Why invest in an expensive PBX phone system when everything you need can be found in phones that simply plug right into your existing telephone jacks?
Most business telephone systems require all the phones in an office to be connected, individually, to a central control box or key service unit (KSU). The disadvantage is that the KSU and unique wiring require professional installation and programming, raising the cost and complexity of the system.
But, “non-KSU” phone systems do not require a central cabinet. Instead, each phone contains the circuitry necessary for features such as conferencing, intercom, and transfer. Installation is as easy as plugging in the phones.
Overview: Simple to install and use, this affordable multi-line speakerphone features Caller ID/Call Waiting when you subscribe to these services from your local telephone service provider. It also offers a convenient speakerphone, headset jack, 32-number speed-dial, and 3-way conferencing.
As your business expands, you can add additional telephones from within this AT&T series which can be networked into a system of up to 16 phones. Additional features include all-station paging, intercom, hold, call transfers between stations, four lighted line indicators, 16 intercom one-touch keys, two data ports, Centrex compatibility, and power failure protection.
The setup: For this review, we purchased one new ATT 1070 speakerphone (as well as an ATT 1080, which was necessary for testing features only available when using 2 or more phones of this phone system series). We connected each phone’s first two lines together, in a star topology, to distribute both lines of a two-line SIP adapter by Sipura using G.711u audio compression to our Asterisk 1.4 voice server.
As you can see by the picture on the right (click to zoom), all of the external telephone lines in your home or office must be wired to all phones. It is actually very common for homes and small offices to already have this wiring plan, so these new phones simply plug in where the old phones were once connected! Optionally, Line 4 can be shared by all phones, or unique as a “private line” exclusive to one phone, or a group of phones that might need a dedicated telephone number for external callers to reach them directly.
First thoughts: Unlike recent AT&T 4-line phones that looked more like a cheap, plastic, consumer-grade, home telephone trying to survive the daily abuse of an office environment, the telephones in this new series of “non-KSU” intercom phones (ATT 1040, ATT 1070, and ATT 1080) look and feel like professional business phones. It’s two-tone silver brushed metal and hard black plastic design fondly references back to the popular AT&T Merlin® KSU phone system of several decades ago.
The included manuals are outstanding! You receive a Quick Setup Guide, a Users Guide, and an Installation Guide. But these aren’t some tiny little pamphlet! Each of these books are about 50-150 pages, every page written in plain English, covering every single feature in a very clear and concise way to make sure you get your money’s worth out of everything this phone has to offer. (I have never been more impressed by documentation!) I found no typographical errors or confusing descriptions. The manuals really add some confidence to AT&T and the future of this new phone series!
The good: The four-way directional button and center “Enter” button become your primary tool to quickly and easily select features without the need to remember codes or special key sequences. In fact, all too often, these “non-KSU” phones will have buttons with two or more functions — not this new AT&T series! The buttons on the phone are self-explanatory and only serve the one function for which they are labeled. All related feature options appear on the blue backlit LCD screen when you are in a particular mode that offers more options. For example, when you lift the handset and press the Intercom button, the top half of the screen prompts “Intercom No.?” while the bottom half of the screen presents you to optionally “Page” a single extension (instead of simply ringing it) or to “Page All” and broadcast your announcement on all the phones in your home or office simultaneously.
Another improvement, which is why I suspect these phones aren’t backwards compatible with earlier AT&T “non-KSU” phones other than the 1000-series: the Intercom audio is digital, crystal clear. No longer will your Intercom calls be subjected to interference from a nearby radio station transmitter or other nuisance! With two phones side-by-side, you can detect a slight millisecond or so delay as an Intercom page is encoded on your phone to be then decoded on the destination phone. The sound quality is truly impressive and worthwhile. If you are currently experiencing any issues with your Intercom on older non-KSU phones, you might want to give a pair of these a test run.
