Guest Post: When to Chose DECT over Wi-Fi – Part III

Note:  This is a guest post by James Kander, North American Sales Manager for Polycom KIRK, and is the final installment in a three part series.  Click here for Part I and Part II.

Completing this series on when to choose DECT over Wi-Fi,  Jim Kander, North American Sales Manager for the Polycom KIRK line, joins us one last time to provide you with the best practices for installation and advice on things you need to make sure you do and things you should be sure to avoid.

To recap, Part I of this series helped users distinguish the differences between DECT (Polyom KIRK ) and Wi-Fi (Polycom SpectraLink) and Part II outlined what’s needed to make the solution work.

Site Surveys Key to Wireless Installation

VoIP Supply:  Jim, you’ve cleared up the vagaries between DECT and Wi-Fi and provided a short list of necessary system components.  Now how do we get this thing to work?

Can you tell our reader what the best practices are for installing a wireless VoIP system?

James Kander, Polycom:  When dealing with RF [radio frequency], every site is unique. Radio coverage depends on a variety of factors such as:

• Building architecture
• Construction materials
• Number of users and usage pattern
• Traffic distribution

A floor plan can be submitted to Polycom for an estimate of the base station number and placement. Deployment kits are available from Polycom to perform a thorough site survey prior to installation/turn up.

Each handset is equipped with a built in site survey which allows users to see signal strength, packet loss, channel utilization and other tools for troubleshooting.