a year. Several hours of my day were spent on conference calls. I ended up having to ditch the Skype phone because of numerous issues. Majority of the time the phone would work fine but there were issues will calls that lasted longer than 30 minutes. Calls would randomly drop, the voice wave would change frequency and become super slowed down, they'd stop hearing me, etc. Had to go back to using a regular land line. I also tried to survive just using my cellphone but the reception in my home office isn't great so my coworkers would have a hard time hearing me.

Yes

[atisss]

As a VoIP engineer, I need it. In fact I need multiple phones, so I have 5 different models.

email vs voice

[Quiet_Desperation]

Maybe I'm just in a weird place, but I regularly et voice mails with long rambling messages on technical topics that would be infinitely better served by a focused, well composed email with an attached diagram or two. Age does not seem to be a factor, oddly enough.

Ask Slashdot: Insert Stupid Question Here

[LoRdTAW]

Seriously. How do we not need phones anymore? On average the engineer here at work spends half his day on the phone, he actually clocked it once. Try spending 4+ hours on various calls using a mobile.

Desk phones aren't going anywhere unless you spend a majority of time away from your desk. And for fucks sake, corporate IM? We have Office 365 here at work and the boss wanted to have people use Lync. Guess what? No one cared for it and I think only a few dozen IM's were ever sent. Its still running on everyone's PC but it sits idle while the phone is constantly used. My guess is since we have no speakers on our PC's (company policy) the alert sound never did its job and IM's went unanswered until the phone was called. You always hear a ringing phone, in fact its almost a reflex to pick it up. Even of the Lync window pops up or an alert bubble appears for some reason people tend to ignore them because its not a blaring phone ring.

Are All These Methods Useful?

[Anonymous Coward]

You rattled off a long list of ways to communicate. From my perspective you've just inundated yourself with a lot of overhead. Yes the phone may be older but it acts as a single source of communication to make things flow smoothly. It's like a few years ago when people decided that email was going to go away because of facebook. Now all those tweeny boppers who said email was dead are using it the same way everyone else does.

There will always be shifts in the way technology works. But sometimes the basic ones are the most effective and straight forward. New tech is not always the answer to communication and organization. Common sense and proper use of what you have will be the solution.

Yes

[Tarlus]

Simple: My employer issues and requires the use of desk phones. I refuse to give out my personal cellphone number for work-related purposes. Just the same, the building where I work has terrible cellular coverage. So cellphones are out of the question.

Yes

[Rastl]

My company uses IP phones and almost no one has a direct outside line since most of us have no reason for non-employees not to go through the main number-extension. However since we're spread out across geographic regions and have a lot of conference calls/meetings it makes perfect sense to use the company network to make the internal calls and keep them completely in-house.

It's also a heck of a lot easier to pick up the phone and dial extension 3456 than to call the main number, put in the extension and have the person on the other end have no idea who is calling them.

My personal cell phone has limited landline minutes and I'd much rather not use them on company business if I can avoid it.

We have corporate IM which is heavily used but sometimes it's quicker and easier to pick up the phone and make the call.

Progress!

[Anonymous Coward]

The company no longer provides complimentary calls to your wife.

Hell yes

[Eggbloke]

I do IT support and use my phone every day. Contacting customers, conference calls, calls from reception. Probably one the most useful pieces of kit I have. I don't want to use my mobile phone for work, the company doesn't pay for it and it's a personal number.

Cell phones are allowed in your building?

[weiserfireman]

I work in a manufacturing environment, we manufacture CNC machined parts.

Because of "National Security" regulations, we are not allowed to have Cell Phones in the Building. Photography and Video Cameras are not allowed without management authorization. Kind of a pain in the butt. If we want to video tape a process, to analyze it for improvement, we have to make sure that certain parts and documents are not on screen.

We also are not allowed to hire non-US Citizens. No Green Cards or H-1B visas allowed, so I guess my job is safe.

