UC500.com Cisco CallManager Express, UC500 reference

Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Oslo, Norway at the local Cisco office to present a short class on the UC520.

What a great event.  We had about 26 students attend from multiple partners in Norway. Each student brought his own UC520 and IP Phones.  It made for a cramped, but fun lab environment.

One of the interesting things about Norway, coming from my North American dial plan point of view, is that there are virtually no FXO lines,  The entire country uses ISDN BRI connections.  I think this fact will really help speed adoption of the UC520 throught Norway.  Other differences from a typical North American setup was the need to apply Norwiegian locals to the IP Phones, setting up a dial plan for Europe, local 8 digit dialing, 0 as an access code instead of 9 as we generally use in the States and emergency dialing using 112.  For non North American dial plans the CCA tool also setup 0T dial plans that worked, but we changed them  to be more efficiant.

It was not all work.  I had the opportunity to join the partners for drinks and dinner one night after class and really enjoyed their hospitality.  We had beautiful weather and Cisco was a great host!