Christmas shipping and opening times 2012

This table shows our Christmas shipping times for our standard UK deliveries via APC:

Order Date Delivery Date
20th December 21st December
21st December 3rd January *
2nd January (Back to normal)     3rd January

Please note deliveries to Scotland will not be delivered until Thursday 3rd January 2013 (Due to Scottish bank holidays).

* If you would like goods to be delivered on Christmas Eve, APC can provide this service at the standard timed delivery surcharges:

pre 9am delivery: Add £12
pre 10am delivery: Add £10
pre 12pm delivery: Add £5

We work very hard with our couriers to ensure punctual delivery, but unfortunately as we all know the bad weather can sometimes affect our normal everyday workings especially at this time of the year. So please accept our advance apologises if there are any delays caused by bad weather.

ProVu Christmas Opening times:

Dates Opening times
24th DEC OPEN 09:00 – 14:00
25th DEC – 26th DEC CLOSED
27th DEC – 28th DEC     OPEN (Skeleton staffing) 10:00 – 16:00    
29th DEC – 30th DEC CLOSED
31st DEC OPEN (Skeleton staffing) 10:00 – 16:00
1st JAN CLOSED
2nd JAN Back to normal 09:00 – 17:30

ProVu celebrate 10 years of snom distribution

10 years of snom distribution

Yes it is hard to believe, but it is now 10 years since ProVu supplied their first snom phone. Back in 2002 when England had just lost again to a fluky Ronaldinho goal in the Japanese World cup and Broadband was just becoming widely available with speeds of just 256K ProVu reached agreement with snom to become their first UK Distributor.

Even in those days it was clear that VoIP was going to represent a major challenge to the long established traditional communication methods of ISDN and analogue lines. And with the advent of affordable Broadband and the SIP voice protocol it was clear that businesses were going to want to take advantage of the flexibility to call colleagues and customers anywhere in the world using the same Internet connection that they were using for normal business data.

The first snom model to be sold by ProVu was the snom 100 (view the snom 100 datasheet) which had an elegant designed handset. This also had the habit of elegantly sliding off the cradle with the slightest of knocks or vibrations to the table. snom quickly moved on to the snom 190 and 200 which set the standard for SIP phones with their ability to be provisioned automatically and technically superior SIP stack.

Ten years on snom have moved from strength to strength, with a wide range of phones and ancillary equipment that is still considered at the cutting edge of internet telephony.

ProVu are delighted and proud to have been snom’s UK Distributor for over 10 years now and look forward to achieving even greater success over the coming years.

Snom phones support for Office365 (Lync Online)

With growing interest in MS Lync, more people are moving to Lync online(Office 365) to benefit from the Microsoft feature rich platform. Some people think it’s a good investment and some think its not. Well I shall leave it to people to decide.

Coming back to the original subject, we are being asked if Snom Lync firmware supports Lync Online or not. The short answer at the moment is No. We understand all the customers requesting Lync Online (Office 365) support in Snom UC edition. The main challenge for Snom devices/development is a new additional login mechanism. To login to O365, Snom need to implement a new OrgID authentication method in their Lync firmware. By the way: in on-premise or Hosted-Edition deployments of Lync Server there is no such additional login using OrgID Authentication. Support for OrgID is on Snom’s roadmap, but an ETA is not available. We hope for the beginning of next year.

Personally, I expect that when we have O365 supported Snom firmware, clients will start requesting Lync On-Premise feature-set, that Snom as a device vendor wont be able to deliver(this may change). In other words OrgID support will be a resolution causing new “challenges”.

Please note: clients requesting phone support in O365 should carefully have a look on the O365 Plans (P1,P2,..,E1,E3,.. etc.) as only E4 support phone/pbx features/PSTN break out’s. E4 plan costs £17.75 per user per month. For the small organisation it’s reasonable but when you start adding more people to the system the cost increases to a level where it would be better to have an on-premises Lync device. Sangoma has recently introduced a Lync appliance that allows O365 integration along with a built-in VoIP gateway.

Find out more information on the Sangoma NetBorder Lync Express Gateway.

Siemens Gigaset – IP DECT Transfer ‘How To’

There are two types of transfer on a Gigaset IP DECT phone. The first way is called a DECT transfer and can only be used to transfer a call to another handset registered to the same base station.

The second type is a SIP transfer and can be used to transfer a call to any other number using your VoIP service provider or PBX. Chances are this is the type of transfer you want to do so you can skip right to the SIP transfer section if you want to.

Please note that you cannot transfer analogue/PSTN call to an external pstn number.

DECT/Internal Transfer How-To

  • During a call, press the “int” key on the handset. This is usually the left hand button on the four way navigation key in the middle but it depends on the handset model.

  • The person you were talking to now hears some awful music on hold generated by the Gigaset phone itself! which can be turned off from the web interface.

  • You will see a list of the other DECT devices registered to the base station, select one of the the dect handset and press the green dial button and it will start ring.

  • Announce the call and press the Red hangup key when ready to transfer.

SIP/External Transfer How-To

An external transfer is made a lot easier if you change a setting in the web interface of the phone before hand. You only need to do this once by the way!

There are two settings to look at. First setting is called "Transfer Call by On-Hook" and is found by clicking "settings" then "telephony" and "advanced" in the web interface. Change it to "yes". Other settings is " Use the R key to initiate call transfer" and found on the same page, change it t "yes"

After this the actual transfer process is fairly straight forward:

  • During a call, press the R keys on the handset which can be found on the lower left or right side of the keypad

  • Dial a number and press the green button to make a call.