There are no phones anywhere in development

[neminem]

It was quite a shock the first time I tried to call in sick from home, and was informed that I couldn't, as my boss didn't have a phone. (Fun, since calling in sick was what HR told us to do - we were -actually- supposed to email in sick.) Other than that, no, I certainly wouldn't ever have any need for a work phone. If I need to talk to anyone at work, I do it in person or over IM, if I need to talk to anyone at work remotely, I do it in skype or over IM, and if I need to talk to anyone not work related while I'm at work, I wouldn't use a work phone anyway even if I had one, I'd use my cell. (And feel guilty - why am I not working?)

Obviously that only applies to dev. Sales people, or other managerial type roles that actually talk to customers, would presumably want customers to also be able to call them. Development doesn't really talk directly to customers.

No.

[Vrtigo1]

If you do any business internationally, you certainly don't want to pay wireless international rates, which are often 10x that of wireline rates.

Cell phone quality is just that - cell phone quality. Do you want to conduct business calls on a connection where you and the other party may not be hearing everything that is said, or would you rather use a desk phone that has a good chance of having a 100% digital wired connection with crystal clear audio?

I don't know where you work, but where I work despite having several IM choices, there are those employees that refuse to use them because they don't like the intrusion when they're working. The only way to get those folks is on the desk phone. Sure I suppose you could use a cell, but it takes 10-15 seconds to find the cell, unlock it, navigate to the phone app, place the call and wait for the call to go through. The desk phone takes about 2 seconds from wanting to call someone to the other end ringing.

What about intercom, overhead paging, etc?

What about multi-party calls beyond three people? This is an area where Meet Me, etc really shines.

Perhaps the biggest driver for us would be the ability to use Jabber apps on mobile devices to place calls via WiFi that go out through the corporate trunks. This is a HUGE cost saver if you travel internationally where you're often paying $1.50 or more per minute while roaming on your cell. Data is much cheaper than voice is in this scenario.

Well, yes.

[Pope]

I work in a secured location. No cell use on the floor for non-managers, no personal webmail or social network access, etc. Fine by me. I rarely ever use my desk phone, but it's handy for when I need it.

There is the option of a software phone & headset, which I may switch to next year if I end up using my desk phone more than a dozen times over the next 6 months.

Gone with the wind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many large companies are doing away with personal offices/cubicles. The hassle of continually forwarding your office phone to wherever you happen to be isn't worth the stress. Given that my last three bosses, acting under corporate policy, demanded my private cell number in order to keep me abreast of their crisis du jour and didn't ever bother to try to call my nominal office phone tells me that the separation between work and private life is at an end. When I complained about invasion of privacy, I was handed a brand new Blackberry something and instructed to keep it on my person at all times. I took that literally and took it with me into the shower. After they replaced the fifth one, they decided that I was not entirely onboard with the whole employer-employee communication thing and would be better off doing something else. Really, relocating my office all the time required that I move a bunch of books and random programmer paraphernalia so I was better off.

You can keep your poor call quality

[clay_buster]

Send me your resume so I can make sure you dont' end up on our team.

I'd prefer to have someone who doesn't have cafe noise in the background during conference calls. I'm tired of folks batteries dying or people saying they are dying when we need to communicate. You can also keep your crappy "I saved $10/month" voip service with a narrow frequency band and horrible compression techniques. Note: Some VOIP services are great. I like mine.

You may think your efficient. I'm wondering if you are a drag on your project.

PS: We use the heck out of Lync and Skype on our distributed team. The company won't let those through the firewall so I have a separate machine on hotspot that lets me "talk" with the rest of the team. Neither are a replacement for an actual phone when we work in groups :-(

Re:You can keep your poor call quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, your poor typing skills and use of English would likely keep me from working with you anyway. I shudder to think of the bugs that your lack of attention must induce.

No place I've worked since the 90s has had a lot of use of phones. IM and e-mail can be archived and searched, provide better ways for multiple people to communicate at the same time than voice can, allow cutting and pasting of commands and code, and don't tie up one of your hands holding it. If something more is needed, people switch to video rather than just voice.

And I'd certainly never work from a cafe. I work in my home office or friends' guest bedrooms, which are generally quieter than offices.

Teachers and other "sensitive" occupations

[mistapotta]

As a teacher, I often find the need to discuss details with other teachers about a student that I don't want to document in an e-mail (that can be subpoenaed.) In addition, I have students of low-socioeconomic status who don't have a computer at home, can't use work e-mail for personal matters, and rely on the POTS to communicate with the world. I use my desk phone everyday.

