Business Speakerphones 101

Most people who are in business today whether in the position of owner, office manager or just the one who "does the phones" have a speakerphone on their desk.

The first thing we'll do is to divide speakerphones into two major groups:
1.Full Duplex
2.Half Duplex
(And yes we are talking about electronic and digital phones, of all makes and models, Lucent, Panasonic, Nortel, Toshiba, Comdial, Nitsuko etc.)

All telephone speakerphones are half-or-full duplex. The difference between them can be fairly large to you, especially if you do a lot of handsfree calling. What half duplex means is that only one side of the conversation can be speaking at a time. In other words, if you are in a conversation with someone and they are speaking, you MUST wait for them to finish to begin your own speech. The reason is the speakerphone itself can only have data, or conversation if you will, heading in one direction at one time. Around half of the manufacturers out there have Half duplex speakerphones and this is the single major reason for "clipping" or hearing your conversation "drop out". Pretty annoying, huh?

Most folks dont know the difference, because the manufacturers have made the actual speed that the phone switches from "Talk" to "listen" fast enough that they work pretty good. Full duplex speakerphones work differently, and better I think. On full duplex phones, you can have the best of both worlds. You can talk at the same time as the other person who is on the line with you. Your conversation is much clearer, and therefore much better understood. And there is no clipping.

To test a phone to see if it is half or full, make a handsfree call. Stand 4-6 feet from your phone and simultaneously have yourself and the person on the other end start counting from one to ten. While doing this, have someone else in your office put their head down by the phone and LISTEN carefully to see if they can hear the person talking from the other end throughout the exercise. If they can, than your phone is Full duplex, and if they cant, or it "drops out" than your phone is "half duplex". Do this test when you're buying your system, and your salesperson will probably learn something from you. The second most important thing to making your speakerphone work right is your computer. I know this might sound a little strange, but read on....

The microphones in a typical office phone are designed to be very sensitive, and most of the manufacturers haven't given too much thought as to what those microphones are sensitive TO. Almost everybody has a computer on their desk these days, and if they don't now, they will soon. And two things that all computers come with are a fan, and a drive. Both of these things make and produce and send out small high frequency noise that is not audible to the human ear, but BINGO!, your microphone on your phone will pick it up. When it does, typically it will degrade the performance of a typical speakerphone by 35% to 80%. Have you ever heard someone in your office say that "my speakerphone must have been bad from the factory, because it's never worked right"??? Have them go to their desk, and shut off their computer and LEAVE IT OFF for at least 10 minutes (to dissipate any high frequency "noise" that might persist around the computer.) Have them make a handsfree call, and I'll bet they'll be surprised at how much better their phone works. To fix this problem, if you find it applies to you, try to make sure that your phone is on the opposite side of your desk from your computer. Another BIG thing to look out for is whether someone else in your office has the BACK of their computer facing your workstation. If they do, your phone hears their computer better than it hears you.