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OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212 have entered the End of Life phase

Started by VolkerP, March 21, 2022, 02:07:25 PM

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VolkerP

Which new models will replace the OBi200, OBi202 and OBi212which all have entered the End of Life phase and won't be supported after 12/18/2023?

drgeoff

There has been no announcement which answers that question.

My prediction (in reality a guess as I have no inside information) is that there will be no replacements.  There was no technical reason to EOL those ATAs.  There is no new technology that would enable significantly better or cheaper units from Poly or others. The market for ATAs is small and shrinking and possibly Poly considers it not worth the effort to be in that business, especially the low margin consumer side. Poly has historically addressed the business market and the future of voice solutions there is certainly IP phones, not ATAs.

RFC3261

Quote from: drgeoff on March 21, 2022, 03:23:43 PM
There has been no announcement which answers that question.

My prediction (in reality a guess as I have no inside information) is that there will be no replacements.  There was no technical reason to EOL those ATAs.

I think there is some subtlety here.  The "value add"/"killer" feature for some of the OBi2xx devices is/was Google Voice support vs the OBi3xx devices which did not support GV.  The OBi3xx (which has not been EoL'ed) is a pure ATA (typically sold via integraters/VARs, sometimes locked to the provider) and is still available for use with other SIP providers (just not GV).

But I do agree that the consumer market for ATAs is nearing zero (as opposed to business's migration to VoIP which is still a thing in some places (although, it, too, is shrinking)), so if Poly (OBi) offers a new device it will likely only be because the SoC's in the devices are, themselves, EOL, and a new rev would be needed (I suspect Marvell has new variants of the SoC at this point).

OBi was partially a victim of their own success and business plan, in that while GV support achieved consumer sales for the OBi devices (who did not want "free"?), there was no recurring revenue after the initial sale of the device, which almost certainly resulted in a pure expense when they had to revise the firmware for the GV changes a few years ago.

And, of course, it should be noted that Poly's ATAs (the OBi3xx) do integrate with Google Workspace (business) VoIP, so another option is to move to a Google Workspace account.


scott818

I certainly hope that after 12/18/2023 those who already have an OBi 200/202 device configured with GV can continue using it with GV for years to come as long as they don't need to make any modifications to the configuration. I depend on my OBi device as a landline.

Lavarock7

Quote from: scott818 on July 14, 2022, 08:25:02 AMI certainly hope that after 12/18/2023 those who already have an OBi 200/202 device configured with GV can continue using it with GV for years to come as long as they don't need to make any modifications to the configuration. I depend on my OBi device as a landline.

Then again, you could port your GV number to another provider and pay a few dollars a month. Although not as cheap as you are getting by now, perhaps $20 to $30 a year is not too much a hardship. Plus you would have a supported provider with lots of extra features and a help desk.
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