IP Phone - Cisco 7960 - Will it work?

Posts: 6 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 17, 2006 Posts: 6

Hello again guys,

Here is my dilemna. I spoke with a sales rep directly at Vonage (and most of the reviews are right as to the terrible level of customer service one receives by them) asking if I could use a cisco 7960 IP phone with this service. He then put me on hold and came back to tell me that it was indeed possible as he spoke to the tech support line and they confirmed it for him. So after finding a good deal on one here in Toronto, I went ahead and bought it.

I signed up for the service. After being transferred, retransfered, disconnected, calling back and transfered yet again to another level of support, I was FINALLY put though to the top level support team. The gentleman said that it would not be possible to run this phone into my Vonage router via ethernet (as this is the only jack available on the cisco phone) and set it up that way because the phone itself does not have the information it needs in order to correctly find the Vonage servers. He said that even if I had a SIP user/pass, the phone still would not know where to go in order to find the Vonage server, and that he did not have that information either.

So I guess once again I will rely on the tech gurus online rather than at a corporation, since it seems like the answers are much more insightful from the ones I get online!

If I sign up for a softphone account and get a SIP user/pass ... will this DEFINATELY work with the phone I have? If so, will I get the info such as server directions for the phone to find the Vonage servers ''as the tech support guy said that it would need but he didn't even have that info''.

Most importantly. Will the phone then be running off of the added softphone account and not my main unlimited line? If this is the case, then I will be restricted to the call limitations and number of monthly minutes the softphone has won't I?? This would almost defeat the purpose of using this service at all then.

I hope this will work the way I hope it will, and hopefully if someone coudl walk me though setting up the cisco phone it would be GREAT! If it doesn't work, then I am considering cancelling my service on the merits of being misinformed by their customer care until signing up, only to find out I agreed to sign up under false pretenses.

Thanks guys!

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 28, 2005 Posts: 11

Vonage only allow customers to bring approved retail (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc ) devices to their network. Those devices are already provisioned in the database. The Cisco 7960 that you have is not provionsion in the database, that's why it will never work.

A softphone line will be useless in this case. It will not work at all. Somehow you were giving the wrong information. About get one of the VTech IP8100 phone they have the web site.

Posts: 1123 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: May 26, 2005 Posts: 1123

Woah, wait a minute there lakay. I'm pretty sure this has benn discussed and tested by someone here. If you use a softphone account, you get the SIP credentials, and if the Cisco IP Phone is SIP-enabled (and it is) then it should work if it's configured properly. One thing you can do, is get an unlimited softphone account, and leave your existing main number on, and forward it to your softphone number. If you don't care about the main number, drop it back to the lowest usage amount, and just forward it to use for special cases (like people who you have to give a number, but not your real one.) Does that make sense? The customer svc person you talked to was an ass for not being up front with you, just one of the reasons I left.

Posts: 11 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Aug 28, 2005 Posts: 11

navydavy2001 maybe it's possible there's always away, but I think Heineken77 is looking for a long term solution.

I've have Vonage for a long time now, and it works fine for me. Heineken77 before you cancel send an email to

'dslreports@vonage.com'

They maybe able to help.