The bad: If you transfer a call from one phone to the next, the caller hears nothing. No music-on-hold, no tones — nothing but silence. If they had offered an option to play a soft double-beep tone to the caller every couple of seconds, that would have been a worthwhile improvement over dead-air. (However, the ATT 1080 does play a “Please hold” recorded announcement every few seconds when a caller is transferring to an extension by way of the built-in auto attendent included on that ATT 1080 phone. But even that phone leaves the caller with dead air if they are put on hold or transferred by a human instead.)
UPDATE: We recommend adding the On Hold Plus Music On Hold 6500 system to play music-on-hold to your callers, which will solve the biggest problem in this otherwise perfect phone system.
One slight disappointment was with regards to the telephone recognizing when a caller on-hold had disconnected. I tried everything in my “toolkit” of test equipment, but it seems these phones just don’t recognize (or don’t care) when a caller that you’ve placed on-hold chooses to hang up before you return to the call. The system will continue to keep that line blinking on-hold until you retrieve it — often to the frustration of loud dialtone in your ear. Not a deal-breaker, just annoying.
It also would have been nice if the Hold button had a red-colored key for quick access. I realize its a minor complaint, but when you take a lot of calls it helps to have that button easy to find. I would suggest the purchase of a red permanent marker so you could do it yourself — you’ll thank me later!
The ugly: When integrated with an ATT 1080 with the “SYS EXT” voice messaging feature enabled, trying to figure out how to listen to your messages on any phone except the ATT 1080 is a huge headache! For a phone system that is so “menu-driven” by that directional navigation and “enter” button arrangement near the LCD screen, it is irritating to have to dig out a reference card to use this ATT 1070 phone to listen to your messages in the mailbox reserved exclusively for your extension but actually recorded and stored on the ATT 1080 voicemail/answering system. It just seems to me this could have been better thought out!
My guess is that AT&T would probably “recommend” that you purchase an ATT 1080 phone for every person who needs a voicemail/answering system, instead of using one ATT 1080 to serve voicemail for multiple ATT 1070 phone users as their advertising suggests.
Conclusion: Overall, this is the best four-line telephone AT&T has ever made! If you’ve ever experienced issues with any of the earlier four-line models, such as the ATT984, ATT974, ATT964, ATT955, ATT945, or ATT944. The 1040, 1070, and 1080 have been redesigned from the ground-up and the attention to quality really shows!! All advertised features worked beautifully, each button pressed produced the expected result — press the Transfer button while on a call, the LCD prompts “Transfer line to ?”. By keeping one function per button, and also utilizing the navigation menu-driven options through the phone’s display, anyone can easily figure out how to do anything on these phones without ever needing to read any of the documentation.
The speakerphone sounds nice, although the volume of the speaker could’ve been louder (in my opinion). Each phone allows you to control the ringing tone, volume, and delay ringing options for each line individually. Believe it or not, that level of control of line ringing assignments are usually reserved for KSU systems only! Intercom calling worked flawlessly. All-Page was loud and very practical for a busy home with an office, small business, or retail shop.
With a cost of about $100 per phone, these are an outstanding value for any large home or growing business with 2 or more phone lines looking for the simplicity of replacing their old phones with something more serious, flexible, and functional.
| ATT 1070 Four-line Speakerphone with Intercom, Call Transfer
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| ATT 1080 Four-line Speakerphone, adds Voicemail to System
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We use these in our real estate office, looking to add the answering machine one. Great, easy phones for managing lots of calls at once!
Do you know if centrex is required for these phones to work right?
No, Centrex is not needed for these AT&T four-line phones to work as you’d expect them to and provide all the features included, such as Intercom and Call Transferring, and do everything else listed on the side of the box.
Centrex service was designed for situations such as if you would want to transfer a caller you’re talking to on one of the four lines on your ATT 1070 telephone to someone’s mobile cell phone “out in the field” or someone’s “home office” phone number at another location anywhere in the country. Centrex is a completely optional service add-on from your local phone company and it is absolutely not necessary for these phones’ ability to intercom or transfer calls from ATT 1070 phone to another ATT 1070 phone (or ATT 1080) in the same building.
