Now Shipping PAP2T Devices Temporarily

[VOIPoTim]

Tim,

I have a question. I thought when you chose the grandstream units, you guys chose them because they worked better than the Linksys PAP2 units. Are these going to be an issue for new customers as I thought you wanted all hardware to be the same to prevent support issues that may arise with just some new customers have the Linksys and everyone else having the Grandstreams.

Just wondering why you decided to throw another hardware vendor into the mix. Just twice as much work for you and the engineers and support staff one would think.

Well we wanted to keep everything the same, yes. Ultimately we just don't have a choice though. Right now we won't be able to get any Grandstream units for over 2 weeks. So our only option was to get something else or cancel the thousands of orders we'll get between now and then because people won't wait 2 weeks for shipping.

The biggest advantage of the 502 over the Linksys unit is the fact that it has a built-in router. So that's a little kink in the mix, but we'll provide an alternative in situations where the customer does not currently have a router.

We also have some other reasons for wanting to integrate the PAP2 into everything in that certain other providers with financial challenges use it, so in the event that something were to happen, we'll be prepared to service users with the PAP2 as well as the 502 if users want to keep their existing devices and have them added to our provisioning. We've been planning on that for a while and had no intention of shipping them out normally, but in this case we need to.

Another thing we've noticed is that for certain network setups, different ATAs work better. As an example, we had many users who had perfect service with the 286 and then when they swapped for a 502 (most wanted the cloned line), they started having issues. Don't get me wrong, the 502 works extremely well, but in some cases (like with 2Wire modems), I think the devices without a built in router work a little better. This will give us some options support wise and may even structure ordering to have users identify their network setup/preferences to get the best fit ATA wise (PAPT2 for some setups, HT502 for most).