My Uniden cordless phones, which I am currently using on my OBi200 (0.0 REN, BTW) simply can't make or take a call without being externally powered. They are just dead. However, I have a nice AT&T desk speaker phone that will still work during a power outage. The speaker phone part won't work, nor will the fancy speed dials, but it will ring and dial out. Without external power, the phone has to draw power from the line to ring a bell, hence the non-trivial REN. I am simply suggesting that maybe your phone is designed to do likewise. Maybe not, but perhaps that's why it draws 1.2 Bels on a ring.
Designing a phone to work during a power failure is neither inherently good or bad. In this application, the tradeoffs are probably not desirable, but in a landline application, it may well be a different story.