Dear Siemens

I have a Siemens C460IP phone at home, and so far I’m very happy with it. Very easy to use, lovely integration with Asterisk, and ideal for general usage around the flat. However, one thing bugs me, and that’s the lack of alphanumeric addressing capability in the phone book or dialing screen. Siemens have been rather good with issuing firmware updates to the system (all done through the handset – how neat!), so it shouldn’t be that hard to get the system updated. This is all to do with what I described in my previous posts about SIP addressing and the future of VoIP

So, in an attempt to get this functionality, and in good tradition, I submitted a feature request to them. Here it is for posterity, and I’ll see if we get any mileage out of it…

Hi,

I would like to submit a feature request to your engineering team
for the C460IP phone (which I have and so far am very happy with). It
would be a simple addition to allow alphanumeric entries into the
phonebook or dialling screen. At the moment it only allows numerical
addresses and IP addresses. Allowing alphabetic characters
would allow the user to call SIP addresses anywhere in the world
without having to rely on a number lookup system. It would allow
similar functionality to your Gigaset.net system, but be global
and open, just like the SIP support in the phone.

Please see http://lodge.glasgownet.com/blog/2007/05/12/more-voip/ for more reasoning behind this request.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kyle

***update***

Siemens have gotten back to me already, rather quickly. Along with the standard blurb about customer service centers, I get this…

We forwarded your feedback and your request to our product manager. Thank you very much for your feedback.

Unfortunately at the moment the phone will not allow alphanumeric entries in to the phone as you pointed out. We have not received any information about this changing in the future with this phone but we will send you an answer when we hear back from the product manager.