OP: Ok, mobiles suck, what about soft phones?

[its a trappist!]

The general consensus seems to be that mobile phones are to expensive, have crappy sound quality, invade your privacy / personal time, run out of batteries just when you need them and frequently don't work inside office buildings. Done. I now officially hate that idea. What about soft phones? Not Skype, which apparently has its own list of issues, but things like Lync? Any thoughts on those?

You answered your own question.

[Nyder]

You plainly said you don't use it, so why the question? Feel guilty to take the phone off your desk? Be a man (or woman) and just remove it. If you don't use it, then get rid of it.

cell phones have too much delay

[gr7]

And calling cell to cell is the worst. It's much worse for conference calls with 3 people (or more). What happens is when one person stops talking the other 2 start in simultaineously and you get 3 words in before you realize two of you are talking and then you both stop for a whole second and then both start up. Plus the sound quality isn't as good because cell phone calls are overly-compressed.

There's probably less delay calling Australia on a land line than downtown to downtown cell to cell.

Cell phones are great - don't get me wrong - for a 1 minutes conversation. But a 1 hour intense business discussion - forget it.

"Corporate accounts Nina speaking ..."

[slimdave]

The last company I worked for used desk phones for answering the door buzzer and outside lines. No receptionist, so every phone in the office would ring -- about 25 in the room the software developers were in. It was expected that they stop what they're doing to answer, and try to contact the required person or take a message. This is just one of the stupidities inflicted by management.

Stil need a phont?

[tchall]

It's a habit... and not necessarily a good one...

People who spend their lives at a desk MIGHT justify the expense of a phone switch, infrastructure, etc...

OTOH, putting a mid-level cellphone in the hands of each employee, using group texting for announcements, having that phone in the conference room, server farm, and out on-site... can about the same annual costs

Evil Geniuses in Upper Management realize that if you give mobile tools like cellphones and laptops to employees they will contribute massive hours of overtime without compensation... The Pointy Haired types will worry about non-business use between bouts of productivity...

Tablets, BT headsets, VOIP apps, and an internal "social network" might, in the near future... beat anything we've seen yet for business communications...

Cell phones don't work.

[Animats]

Cell phones just don't work. I'm in Silicon Valley, which you would think would have 100% cell phone coverage. It doesn't. My Sprint PCS cell phone barely works at home, because there's a hill between me and the nearest cell tower, and the neighbors have a NIMBY problem with cell towers. This isn't a remote area; I'm just outside Redwood CIty.

So I have to have a Sprint "Airave" cell-to-VIOP box at home. This is a Sprint-provided small cell node in a box tied to my DSL line. This drops voice quality to cell quality plus VoIP quality - there's more lag than the echo suppressors can handle. Worse, if I lose the DSL line, I lose cell phone service. The Airave box, upon losing Internet connectivity, does not stop promoting itself as a cell node, and will capture local Sprint phones, even though it can't connect calls. If DSL is down, I have to unplug the Airave to free the cell phone, and go to a window on the side of the house facing a cell tower to make a cell call.

Sprint doesn't have service at TechShop Menlo Park, either. That's in an industrial park, on flat land, so there's no excuse for that.

Another big coverage hole in Silicon Valley was Stanford. Stanford cut a deal with AT&T to make AT&T their official cell phone provider, and didn't allow non-AT&T cell sites on their land. So non-AT&T phones worked badly at Stanford. This angered so many people that Stanford finally had to give in. Still, AT&T cell service is said to work better on campus.

Even when there's good coverage, delay and echo is a problem. I frequently talk to a friend in a rural area of Lake County, about 200 miles away. She has good cell reception on AT&T, but for some reason, there's more than a second of delay round trip, which breaks the echo suppressors and makes conversation painful. I mostly talk to her cell on my land line, even if I have to call back to do it.

On the other hand, when I get calls from Switzerland, where they have IDSN home phones and the call is digitized in the handset and sent over a synchronous channel with no jitter, it sounds great.

