Linksys is certainly paving the way with their VoIP products lately and we certainly were impressed with the SPA-941 phone although it was a bit lacking in a few features that we considered to be key items. The new SPA-942 is now readily available and addresses several of these key features. Let’s look under the hood and see what the new 942 brings to the table. With more VoIP products released this year than most companies even have in their entire product catalog, Linksys is set to dominate the business VoIP market.

Overview
Like the SPA-941, the newer SPA-942 is a SIP compliant VoIP phone aimed squarely at the business market. Both phones combine the technology originally developed by Sipura, combined with the look and feel of the Cisco phones to create a mid-range device that is affordable enough for small businesses and yet good enough for the most demanding companies. The phones support the SIP standard well enough to be able to be used on any of the popular IP PBX systems including Asterisk, Call Manager Express, SipX, PBXNSIP, and others as well as being extremely easy to provision with Linksys’ own SPA-9000 IP Key System.

Virtually every thing that people disliked about the old Sipura SPA-841 has been addressed and improved upon from the handset weight, the keys, the display, the overall style, and the sound quality. With the SPA-942, the few complaints about SPA-941 such as lack of backlit display, single Ethernet port, and lack of power-over-Ethernet have all been addresses. Actually, finding something to complain about with the 942 is actually nothing more than a wish list for a future phone.

Features
The SPA-942 is a full function SIP phone with 2 line call appearance (4 line optional) with an easy-to-use menu system controlled by the 4 way directional pad. Four softkeys are used to control different functions based on what screen you are on.

SPA941 Hardware Features:

• (2) RJ-45 100BaseT Ethernet Ports
• High Quality, Hi-Resolution Pixel Based Display
• 128 x 48 line display
• Four Line Keys
• Four Soft Keys
• “Solid” Handset
• Headset Port 2.5mm
• Full Duplex Speakerphone
• Interoperability with Asterisk and other SIP based platforms
• Excellent Voice Quality
• Secure Calling via sRTP
• Network Based Ring Tone Support
• Call Transfer, DND, Conferencing, Call FWD, etc.
• SIP B and Bridged Line Appearance Support
• Remote Provisioning via HTTPS, HTTP, TFTP
• Support G177u, G711a, G726, G729a, and G723 codecs
• Message waiting indicator light
• Handset, Headset, and Speakerphone Gain controls
• VLAN ability
• Backlit display
• Power Over Ethernet Capability

When ordering the SPA-942, keep in mind that the phone does not come standard with an AC adapter since this version of the phone supports power-over-ethernet. The SPA-942 is easily configured from the built-in web interface or it can be provisioned through XML files from a tFTP site. When used with the SPA-9000 key system, the phone is automatically setup as well.

For those who read my review about the SPA-941, my only complaints where the lack of a backlight on the display, only a single network jack, and no PoE (power over Ethernet) support, the SPA-942 addresses all three of these issues. Linksys listened to us and only about 15 of the SPA-942s ever shipped without a backlit display (does this make those units collector items?). Adding the second network jack saves you from having two network jacks at each person’s desk, and PoE support is a welcome plus for enterprise installations.

Usage
Let’s cut to the chase here, if you are looking for a quality business phone at a reasonable price, this is it. My company has installed around 150 of the 941/942 phones for different clients and everyone just loves them. The ONLY issue is that some people want some programmable keys for seeing the status of another line (like Asterisk’s BLF function) like the Grandstream GXP-2000 or the SNOM 320/360 phones. To put everything into perspective, I could have any phone made on my desk and I have an SPA-941 at my office and an SPA-942 located remotely at my house (which happens to be using a Linksys Wireless G Bridge, more on this later)

Initially the SPA-942 will configure itself via DHCP and then you can do the setup via the web interface which works quite well. When trying to provision 50 at a time, it is much easier to create config files for each phone and then a DHCP server that can push out DHCP Option 66 (Boot Server Address).

In practice, the phone has superb sound quality and is quite easy to use with an intuitive context-sensitive menu and soft buttons for the different functions. When the handset or any key is pressed, or when the phone rings a very smooth and bright backlit lights up the display completely. In typical fashion, this is one of the nicest backlights on any monochrome LCD we have seen so far. It would be nice if the timeout could be adjusted, or an option to simply leave the display on all the time would be even better.

The SPA-942 is fully SIP-compliant so it is pretty simple to configure to use with most VoIP services that support the SIP protocol including Asterisk, Broadvoice, Teliax, Gizmo Project, etc.

Summary
When part of your job is to review, test, and certify phones you can have phone you want on your desk so it stands to reason that the phone that sits on my desk is as good as it gets. This is precisely why the SPA-942 is the phone that sits on my desk.

The 942 is testament to how Linksys listens to the clients (and especially reviewers) and added the features to the 942 that were lacking in the 941 (namely the backlit screen and PoE support).

Linksys
http://www.linksys.com