I can’t support this product review at all. Our a set of 8 Nortel Venture phones were destroyed by a major lightning hit, and I replaced them with AT&T 1070/1080 phones. While the feature list and cosmetics of this system look good, the performance sucks. All the first group had to be replaced because the speaker phones were useless. One of the replacements is also going to have to be replaced, but on all of them the audio is marginal, and good audio quality should be the phones’ first requirement. Turns out they are incompatible with plantronics wireless headsets too- they release a lot of stray signals that interference that conflict with the headsets and make them useless. In general, the AT&T’s fall far short of the performance we were used to with the Nortel phones. I would rate them about a three on the 1 to 10 scale, and a bad choice.
The speakerphones on the Nortel phones will be better, they are much more expensive phones than the AT&Ts. But our testing has proven great results with the sound quality of the phones themselves when using a handset or directly connected headset. If you are experiencing sound quality issues with these phones, there is a setting of Line Type in the phone’s configuration menu where you can correct for that by changing to its alternate setting.
Unfortunately, almost all phones in this price range will have poor speakerphones when you’ve been spoiled by the high priced Nortel or Polycom phones who pride themselves on the speakerphone design but compromise with intercom issues or extensive price tag per phone.
This system will be returning to the shelves of Office Max today. I purchased 1 1080 and 3 1070 phones. I had intended to place the 1080 at the desk of the receptionist and the 1070s at remote desks. I find that, if the receptionist is on the 1080 phone, the Auto Attendant and Answering Machine will not pick up. I contacted AT&T and was told that the phone can only do one task at a time.
It is disappointing that, after all of these years in the business, AT&T would think it’s acceptable for an “Automatic Attendant” to not be able to answer because you are on the phone…
While I use the 1070 and love it, I agree with you here Greg W. I first picked up the 1080 and was completely disappointing by the auto attendant. The moment I discovered it can’t even take a call while you are using the phone I boxed it back up and returned it for the 1070. While other high end phones can certainly outperform this one, you cannot beat the value at this pricepoint.
Soon after I returned the 1080, I switched my business line to Vonage and use their voicemail system, which may not have features such as extension mailboxes, but does provide things like after hours messaging and suits my needs fine.
I am a big fan of these types of phones, and have had the AT&T 854/954 series for years. I have changed over to the 1070s because our system required more phones, and the 1070 allows 16 phones on one system rather than the 12 of the 854s.
We often need to call into a bridge to join an audio teleconference using the speaker phone on a 1070. Our voices fade in and out leaving our clients exasperated. The participants on our end go back to their individual phones and join the call from their own desks where the sound is fine but we lose the ability to interact with each other during the call or possibly reference material on a laptop. Is this a problem with the speakerphone or possibly even the bridge? Any information would be greatly appreciated. I read somewhere that a phone needs to be full duplex to work with a bridge. I can’t find information anywhere about whether the 1070 is full duplex or half duplex.
RESPONSE: The 1070 speakerphone is closer to half duplex functionality than full duplex. It tries to be slightly better than other half duplex speakerphones by employing some digital signal processing, but if you are really looking for an exceptional speakerphone with full duplex design expect to pay about $500+ per phone.
im wondering if line one is busy, will the calls forward (roll) over to the next open line..? or is that a phone company feature? thank you
EDITORIAL: Yes, that is a phone company feature and these telephones work with that feature.
I am researching KSU-less phones for a new office. Would you suggest I buy one 1080 and 1070’s for all substation phones? We don’t have a receptionist and I was thinking the Auto Attendant could pick up all the time. So no one could use line 1 except the 1080 if you want Auto Attendant to answer at all times?
EDITORS NOTE: Yes, one 1080 and everything else as 1070s would be the best way to go. The 1080 can be set to answer any line, 1 through 4. The trick is this: put the 1080 in a location with almost no potential for it being used by a person. When the 1080 is acting as “auto attendant”, no person can use the phone for making or receiving calls. So stick the 1080 in a back room somewhere and put 1070 phones everywhere a person will be and you’ll be all set!