Sprint, 1988: "You can hear a pin drop"
Verizon, 2000s: "Can you hear me now?"

Google Voice

[cos(0)]

The desk phone provides higher quality voice and better ergonomics. That said, I never gave out my work number because I don't want people to call multiple places, or to chain me to the desk when I'd rather answer their call on my cell.

But I started using my desk phone just this week. I ported my cell phone number to Google Voice, associated both my new cell phone number and my work number with it. Now when anyone calls my cell phone, it rings both phones, and I choose how to answer. I can also make outgoing calls through my work phone, appearing to others that I am calling from my original cell phone number. It's a beautiful system.

Re:Google Voice

[geekoid]

And when someone for the company you work at wants your phone to check of company business?
When there is a lawsuit and your phone needs to be confiscated?
When a judge declares your phone a company asset?

Re:Google Voice

[cos(0)]

I don't understand. When you say "your phone," are you referring to my desk phone or my cell phone? If I ever lose access to the desk phone, I just unlink it from my Google Voice account, and it'll never receive any of my calls again.

Corporate phone systems

[Anonymous Coward]

If I recall.. most corporation record conversations that happen on their phone systems for legal purposes. On another note.. I have to make support calls to a DC's in remote areas.. I'm not going to be wasting my cell mins unless my company pays for my cell bill. What if you company gives you a phone? uhg.. yea.. then it'll be like back in 2000 when I had my cell phone, company cell phone, pager and the oncall pager..... people called me Batman with my utility belt...

Don't need, want

[dave562]

I like the land line because of the call quality. I do not need it, but I absolutely prefer it. I like my Plantronics headset too. I could get one for my cellphone, but again it goes back to call quality. I do a lot of international calling, and the poor quality of a cell phone connection just compounds the communication challenges introduced by the international delay, and the often poor quality of overseas phone lines.

In my line of work, communication falls into a few different buckets. For discussions that need to be preserved, or when they need to be crystal clear, email is still the best tool. For quick, informal conversations with people in remote offices then IM works. The telephone is good for conference calls, bridges and discussions that require a lot of back and forth that would otherwise be slowed down by email.

I don't get this 'landline' need

[Anonymous Coward]

My old office had cisco ipphones, and they were one of the best things ever. Admittedly, I set up the network, and put every single IP phone on its own local subnet with an entire subnet getting QoS.

But really -- we had a highly reliable SIP provider. I could program and configure the phones -- address book xml profiles shipped over DHCP info. I wrote a python twisted client that pulled off of an LDAP server I propped up, and that generated the XML it needed...only took like three hours.

They could integrate with calendars, and scheduling software -- changing addresses over time with a pretty simple calendar feed that knew when I was in the office...

I could even update the phone with a free/busy calendar so it'd stop ringing during important client meetings.

I could program my phone to automatically forward calls to my cell phone. More relevantly, I programmed it to forward calls to my cell phone based on time of day, and my cell number had google voice so work would get one voicemail, non work would get another (based on the caller id #).

If I was more private and less available, it could easily have forwarded to a company cell, or being a SIP system, have forwarded to multiple numbers at once by creating additional bound accounts...

If I knew I was out for a prolonged period or whatever it would handle vacation messages, intercom, forwarding to an appropriate other party...

I could authenticate using a SIP client on any platform from anywhere in the world and act as if I was at my desk from a phone perspective -- intercoms, lights-on for colleagues on the hook...

The handset supported cordless, bluetooth, and headsets... (although in some weird format for the headset)

So...yeah...I don't get it? Why the landlines? I can't do all of that on a landline. I guess landlines are considered more reliable -- they don't need electricity?

I'm in IT -- if the electric's out...I don't work...

Who the heck on /. actually does work if the power is out? Maybe a colo-wiring engineer?

Re:I don't get this 'landline' need

[zaft]

Yes, a "real" landline phone doesn't need to be plugged in, it gets its power from the landline and that is battery-backed which is why your landline phone works when the power is out.

