Many thanks to Dan York for setting the record straight on wireless phones. He noted my recent post on the new Siemens OpenStage SIP solution, and caught a claim in the Powerpoint that isn't accurate. I've ribbed Dan about not talking enough about his employer, Mitel, but in retrospect, I knew Dan used a WiFi VoIP phone in his home office, and wish I'd been on top of things to ask them about that in pointed fashion during the briefing.

That said, I agree with Dan's assessment that this is likely a research oversight, probably farmed out to a junior employee. It's just an oops, but I'm glad Dan caught it. Read his post for more.

Note to Siemens: Need better fact-checking: your OpenStage phones are NOT the first IP phones w/WLAN
Now I realize that often in sales and
marketing, some folks tend to exaggerate claims... or split hairs to
make various claims... or (more often) don't do enough fact-checking to
verify their claims... but it rather annoys me when I see someone
making claims that are just wrong - especially when the claims overlook
products made by my own employer! As readers know, I don't really tout Mitel
products here all that much, but in this case, I feel compelled to
write a bit about one. In the recent announcements by Siemens of their
new OpenStage SIP phones, which Ken Camp covered so well here, Siemens makes the claim in their PowerPoint presentation (available from Ken's post):

The first time an enterprise desktop phone has been able to connect to both wired and wireless infrastructures.

Um... no. You see, Mitel has been shipping this little product called the "Mitel WLAN Stand" since July of this year (2006) which just clips onto the back of any of our enterprise desk phones and allows that phone to connect to a 802.11 network. I've got one here in my home office...