  • When you are ready to transfer, simply press the hang up key on the Gigaset handset and the other two callers are connected.

Save money with ProVu’s NEW Gigaset N300IP bundles

a510hs

With the success of the N300IP and A510H handset bundle we are delighted to announce that we have expanded the range of Gigaset N300 IP Bundles to include the S810H / S510H PRO, C610H and the E49H ruggedised handset.

These new bundles offer great savings compared with ordering the handsets and N300IP separately. More information about the new Gigaset DECT Bundles

All pricing is available on ProSys, our Reseller portal. If you are an ITSP, telecoms retailer or telephony system installer sign up to become a ProVu reseller.

Find out more about the N300IP bundles

Yealink T26P, T28P and T38G now interoperable with Sennheiser Wireless Headsets


The Yealink EHS36 wireless (electronic hook switch) headset adaptor is now compatible with the high quality headsets in the Sennheiser DW Office DECT range. Meaning that there is now more choice of Wireless headsets to use with the T26P, T28P and the T38G.

Find out more about the Sennheiser products: www.provu.co.uk/sennheiser

The Sennheiser-Y-Cable is required for compatibility between the headset and the phone, this cable will be included in all our current and future stock of the EHS36.

Wiring Diagram:

EHS36 wiring

ProVu Launch Planet Technology range of PoE Injectors

Planet banner
Planet products

We are pleased to announce that we have reached agreement with Planet Technology Corporation of Taiwan to distribute their range of POE Injectors.

These are compact, affordable and reliable injectors and are ideal for powering IP phones plus other POE devices for example the Algo SIP alerter and fit easily into standard rackmount server cabinets.

With the ever increasing drive to greener technology solutions we are seeing many of the phone manufacturers moving towards supplying phones without a PSU. And with the Planet range POE injectors ProVu are now able to offer a very cost effective and greener POE solution.

We have available the 24 port, 12 port and 4 port injectors.

All pricing is available on ProSys, our Reseller portal. If your company has not been assigned an account or you have forgotten your login details give us a call on 01484 840048 to request a new one.

Vega 400/200/100 firmware recovery

If you have bricked your Vega box during the firmware upgrade process or something similar then it can be recovered.

You will need the following items for recovery.

  • Console cable (RJ45 to Serial converter). Vega 400/200/100 comes with a console cable.

  • Computer running Windows/Linux or Mac.

  • Terminal client such as Hyper Terminal, Minicom or Putty.

  • USB to Serial converter (optional: only required if computer does not have a serial port)

Recovery Procedure:

  • Turn off Vega

  • Connect RJ45 end of cable to console port and connect the serial connector to the serial port on computer.

  • Connect to Terminal client of your choice and set following configuration

    • Speed: 9600
    Data bits: 8
    Parity: None
    Stop bits: 1
    Flow control: None

  • Turn on Vega box and press Enter button a couple of times until the message “Press ‘Y’ to enter Boot Menu ” appears on terminal window.

  • Press ‘Y’

Note: Check the connections if nothing appear on terminal screen.

    Vega400 BootLoader: Version 3.00
    FPGA Test Pass (FPGA Version 3)
    RAMTest Pass – 64Mbytes verified
    Programmed MAC Address 00505816244A
    Press ‘Y’ to enter Boot Menu

    VegaStream Boot Menu Version 3.00
    ———- —- —- ————

    1) Download Boot Image (SRec)
    2) Download Firmware Image (SRec) (115K2 Baud recommended)
    3) Config Clear
    6) Switch Boot Partition
    D) Duplicate FLASH
    F) Set Flow Control (currently Hardware)
    Z) Set speed high (115200 Baud)
    E) Exit BOOT and Run Firmware

  • Finally press 6 to choose option 6 i.e. switch boot partition press 6 and wait couple of seconds. This setting will change the partition to older firmware version press E to exit and reboot to old firmware.

After the reboot the Vega should come back with older firmware and settings.

DE900 Rescue mode

If you get a gigaset DE900 stuck in rescue mode, this is what to do.

First change your computer to have an IP address of 192.168.15.2 with a 255.255.255.0 netmask. The phone will be on 192.168.15.1

Download the Firmware file
unzip

On Windows
Open a “DOS-box”
go to the DIR where the Firmware is located
TFTP -i 192.168.15.1 PUT filename.IMG

​On MAC/linux
Open a Terminal (Firmware file has to be in users home-DIR)
tftp
connect 192.168.15.1
binary
rexmt 1
timeout 60
put

Very secure Yealink provisioning coming soon

Just a quick note to say that I was supplied a specially modified version of a Yealink T28P a few weeks ago which has HTTPS certificates loaded into it.

There are two certificate chains, one is used by the provisioning server to verify the identity of the phone. The other is used by the phone to verify the identity of the server. There is a list of a few popular certificate signing authorities you can buy a certificate from for the server identity.

This two way identification is what is required for a truely secure provisioning system. It protects against attackers attempting to obtain SIP configuration from our servers and protects against DNS spoofing/poisoning attacks against your phones.

We sometimes get asked for HTTPS provisioning and of course it is pretty simple to implement. But without these certificates it is fairly useless. It does nothing to guarantee the identity of the server or the client.

At the moment this is a Beta test, we will be rolling out this provisioning option as soon as we can, in the next few weeks. It requires Yealink to start supplying phones with certificates pre-loaded at the factory and requires a certain (currently test-only) firmware version.

If any of this is of interest, please let us know.