Need? No. Use? Yes

[denmarkw00t]

In today's age nobody really "needs" the desk phone, but they're fairly convenient. Sure, I can IM a co-worker or walk to their desk, but when I don't want to get up but the only good way to explain what's going is with my mouth words, then the desk phone is perfect. And don't forget the ease of using inter-office extensions to call people - easy to remember and recall later when you're all crowded around one desk and need to call IT to restart a service or grant permissions. Conference calls are easier to take with a speaker instead of a mobile IMO...I took one from home the other day on my iPhone and had to eventually Bluetooth the sound through my TouchPad so that I could hear the damn call on the speaker (and no way I'm holding up my mobile for an hour+ to my ear).

Again - need? No. But am I glad I have one? Absolutely.

My reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the office phone still has a place.

For one (and this depends on the implementation, admittedly) but the U.S. telephone system is in some ways the very model of reliability. Something like five 9s of annual uptime.

The biggest argument for me, though, is that the physical phone is my office phone. I have work related messages left on that phone, not lost in an email queue or on my personal cell or home phone. The office phone stays there, so I can turn off my cell phone and not have to worry about someone calling me at work unless they deliberately mean to call me at work (meaning it's something important). The phone is not dependent on my work computer, so that can be upgraded without impairing phone operation or vice versa. If necessary, I can forward the phone as needed to other numbers. I haven't used Skype or telephony or what not, and frankly I don't want to.

Instant messages and email are good for specific information, but aren't time efficient - you have to hope the other person is there and can respond quickly or you have to find something else to do while you wait.

What I want is a reliable, functional, and standardized communications device. I know how to use it, it does it's function well, and is easy to service/replace/upgrade if needed. The office telephone does this.

That's if your cell (etc) work at your desk

[vhfer]

I can't be the only /. reader who works below ground. None of our WiFi, 3G, 4G devices work down here. Well, not entirely true-- I'm in the IT department, so yes, I have access to the company WiFi on my phone. But the general user population here doesn't. As recently as 2 years ago, there wasn't a cell carrier in town that penetrate to the depths. Now those employees and visitors whose phones use one particular carrier can make a receive calls in certain parts of our suite. Those in other departments apart from the two not on the lower level don't have that problem. It's not that we don't believe in advanced (beyond voice) communications. We completed a move to Asterisk open source PBX last year and are working on more and more integration. But not wireless. Many many people whose building has office space in the lower levels are a little RF starved.

Short answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Internet goes down sometimes. Cell phonr batteries die, and signals inside buildings can be low to non-existant. At this point the plain old hard-wired phone is the most reliable option. Get rid of it, and you will need it!

What about regulated businesses?

[joshio]

Depends on the business. I work for a financial company, and there are regulations that require recording of many customer facing conversations. With the advent of Dodd Frank, it appears that the recording regulations are going to extend to mobile devices. Oddly enough, it is quite difficult to record cell phone conversations in a non-intrusive and reliable manner. Sure, there are spyware applications, but those are designed for consumer use, and aren't particularly workable in the enterprise (especially since most of them require rooted devices, which isn't easy to accommodate in an enterprise environment). We've also looked into recording Skype conversations, and there aren't a lot of reliable solutions for that either. Many of them have to run on the same machine as the client, which makes retrieving the conversations a nightmare.

Plus, things like abbreviated dialing between global offices, least cost routing, TEHO, etc, would cause telephone costs to skyrocket if desk phones were eliminated. Our International rates for our dedicated voice circuits is significantly cheaper than those of cell phones.

So, in our environment, at least, about the only conversation you could have would be replacing desk phones with soft phones. With as many people as we have who have more than 8 lines on their phones, I don't think there is a soft phone client that is reliable enough to replicate the experience.

Even for me personally, I have a much more pleasant experience using speaker phone on my desk phone than trying to use speakers and a mic on my computer. Headsets either way suck. I can't even imagine only using a soft phone or only using my cell phone. Heck, as it is, I generally call people back from my desk phone if they call me on my cell phone. Same thing if I accidentally pick up a call on my soft phone. For those of you who enjoy not having a desk phone, kudos to you! For me, I'm going to hold on to mine as long as I can!

Re:What about regulated businesses?

[geekoid]

Go with android devices.
Put out a request for an app that meets you specifications.
Pay the bidder to build the app.