Here is my take on the AT&T 1080 on a rainy Sunday afternoon in Tampa, Florida. Good phone. Very electronically sophisticated for the price. Has 60 minute message recording time which is 40 minutes more than its predecessor, the AT&T 984.
The three manuals that come with it are very well written and detailed. However, I found it a little inconvenient and extra time consuming to have to bounce back and forth between manuals to program the 1080 phone. With the AT&T 984, the predecessor to the 1080 (that I have been using) you received a Quick Start Guide and ONE well written detailed manual put together in a logical sequence. No bouncing around. In fact, for the most part the manual for the 984 can be used set up the 1080.
The four line, blue tinted LCD on the AT&T 1080 is not bright enough to read easily. No amount of tweaking the contrast up or down will improve the quality of the display. Also, in the 1080 there is no provision to turn the LCD display “off” as there is with the 984.
The AT&T 1080 is not a Full Duplex phone. However, the sound quality is crystal clear with no noticeable “clipping” or noise.
Most vexing and annoying was removing and reinstalling the clear plastic cover over the Speed Dial/Intercom buttons on the AT&T 1080. This turned out to be quite daunting and time consuming. Not so hard to get the plastic cover off but a real challenge in finger dexterity to get it properly installed again. Also, in my opinion, the spaces allotted on the Speed Dial name card are too small for printing names.
By comparison some similar phones, such as some of the RCA phones, will allow you to program the name of the person associated with each Speed Dial or InterCom key directly into the phone so that there really is no need to even write on the card at all. (You press a button and the display shows you the name (or number) associated with each Speed Dial key). It would be nice if AT&T telephones had this capability too.
The two-tone silver brushed metal fascia on the phone is quite striking. Almost too striking and “glaring” in fact. Combined with the dim LCD screen above it all that shiny metal only further detracts from your ability to read the LCD.
On the plus side however, the Hold button is predominantly placed at the top of the row and clearly and easily stands out on the bright metal finish so in my opinion, there really is no need to deface the button by smearing a colored marker over it.
I am finding that the auto attendant works fine if a call comes in on one line at a time. If my line one is in use and the call rolls to line two or three, the outgoing message defaults to the factory setting and not my recorded OMG. The phone does not give the option to select which line(s) to use for the OMG. is there a setting somewhere that I ‘m not finding, or is this phone simply not capable to using the same outgoing message on all lines?
These phones sound like what we need. Two final issues (potentially deal breakers, unfortunately) regarding compatibility with other phones:
1. Can an external speakerphone be added at a conference room location for those times when we just have to have high quality?
2. As someone put it on Amazon.com: “If the 1040-1070-1080 series is used on a line shared by non system phones (etc), the hold button on the phones will not recognize when a non-system phone picks up the line (ie: if you put a line on hold, apparantly only a system phone can release the hold) (This info is confirmed in the at&t phone website FAQ’s)”
Since we would like to use our new system of 6-10 corded phones in parallel with an existing Panasonic cordless system, would we have a problem with the AT&T phones? We’d like to be able to put a call on hold at the corded phone, pick up a cordless phone, access the call, and then upon completion of the call, have all phones go back to on-hook status. We would naturally hang up the cordless phone, but would we have to do something on the AT&T phone too? Thanks for any wisdom!
The AT&T phone will let you place a call on hold and pick up a call placed on hold by another phone. But the “intercom” and “call transfer” features will only work between two or more AT&T 1040, 1070, 1080 phones. With regards to your desire to have all phones go back to an on-hook status, the only way to make sure of that in your scenario is to not push the hold button on the AT&T phone but instead hang up the AT&T phone when the cordless picks up that line. The line light for that line on the AT&T phone will be on solid (meaning, someone is using that line) instead of blinking (what happens when you put it on “hold”) and the AT&T phone will properly clear that line and its light will turn off when the cordless user is done with their call.
Is there any product that can be plugged into the 1070 headset jack that can improve speakerphone quality?