Whether you are a corporate or residential VoIP user, at one time or another, you have to give some attention to what equipment you are using, since they have a bearing on your VoIP experience. As the VoIP market has grown over the last decade, so has the number of vendors. There are dozens of these hardware manufacturers and solution vendors around, meaning better prices through competition, but also better quality and features. I have shortlisted some of the most popular and most evaluated vendors below.
Avaya
Avaya is the leader on the VoIP market. It has a vast variety of equipment and solutions including IP phones, media gateways, routers, communication servers, PBXs, wireless phones, voice application etc. Its hottest product is the IP Office platform and communications system.Nortel
Nortel is one of the oldest vendors around - it has been here since 1895. The range of products it offers is more or less like Avaya, but it is more reputed for its PBXs. Nortel is the first vendor to provide an end-to-end IP telephony solution certified by U.S. Defense Department Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) in 2004.Cisco
Before VoIP, Cisco has been around as a networking vendor giant. Now, it is a leading player in the VoIP equipment arena, with good IP Phones, routers and other devices and solutions. Cisco owns Linksys, which is also well known on the market.Shoretel
Shoretel is a fast-growing vendor providing complete IP telephony solutions and PBXs. Shoretel's strong points are performance and ease of installation and use.Siemens
Siemens is another giant in technology which has extended its reach to VoIP and unified communications. It provides phones, PBXs and ... just anything concerning communication.Mitel
Mitel is a global provider of communications solutions for enterprises and small business. It aims at blending good human interface with powerful infrastructure. Mitel brands include SX and ICP series.Asterisk
Asterisk is not hardware, but a software PBX that can run on Linux, Unix, MacOS and some other operating systems. It is open source (meaning free) and is extremely flexible and very robust.Taridium
Taridium is a fast growing open standards VoIP solution provider. Taridium's offering ranges from managed VoIP services for small and medium sized businesses through to high capacity telephony solutions for large enterprises and service providers.Here are some of the other providers:
TalkswitchToshiba
Fonality
3Com
Polycom
Alcatel
Lucent (owned by Avaya)
Linksys (owned by Cisco)
D-Link
Sipura (owned by Cisco)
Grandstream
Snom
NetGear
ZyXEL
Belkin