Voice Communication is needed, but not a phone

[captainstormy]

I work remotely from home, so do a good number of the people in the company I work for. Even the ones who go into the office are often only there a few days a week. Right now, people have physical phones in their cubical but they are being phased out to use a USB headset with a software VOIP system. I don't really want to use my personal cell phone all the time for work, even though I have unlimited minutes and all that. I bought an Ooma, which a VOIP device refurbished from woot.com so it cost me around $105 for it. It only runs me $4 a month and I bought a nice speaker phone to hook up to it. I like to use that for long calls and such. I don't think that the traditional phone is necessary anymore, but we still need some way for voice communication which typically means some sort of VOIP system.

Sprint

[gooner666]

No one needs one, unless of course you have Sprint for your wireless carrier.

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Your Stupid For POSTING this. period.

Not really, no.

[Qbertino]

Don't have one at my desk. Don't really miss it. Can take the phone from my co-worker if I need to call out. We have no shortage of phones at work.

no phone

[shokk]

Not for most people. Receptionists need phones are their desk only because it is tied to a place, but most office workers do not.
I forward my desk phone and blackberry to my iPhone. I still don't get enough calls to even approach my plan limit, since most calls are during the day and cell to cell. I'd really be happy if they could take the physical phone away and just keep the extension forwarded.

I still do not own a cell phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I pay $49 or whatever amount to have a cell phone, so my boss can call me 24 hours?
so I still need a desk phone when I'm at work

bailed on the phone

[SeanBlader]

Unplugged my office telephone a few months ago, as a developer, getting calls from end users and investors was completely an obstruction to my day. Since voicemail automatically ends up as a .wav file in my inbox, I just unplugged it and everyone who feels the need to call can leave a message. It's a lot easier to forward a .wav file with a message to the right department, than it is for me to try and navigate the options on a phone system to send a voicemail, or transfer an actual caller to someone who's not at their desk. And having a phone is a good way of having responsibilities that just need to be randomly memorized instead of written down and trackable in some way. In all effects, the phone is a much less efficient and effective way of interoffice communication than mail or chat.

Re:bailed on the phone

[geekoid]

I don't trust a developer who finds a corporate phones system difficult. I can't imagine you could do complex tasks.

" the phone is a much less efficient and effective way of interoffice communication than mail or chat."
that's just incorrect.

any decent conversation is going to have question develop as the conversation goes on, make email a pain in the ass to get anything done in a timely manner. OTOH, I suppose people who can't memorize a few phone commands wouldn't have a conversation about anything complex anyways.

yes

[geekoid]

because companies like to claim anything you do business on that can take, read, download, monitor 24 7.

Give me the contract that states you can't not and will not under any circumstance try to look at anything on my phone.
Pay me for a portion of my phone bill.

have hardware IP phone on my desk for work

[Chirs]

That means I have phone connectivity without needing the computer to be on.

And since I work from home, I have very little need for a cell phone. So my wife and I share one phone with a basic voice/text plan and no data.

Yes, but...

[eepok]

Yes, but I wish people would just send me emails. Often, I just don't have the time to talk. If I get an email, I can respond at will or forward it off to someone else who it should have gone to in the first place.

If you don't call out..no

[crossmr]

If you don't need to actually call out and talk with external people no. Or if you do it so infrequently that it's a non-issue no. Probably whole floors of workers could have their phones removed and perhaps a couple of "phone rooms" added to the floor, so that on the odd chance they had to call a landline out, they could have a quiet place to make the call, and numbers associated with it if they needed to give someone a number to call.

Desk Phone is critical in the medical profession

[Anonymous Coward]

Having a desk phone while working in the medical IT field is critical, especially when your on a P1 for hours because something went wrong.

Although I telecommute nearly 100% of the time,

[drfreak]

I still need a desk which exists in my home-office. As for the desk phone? VPN access to the corporate VOIP network is all I need and a headset. I'm grateful to work for such a forward-thinking company which realizes many office norms are a thing of the past in the information age.

Not really, no...

[chriskenrick]

The company I work for does hot desking / activity based working, and only a small percentage of the desks and all the meeting rooms have fixed phones.

