April 1999
To: CTI Subscribers
Cc: Altigen; Artisoft; Cisco Systems; Comdial; IBM; Nortel
Subject: The Battle Between Analog And Digital Phones Rages On…
Which do you choose? Mac or PC? Windows or Linux? Coke or Pepsi? Internet Explorer or
Netscape? Analog or digital phones? While most people might not put the battle between
analog and digital phones in the same league as the "battle of the browsers," or
some other well-known battle, it is still an interesting issue in the CTI world. Choosing
the appropriate phone one of the most important decisions a company can make, since the
phone is a tool almost every employee needs to use.
THE DIGITAL ADVANTAGE
While analog phones are predominant in residences, digital phones are favored in business
environments, where they are used to connect to a PBX or key system. The reason? Digital
phones offer capabilities which analog phones cannot offer, such as LCD displays,
programmable buttons, buttons which light up, and built-in message waiting indicators
(MWIs). (To be fair, I should point out that a few analog phones do have built-in MWIs,
such as phones in the Nortel 8000 and 9000 series.)
In cases where the analog phones don't have MWIs, a small box can be placed next to an
analog phones to attain MWI functionality, but at an additional cost. Digital phones, on
the other hand, almost always have MWI functionality as a standard feature.
Another advantage of digital phones is the ability to perform "hands-free"
intercom (overhead) paging to a digital phone's built-in speaker. Paging zones can be set
up to page certain areas of a company. Analog phones, however, are not designed to
function as a "hands-free" overhead paging system. Many analog-based PBXs on the
market do allow multiple phones to ring at the same time, which can be used to track down
a live person. But whoever picks up a phone first will be connected to the person who
called and no one else. This can be used as a workaround when an employee needs to get in
touch with someone in the office. But this is a kludge at best, and requires employees to
participate in tracking down fellow employees, whereas with digital phones, it's a true
overhead paging system.
On the other hand, digital phones can broadcast a voice message automatically over each
digital phone. If an employee is in earshot of any digital phone, they will hear the page
and respond. Of course, there are some disadvantages to this as well, since employees can
abuse the overhead paging system, using it too often, thus distracting fellow employees
with overhead announcements.
Parking a call with a digital phone is also much easier than their analog counterparts.
With digital phones, the programmable buttons can be assigned to a range of park numbers.
Each "park" is labeled appropriately on each digital phone. Then, when a call is
parked, with many digital phones, the programmable button will light up, indicating that a
call is parked on that parked number, making it much easier to retrieve the parked call.
For example, in a small office, a dentist's office, say, a personal assistant can make
an announcement such as "Dr. Smith, you have a call on Park 2," and Dr Smith
will be able to easily retrieve the parked call. With analog phones, however, it would
require that the person have a PC at their desk along with PC-as-phone software to easily
retrieve the parked call. Since, in most small offices, you don't have a computer next to
every phone, picking up one of the parked calls would require picking up the phone and
pressing something like *48, followed by the DTMF number of the parked call.
Another advantage of digital phones is the ability to quickly access the voice mail
system, via a single, pre-programmed key. But, I should point, many analog phones do have
"speed dial" buttons, which can be programmed with a series of DTMF digits to
automatically logon to a voice mail system. Nonetheless, traversing the voice mail system
is usually much easier using digital phones, since it can be done via dedicated (and
labeled) buttons (such as fast forward, rewind, delete, and save as new). In addition,
some digital phones have an LCD display with buttons surrounding it, which displays
messages such as "Next Voice Message," "Previous Voice Message,"
"Options Menu," and "Change Greeting." These displays make it even
easier to traverse the voice mail system and play messages.
Digital phones also offer the ability to allow call center agents to log on to a queue
via the LCD display - not easy to do with analog phones. Usually analog phones will
require something like pressing *55 to log on to the ACD queue and *56 to log off, which
isn't as user-friendly. Also, without an LCD display available, an agent cannot quickly
determine if they have logged on already.
THE ANALOG ADVANTAGE
Using analog phones in a business/corporate environment is not without it merits however.
For one, analog phones are much less expensive than digital phones. Analog phones with
speakerphone, redial, and flash capabilities can cost around $50, whereas digital phones
(such as those from Lucent, Nortel, and Comdial) can range anywhere from $200 to $750
each.
