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Bluetooth Conference Phone (BTC)
Overview
The BTC phone is a premium phone intended for use in conference rooms and similar environments. The phone has excellent speech quality over a very wide range of volumes. It communicates using Bluetooth wireless or audio cables to a variety of other devices. The BTC phone is battery operated so that it can be used in the middle of a conference room without wires attached or used for any portable application. Applications of the BTC phone include the ability to have conferencing using a VoIP phone, a mobile phone, or a soft phone on a PC. With the appropriate phone, conference calls can be made to two or four other parties. With its superb audio capabilities the BTC phone can serve a conference room with one to 50 listeners.
The phone has four microphones to be able to collect sound from any participant in the conference. It offers full duplex echo cancellation to ensure a completely natural conversation between all parties to the call. The product has an attractive appearance and is simple to use, making it the ideal complement for any environment.
Key Features
- Attractive phone for conference rooms in any business
- Serves one to 50 listeners
- Talkers can be 0.5 m to 2.5 m from the phone
- Noise reduction removes background interference from fans and traffic
- Simple operation with only three buttons
- Multiple color LEDs provide clear indication of status
- Battery operated to eliminate wires on conference room table
- Highest quality product in its class providing extremely low distortion
- Provides VoIP conferencing with SIP or other protocol
- Permits conferencing using mobile phones
- Permits conferencing using soft phones including MXIE and Skype
- Connects wirelessly with Bluetooth or with standard wired connections
- Uses four D size NiMH cells to give 10 hours talk time
- Two weeks standby time
- Recharge in four hours
Acoustical
The BTC phone has been engineered to provide the best possible performance when operating in any business application. The speaker and its associated speaker chamber provide very low distortion over a wide range of volume settings. The volume is adjustable with 21 steps and is coupled with a hi-fi acoustical limiter that ensures the output volume is the same regardless of the level of the signal on the telephone circuit. Further, the speaker has a spectral balancing system to provide the best possible speech intelligibility.
The four microphones provide better coverage than products that have one, two, or three microphones. Participants in the conference can confidently be heard from 0.5 m to 2.5 m (1½ ft to 8 ft) from the phone. The phone automatically selects the microphone that is receiving the clearest signal. This use of a single microphone at any one time eliminates the tunneling effect heard on competitive products and ensures the BTC phone sends the best sounding audio to the other end. The output volume beats all other phones in its class. It can exceed 95 dB SPL at 0.5 m. The total harmonic distortion (THD) over the range to this level is less than 2%. The microphone signal to noise ratio is 60 dB. The noise reduction eliminates background noise of up to 17 dB.
Connecting to the Host
The BTC phone needs a host to make and receive the phone calls. This can be virtually any type of phone, thus extending the usefulness of the BTC phone. As shown in the figure, the BTC phone can be used in VoIP environments, with cellular or GSM phones, and with legacy phone systems.
The phone can connect with any Bluetooth device using the Headset Profile. Bluetooth is available on VoIP phones, cell phones, and laptop computers. Pairing the BTC phone with the host phone in this manner takes only a few seconds. This permits the phone to easily be moved from one conference room to another or switched between use with a wired phone and a cell phone. The speech transmitted over Bluetooth is digital, ensuring that the signal is not degraded and that the quality is maintained.
The BTC phone can connect to a device with wires. It has standard 3.5 mm connectors just as found on most laptops and modern VoIP phones. These are the "pink and green" sockets used to connect an external speaker and microphone. The BTC can connect to any device that supports these in a standard manner. When connected to the host, the BTC phone provides a complete solution. The host phone is used to dial a number and the speech can be over the host phone or the BTC phone at the press of a button. When a call is received by the host, the BTC will also announce the incoming call, which can then be answered either by the host phone or from the BTC phone. Users can download different ring tones to the BTC phone to make it either match phones already within the business or be distinctly different from other phones. This offers significantly improved flexibility when compared with a phone that has only loudspeaker mode.
Invariably, a conference room has to have a separate phone (in addition to such a conference phone), so that private calls can be made. The problem is that once a call is established on the desktop phone, it becomes awkward to transfer it to the speaker phone. With the BTC phone, these problems disappear. A user can switch back and forth between the private phone and the BTC phone instantly. Further, if the private phone has the capability to initiate multiple calls, a multi party conference can be established without additional equipment.
The BTC can be used with laptop computers, either connected over Bluetooth or with a pink and green cable. This allows the phone to be used with a soft phone, such as the Zultys MXIE client or with Skype phone service. It can also be used when a group of people are viewing a seminar that is being streamed from the Internet so that the group can clearly hear the presenter of the seminar. A travelling executive can take the BTC to a customer's site or to a rented hotel room, and pair the BTC phone with a cellular phone to be able to simply offer quality conferencing capabilities.
Portability
The phone requires no cables connected to it to operate. It is shipped with four D size NiMH cells that provide 10 hours of talk time and two weeks of standby time. In most environments, the phone needs to be charged once a week. The recharge time is four hours.
When the phone is taken on the road, the batteries can be substituted with alkaline D-cells if it is not possible to charge the installed batteries. These are readily available through-out the world and performance is only slightly degraded with the alkaline cells. These cells are easily replaced without tools.
Making a Conference Call with Multiple Parties
When pairing the BTC with the Zultys ZIP 4 family of phones, users have a choice of using wired or wireless connections and can create a multi party call with people in the conference room and four other destinations. The user has a complete SIP solution proven to operate in a variety of VoIP environments.
With other phones or devices, the conferencing may be possible on the host, the PBX within the business, or an external conference mixer offered as a service.
Ergonomics
The phone has a clean look and will complement any office environment. The three buttons are very intuitive. Two control the volume and the third (the green button) serves multiple purposes. It is used to initiate or terminate a call, or put the call on mute. It is not necessary to orient the phone towards speakers. Its four microphones provide adequate coverage in any room up to 6 m by 6 m (20 ft by 20 ft). Above each microphone is an indicator that can show any color. It comprises a red, green, and blue LED to indicate the status of the phone.
Connectors and switches are hidden under the skirt of the phone, but are readily accessible by turning the phone upside down. The phone is shipped with stickers that indicate the function of these connectors and switches in multiple languages.
Technology
The product is built with high quality components. At the core of the phone is a DSP that processes 800 MIPS. It uses 16 bit sampling of the speech instead of 8 bit sampling on competitive products to minimize noise and other artifacts. There are four cardiod microphones and a loudspeaker with a neodymium magnet. These components ensure the speech input and output is the best possible.
The software on the BTC phone is upgradeable; thereby ensuring that as Zultys improves the product, existing owners can take advantage of these improvements. There is no charge for these updates. A software application that runs under Windows is available at no charge from Zultys' web site to download different ring tones or to change the software.
Physical and Environmental
Operating temperature: 10° C to 40° C (50° F to 104° F)
Storage temperature: 0° C to 50° C (32° F to 122° F)
Weight: 1.7 kg (3.6 lb) with batteries, 1 kg (2.2 lb) without batteries
Shipping weight: 2.4 kg (5.2 lb)
Size: 270 mm (W) x 270 mm (D) x 60 mm (H) (10.6 in x 10.6 in x 2.4 in)
Safety: UL 60950, CSA-C22.2, EN 60950:2001 EMI: FCC Part 15, ICES-003 Class B, CISPR 22, AS/NZS 3548 Class B
Emissions: CISPR 24 (EN55024:1998), EN61000
Bluetooth: FCC Part 15.247, EN 300 328, EN 301 489-17
Warranty: one year
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