Every single employee is issued with a mobile (cell) phone. At the office there's some kind of technology that will route any inbound "landline" calls to both your mobile phone, as well as any desk phone you happen to be logged into. There's also the option of using VOIP via a headset connected to your laptop, which seems to be the option most "phone heavy" people choose.

In reality: most people hardly use their work issued mobile phones at all, or even keep them charged. Most real time colloboration is done over instant messenging and the occasional conference call for meetings with people who are working from home or offshore.

Quick Answer: NO

[Filgy]

Many companies are switching to SIP based IP phones.

There are tons of SIP clients you can run on your PC, and plenty of high grade headsets that work with USB ports (Plantronics as one example that my company uses).

So no, no you do not.

But yes, yes you still need a regular phone #/extension that people can call you on from any regular phone line.

Re:Asterisk

[Filgy]

...has been one of the best things I've learned.

Highly used by companies since it is free so the companies jump on it, then they realize they need someone to maintain it, not just set it up initially (really small businesses can just contract with one of many many SIP providers to make it very easy and not have to worry with their own asterisk install).

Not the desk phones you are used to

[Casandro]

The great thing about modern VoIP deskphones is that they offer much of the flexibility of a smartphone without the hassle of constantly needing to replace them.
For example there are now phones which have button extensions which can issue plain HTTP requests. So it's trivial to use them to turn the lights on and off.
The phones also allow you to use VPN tunnels, so you have at least some security mobile phones won't provide you.

Again you could do that with mobile phones, or even PCs, but putting it into a "desk phone" case ensures that nobody will mess with it and that it will last for some time. You'll never need to upgrade the hardware because you upgraded the operating system to run some piece of software since you don't run much of your own software on those. They are designed to be semi-dumb terminals. (Some modern VoIP offer you a simple sort of Web-browser, deliberately non compatible with html)

Google Voice with GApps for Business

[amartani]

I find Google Voice very convenient, and it seems to fill most of the use cases listed on other comments. If you have a Google Apps for Business account, you can get a phone number associated with your work account, which is nice to separate personal and work numbers. My work number only rings my corporate Gmail, which is open if and only if I am at work. Combined with a decent headset, the call quality is much better than cellphones. And, if you want, you can forward it to your cellphone when you are away from your computer. A very sad missing feature is that you cannot forward two Google Voice accounts to the same cellphone number, so you can't forward both your personal and your work numbers to your cellphone.

Most workers don't need them

[Shirley Marquez]

People who spend their day on the telephone obviously still need a desk phone; if your job is in sales or marketing I don't expect your phone to go away. If you do a grubby job on a factory floor your rugged wall phone still makes sense. And if you work in a call center, duh!

Cell phones and/or VOIP make more sense for the rest of the workforce. For the typical knowledge worker the first question should be whether you even need to talk to them (a highly disruptive method of communication because of the need to drop everything to answer) at all, or whether you'd do better to use some form of text communication.

Mobile phones are not ready to replace the PBX

[nessman]

I work for a company who maintains a number of large Nortel 81c / CS1000 enterprise phone systems hosting a phones that number in the thousands. The pros easily outnumber the cons. Conversely, as my company gears up for the 21st century - we've migrated our internal telephony system from the Nortel products to Microsoft Lync.

I can tell you that the Nortel phone systems run at 100% uptime. Not 99.999%. 100%. Sure, we'll lose a line card here and there - but that just affects a small number of phones or incoming trunks. The processing cores are redundant, and we have redundant T1 lines coming in for in/out bound calls - and from different carriers. The call quality of the Nortel systems is top-notch. Some of these systems - and the phones they're using - are 20 years old and still running without a hiccup. It has it's own wiring infrastructure - and if the LAN goes down (and you'd be surprised how often that does happen), the phone system stays up. Plus we have extensive DC battery plants to keep them running 8-12 hours - most sites have backup generators though. There's a reason why public safety agencies and utilities still use these systems - their reliability is unmatched and it is a very well engineered product. I've been able to resurrect Nortel products after sitting in flood waters for a few days by rinsing them off and letting them dry out for a couple of days and they *still* work. Plus yeah... I like having a desk phone with a number I give out for business people - and if I really need to be contacted away from work - I'll forward it to my cell phone.

