What is a DECT Phone?
DECT stands for Digital Enhanced Cordless Technology. Put simply, it just means that the phone can link up to its base wirelessly. That means you can walk and talk, or make and take calls from another room. The days when you had to carry the whole phone set around the house with you are thankfully long gone!
Unlike corded phones, DECT phones don’t plug directly into your landline. Instead, they require a separate base unit to function. If you’ve only got a single handset, then this is simple enough- the base and charging unit are usually combined into a single device. Any extra handsets will typically come with their own charging cradle.
Supported by all PBXs
Did you know that DECT Phones are supported by all PBXs? You can use DECT phones no matter what your PBX brand is or what it runs on
Number of Users- How many DECT handsets will you need to completely satisfy all of your users. Like I said, most SOHO DECT solutions can handle 6-8 Users. This is a limitation of the solution itself as the base station used in these applications can only support 6-8 total DECT handsets paired to it. If you are customer that needs more than 8 DECT handsets, then you will need to look at an enterprise grade DECT solution.
Call Control Platform- Most SOHO DECT applications have been tested to work with most SIP based PBX’s or service providers. I can tell you that I have personally tested many of the SOHO based DECT solutions with in-house asterisk software or open-sourced distributions of asterisk and the solutions work like a charm. If you are using a service provider, you will want to check with them first to ensure your DECT solution will work with their network and call control platform. Some Enterprise DECT solutions also work on a SIP Based call control platform but some offer interfaces to the Cisco Call Manager or Unified Communications platform, interfaces to older legacy (analog PBX’s) via the use of a special DECT gateway.
Size of the DECT signal coverage- DECT operates on the 1.9GHZ frequency has the ability to span anywhere from 300 meters to 1000 meters from one particular DECT Base station or Access Point. Obviously signaling and the strength of the DECT Frequency is affected by any physical barriers which we will talk about in our next considerations. The Snom M3 SOHO DECT solution offers DECT repeaters which simply repeat DECT signal even farther out from the Main DECT base station to offer you even more DECT coverage in those hard to reach places. DECT repeaters, in most cases must be in the same DECT signal coverage as the MAIN DECT base as pictured below and the number of additional repeaters vary between solutions. Some SOHO solutions don’t even offer a repeater solution. Keep this in mind when planning your deployment. Also DECT signal can be broadcasted in either horizontal or vertical applications to meet you many floors you may have in an office building.
Physical Barriers- Obviously, in a solution where there are little barriers in the way of the DECT frequency being broadcasted, the solution scales to a much larger coverage area. However, this does not mean that the frequency can’t penetrate any barriers you may have. DECT frequency can get through walls including concrete walls, but obviously the signal strength is degraded. When designing your solution, you will want to test your known or thought to be known “dead spots”. You will also want to physically place the DECT base station in the middle of your coverage area or center of your building. This will offer you the greatest coverage end to end or wall to wall. Like I said, you will want to test those dead spots, the corner of your office, any rooms separated by concrete walls, and you may also want to check your outdoor coverage as well as often times this frequency has a tendency to overlap outer walls and reach to outdoors. Theoretically, your users may be able to step outside and still make and receive calls on their DECT handset. A good way to pinpoint your physical barriers is to dust off those old blue-prints and map out where these may be.
Outdoor Scalability- While I mentioned that some SOHO DECT solutions can broadcast outdoors, none of the physical Base stations or repeaters were designed however to be in the outdoor environment. In larger deployments such as college campuses, the need for outdoor Access Points or repeaters is eminent. In this case, you will only find outdoor access points in enterprise level DECT solutions.