The PC-PBX Connection
Analog phones are actually the predominant choice for many of the PC-PBX manufacturers,
such as Artisoft's TeleVantage, Altigen's AltiServ, and IBM's IBM Small Business Computer
Telephony Solution. As most of us in the CTI industry are aware, PC-PBX's are meant to
offer more flexibility than traditional PBXs. Typically, PC-PBXs run on Windows NT and are
in many ways more open than traditional PBXs. Also, they are much less expensive. But why
do most PC-PBXs choose analog phones rather than digital? The answer is three-fold.
1. Some of the PC-PBXs manufacturers are strictly software companies. They may not have
the expertise to make a digital phone from scratch. They could, of course, OEM a digital
phone from Nortel, Lucent, and the like, but since PC-PBXs are now starting to compete
with digital phone manufacturers, this may not be a viable option.
2. Utilizing analog phones reduces the overall cost of the system, which gives PC-PBXs
a cost advantage over some of the traditional PBX manufacturers.
3. PC-PBXs often use client-based "soft phones," also known as "PC as
phone," to make up for the lost functionality on the analog phones themselves. This
allows analog phone based systems to match or even exceed the functionality of systems
based on digital phones.
The Call Center Connection
In call center environments, the phone interface is moving more toward a "soft
phone," either in conjunction with instead of expensive digital phones. In call
center environments, an agent usually does not even need to touch the phone to receive an
incoming call or make an outbound call. Instead, ACDs and predictive dialers perform these
tasks. In many call center environments, a database query is performed, and a screen pop
is displayed on the agent's screen, even before the call is answered. To actually answer a
call, an agent wearing a headset may simply depress a button on the phone, or click on a
button on the computer screen to answer the call. In such a case, it doesn't make sense to
spend $500 per agent for a digital phone (plus a headset), when a $50 analog phone (plus a
headset) and a GUI-based "soft phone" will suffice. For example, assuming a
100-seat call center, the savings from using analog phones could amount to $45,000.
There are several companies in the CTI industry selling products targeted at the call
center market. These products utilize analog station sets and still provide the
functionality of a digital station set (and more), simply by taking advantage of
user-friendly and powerful PC-phone software. For example, Interactive Intelligence's EIC
system utilizes analog phones and an extremely powerful PC-based phone GUI, which can
manage many different forms of communications, including incoming calls, chat requests,
Web callbacks, and more. Call control functions, such as transferring, on hold, and
conferencing can be performed via the GUI. Artisoft's TeleVantage is another system, which
utilizes analog phones along with a phone graphical interface for managing calls and voice
messages and even includes very good call center features, including ACD functionality.
Soft Phone Underbelly?
Digital phone proponents may argue against the PC-based PC-phone software, saying the PC
is unreliable, or that people are still accustomed to using the phone. However, even if an
agent's PC crashes, an agent that has an analog phone can still take calls, transfer calls
(via a flash hook) and the like, since the ACD and/or predictive dialer will still be
feeding calls to the agent. Thus, the reliability argument may not be so compelling after
all.
IP-BASED TELEPHONES
There is at least one other phone genre that I did not mention yet, and that's IP-based
telephones. Companies such as Cisco Systems and NBX sell phones which connect via an
Ethernet connection. These types of phones are more similar to digital phones than analog
phones, since they often have an LCD display and several programmable buttons. Some might
claim that these IP-based phones are the next evolution above and beyond digital phones.
These IP-phones certainly do bring a great deal of flexibility and manageability to the
table, but they still have a ways to go to catch up to the reliability of digital or
analog phones, since IP phones are dependent on the LAN.
CONCLUSION
What's the right choice of phone for you? As I previously stated, it depends on several
factors, such as cost, flexibility, software support, and your business model. Expect
vendors to espouse using their digital, analog, or IP-based phones and to give a hundred
reasons why their phones are best. But let me point out that the choice of phone actually
isn't as important as the choice of the PBX or PC-PBX or voice/data switch itself, since
that is where the core functionality to meet your business's telephony needs resides. For
example, does the voice/data switch, PBX, or PC-PBX support TAPI, unified messaging,
one-number follow-me, T1 trunks, analog trunks? Each business is different, which means
that PBX systems with different types of phones will work better in different situations.
But I'm interested in hearing from our readers. What are your experiences with various
types of phones? Send me an e-mail on what kind of phone (digital, analog, or IP-based)
you prefer and why.
Tom Keating is chief technical officer and executive technology editor for TMC. He
welcomes your feedback. To contact him, send your e-mail to Tom Keating .
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