Lync - it's a very neat product. I use it for our internal communications all the time - and it's the number I give out to customers as I can fork calls to both my Lync number and my cell phone (and turn that on or off at will). It has it's share of problems - your LAN goes down, so does Lync. Lync server throws a BSOD, no Lync for you til it reboots. If you have a USB handset, you gotta have a computer up and running. Got a bad internet connection? You'll be lucky if your call goes through. For starters - it's a Microsoft product... and it integrates nicely into your Active Director and Exchange infrastructure... but has it's share of problems inherent in MS products - and there are many interdependencies required to make it all work properly. Servers need to be patched and rebooted routinely (so does the Nortel stuff once in a while to address specific problems - but you do it one inactive core at a time off-hours and the service disruption lasts just a few seconds at most - and you're not doing tons of security patching either). So long as you build sufficient redundancy into a Lync system - these issues can be mitigated. Call quality can be as good as standing next to someone with higher voice bandwidth, or highly compressed incomprehensible garble when you run into bandwidth and latency issues). I get a number of calls that result in dead-air and I gotta call the person back.

Mobile - it comes nowhere near the quality or reliability of a PBX. Call quality ranges from good landline quality so long as you have a good signal and you're not using a shitty Bluetooth earpiece... to just abysmal if you have a poor signal and you're using a shitty Bluetooth earpiece. Good luck relying on it in rural areas, or in parts of an office building that are in effect a Faraday cage. I love my Droid, but it's essentially a handheld computer that you can make calls on - and placing/receiving calls can be a pain when your phone doesn't feel like cooperating because some poorly written app is hogging up all the system resources.

At home I have a regular landline (actually Verizon FiOS now)... the call quality is top-notch and I can use it to dial out with a 56k modem to the PBX's I maintain. Can't do that with "digital phone", or VoIP. Plus if I gotta dial 911 in a hurry, I know where my corded phones are - and I'm not concerned with finding my mobile device, dead batteries, or bad signal strength.

my co.

[Dr Floppy]

We bought a phone system some months ago when we were moving into a bigger space. its really just for inside the two office locations, a few of our remote sales people have remote phones, but most just want their calls forwarded to their cell phones. We use Skype for engineering conferences but my phone mostly just collects dust, Ill call other extensions for ease and to keep my battery up, but I wouldnt miss it. Since Im in charge of simple changes to the phone server I have to know a bit about it, but I really dont like the system. I think my boss likes having a system but I think we could have gone another route. Perhaps in a few years when the system is long in the tooth I can persuade another route.

kinda

[grenadeh]

Yes and no. Unfortunately my job requires a phone but we do all inter office comm with Lync/ Comm / Outlook and the businesses we work with use Cisco IP Comm and other programs like TouchStar (shudder). I guess if zombie apocalypse starts in the office, Aspect desk phones can kill a zombie. One.

We don't have them

[Anonymous Coward]

We are half owned by Microsoft and we got rid of desk phones and now use a USB head set with Lync, which is like Skype or Google Voice. And it isn't just the software developers either, it is everyone in the company that uses these.

Re:PC Do Dad - No PC needed

[Technician]

SIP (VOIP) ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptors) can be purchased either tied to a carrier like a cell phone AKA Magic Jack or Vonage, or you can use an unlocked device and use a BYOD provider (Bring Your Own Device). In addition to a POTS phone line, I have two additional lines. One is tied to Google Voice for free calls to all of US and Canada, and the other is provisioned for under $10 US per Month also calling all of US and Canada as a "Local Call" with unlimited minutes. The Landline is published and used for the alarm, local calls, etc. The other lines are used to place and receive long distance calls and save cell phone minutes.
Details follow, SIP ATA is a Linksys PAP2-AT (un locked) One line subscribed to ViaTalk. One tied to free IPPI and free DID phone in Washington State. Google Voice rings that line. Included was a INUM number. All INUM numbers can call each other for free just like Skype, but unlike Skype, I'm not locked into a single provider. The INUM is used for international friends using INUM, Skype, or Google Voice. The free IPPI allows free calls to/from Skype and Google Voice. No need to be at the PC or even have it on for a call to ring my phone.